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Washington, D.C. – Federal employees whose appeals were filed late through no fault of their own should be allowed to challenge their dismissals or demotions in federal court, according to arguments the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in three separate cases.

Although the union doesn’t represent the three federal workers, NTEU filed the friend-of-the-court briefs asking the Supreme Court to review and to reverse the lower court decisions wrongly denying them the opportunity to have a federal court review the adverse employment actions against them.

“These cases are about protecting all federal employees – including whistleblowers – from retaliation or otherwise illegal personnel actions,” said NTEU National President Tony Reardon. “The law says they have the right to federal court review of these actions. When their paperwork is late because of someone else’s mistakes, the court can and should excuse the tardiness.”

In all three cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied the employees their day in court because of inadvertently missed deadlines. Two were late because the court posted incorrect information about the deadlines on its own website. In the third case, the employee sent his petition by priority mail 13 days before the deadline, but it took 16 days to arrive.

“These lower court rulings were incorrect, harsh, and contrary to Congress’ intent to give federal employees an impartial review of adverse actions taken against them,” Reardon said.

The cases are prime examples of dedicated civil servants who felt they were mistreated and simply wanted a judge to hear them out. Jeffery Musselman is a Bronze Star recipient with more than 20 years of military service who later worked for the Army as a civilian, and was demoted after making several whistleblower disclosures to management. Laurence Fedora is a military veteran with more than 36 years of federal service with the U.S. Postal Service and the Army, who says he was dismissed as a mail handler in violation of civil service laws. And Robert Vocke Jr. alleges the Department of Commerce retaliated against him for blowing the whistle on fraud, waste and abuse at the National Institute of Standards and Technology where he works as a scientist.

The cases are Vocke v. MSPB, No. 17-544; Fedora v. MSPB et al., No. 17-557; and Musselman v. Dep’t of the Army, No. 17-570.

NTEU has a long history of participating in federal court cases to protect the interests of the 150,000 employees it represents in 31 federal agencies and departments.