Court: DoD violated veterans hiring preferences

Court: DoD violated veterans hiring preferences
By Elise Castelli - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 29, 2008 17:21:11 EST

The Defense Department violated the rights of a veteran who was seeking an entry-level, civilian auditing job when it decided to hire two nonveteran candidates instead, a federal court has ruled.

In a Dec. 24 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that an Office of Personnel Management authority that allowed Defense to bypass traditional competitive hiring procedures for entry-level positions was invalid because the regulation conflicted with statutory requirements.

Congress required that OPM give permission to DoD to pass over a veteran or other preferred candidate for a job, but in this case Defense made that decision on its own when it passed over veteran Stephen Gingery for a job at the Defense Contract Audit Agency.

Defense used a special authority to hire candidates through the Federal Career Intern Program, which under OPM’s regulation allowed the department to decide whether to give preference to the veteran. In exercising this hiring authority, the department denied Gingery, who has a 30 percent or greater disability, his preference rights, Judge Kimberly Moore wrote in the decision.

The court reversed a previous decision by the Merit Systems Protection Board to uphold the Defense hiring decision under the intern program and sent the case back to the board for further action.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/federal_gingery_122908w/%2e