Federal Employment

Over the past ten years, we have been fortunate enough to represent a large number of federal government employees. We have substantial expertise with the complex Equal Employment Opportunity complaint process for federal workers.

We have also handled proceedings under the Civil Service Reform Act including:

Proposals to Remove – Federal employees have the right to 30 days notice when management proposes to remove them from their position, whether for alleged misconduct or performance deficiencies. During those thirty days, the employee can make an oral and written response to the proposed removal. Employees have the right to have an attorney to make these presentations for them.

To defeat a proposed removal for misconduct (and stay employed) an employee can require management to consider the “Douglas Factors” including nature and seriousness of the offense, length of service, past performance and prior disciplinary history.

To defeat a proposed removal for performance reasons, an employee can try to show that he or she performed at an acceptable level, or that management did not give him or her a genuine opportunity to improve performance.

We have helped several clients defeat proposals to remove and keep their jobs.

Federal Retirement Benefits – Recently, Rose & Rose represented a client caught in “Catch 62.” Catch 62 allows former military personnel to receive civil service retirement credit for their years in the military so long as they deposit 7% of their military pay with the federal government before they retire from the civil service.

Our client served several years in the Marines. After college on the G.I. bill, he worked almost his entire career as a civilian government employee. When he decided to retire, an agency retirement counselor told him NOT to make the Catch 62 deposit. He was told the deposit was unnecessary.

Just after his sixty-second birthday, in the Summer of 2003, our client was greeted with a notice from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), advising him that his monthly retirement benefit would be reduced by about $500 a month.

On December 22, 2003, a Judge of the Merit Systems Protection Board ordered the government to allow our client to make the deposit after the fact, which would restore his full retirement benefit. For a copy of that decision click here

On June 16, 2004, the same MSPB judge held that the interests of justice required that the federal government reimburse our client for the attorney's fees that he spent defending his pension against “Catch 62.” For a copy of that decision click here.