WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday to let a Defense Department employee challenge his six-day furlough during the 2013 government shutdown in federal court.
In a unanimous ruling, the court said the 60-day deadline blocking Stuart Harrow from having a federal court review his furlough challenge should not have been enforced.
“The question presented is whether that 60-day limit is ‘jurisdictional,’ and therefore precludes equitable exceptions,” Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote for the court. “We hold that the limit, like most filing deadlines, is not jurisdictional.”
Harrow was part of a department-wide furlough over a decade ago while working with the Defense Contracting Management Agency. His attempt to avoid being furloughed by claiming financial hardship failed to convince the Defense Department, the Merit Systems Protection Board and an agency judge.
Over a decade later, however, the Supreme Court agreed to hear his case.
The long wait to settle Harrow’s claim is due in part to the Merit Systems Protection Board losing quorum. While his appeal sat in purgatory, Harrow changed his email address; when the board finally notified Harrow of its decision, the notification was sent to the wrong address.
The order started a 60-day timer when Harrow could appeal the board’s decision to the Federal Circuit. Harrow’s appeal came late and was dismissed as untimely.
Kagan said Harrow’s appeal should have been considered an exception to the procedural time limit enforced by the lower court.
“The procedural requirements that Congress enacts to govern the litigation process are only occasionally as strict as they seem,” Kagan wrote. “Most of those rules read as categorical commands (e.g., a person ‘shall file in this court,’ ‘shall file by that time,’ ‘shall include the following documents’).”
Kagan said lawmakers knew judicial doctrines occasionally would lead courts to deviate from the prescribed procedural rules. There are limits to when courts can break the rules, Kagan said, but Harrow’s case is within the court's authority.
“This case falls outside the Bowles exception because Harrow appealed to the Federal Circuit not from another court but from an agency,” Kagan wrote. “And as we have shown, the time limit Harrow missed when he filed that appeal does not satisfy our clear-statement test.”
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