Janice R. Lachance, Director, Office of Personnel Management v. Larry Devall, and Merit Systems Protection Board

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• explaining that the MSPB’s mitigation authority is generally the authority to “mitigate the agency’s original penalty to the maximum reasonable penalty when it finds the agency’s original penalty too severe”
• setting forth the Board’s authority to mitigate an agency’s penalty after consideration of the relevant Douglas factors if it finds the agency’s penalty too severe
• stating remand to the MSPB, rather than the agency, is the correct course of action where the agency does not indicate it desires a lesser penalty to be imposed on fewer charges
• when the Board agrees with the penalty assessment, yet declines to affirm all charges, it must “precisely articulate the basis for upholding the agency’s action.”
• “It is a well-established rule of civil service law that the penalty for employee mis- conduct is left to the sound discretion of the agency.”
• “That the Board always should have independent balancing authority seems manifest in view of the Reform Act’s purpose in creating the Board to determin[e] whether [the civil service] system is free from abuse.” (alterations in original) (internal quotation marks omitted)

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).