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DOJ Seeks En Banc Rehearing of D.C. Cir. Myers Whistleblower Opinion

Posted on Sep. 17, 2019

On July 2, 2019, the D.C. Circuit held that the 30-day filing deadline for bringing a Tax Court whistleblower award review suit at section 7623(b)(4) is not jurisdictional and is subject to equitable tolling. Myers v. Commissioner, 928 F.3d 1025. I blogged on the opinion here. Upset at its first loss in one of the cases in which Keith and I and the Harvard clinic have been making this argument as to various Tax Court filing deadlines (including in our amicus brief in Myers), the DOJ, on September 12, 2019, petitioned the D.C. Circuit to rehear the case en banc as to both the jurisdiction and equitable tolling rulings.

I won’t repeat in detail from my prior post how the D.C. Circuit reasoned that the filing deadline is not jurisdictional under recent Supreme Court non-tax case law. But, basically, the court held that, while the Code section clearly gave the Tax Court jurisdiction to hear such cases, the Code section was not sufficiently clear, by using the words “such matter” in a parenthetical, that Congress also wanted the filing deadline to be jurisdictional. Absent such a “clear statement”, the Supreme Court’s current position is that filing deadlines are not jurisdictional. In the DOJ’s rehearing petition, the DOJ basically repeats what it argued before – that “such matter” necessarily implies the filing deadline as well as the subject matter of the case.

When the D.C. Circuit ruled (2 to 1) against the DOJ on this argument, the court stated that it recognized how its ruling was “in some tension with” both Duggan v. Commissioner, 879 F.3d 1029 (9th Cir. 2018), and Guralnik v. Commissioner, 146 T.C. 230 (2016), each of which held that the section 6330(d)(1) Collection Due Process Tax Court filing deadline is jurisdictional and not subject to equitable tolling on language virtually identical to that in section 7623(b)(4).

My favorite passage from the rehearing petition is one with which I wholly agree:

The majority recognized that its holding “is in some tension” with that of the Ninth Circuit regarding “a similarly worded provision of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 6330(d)(1).” (Add.20.) But that is an understatement (to say the least). It is simply not possible to reconcile the decision in this case with Duggan.

The petition makes no new arguments, with the exception of (in the equitable tolling section) adding information (not previously given to the court) about how many whistleblower award claims are received each year — over 10,000. The DOJ argues that there would be huge administrative problems if equitable tolling were allowed because a lot of those claimants (including ones whose claims were long ago turned down) could now file late in the Tax Court. That, of course, is pure speculation. What the DOJ doesn’t mention is that, up to now, there have only been about 100 whistleblower award cases under 7623(b)(4) pending in the Tax Court at a time. This latter figure appeared in the appellant’s brief from a 2017 report of the whistleblower office.

In its rehearing petition, the DOJ also raised the specter that some awards may already have been given to one whistleblower, but if late Tax Court petitions are allowed, equitable tolling could lead to duplicate awards. I seriously doubt that is a real concern. Equitable tolling is a matter of equity. If a court saw that by a petitioner waiting so long, the IRS could now be in a situation to have to pay two awards, no doubt that is an equitable fact the court would consider in deciding whether tolling should be allowed.

The DOJ also makes an argument that it did not make before to the panel below — that there should be no equitable tolling because there is a cottage industry of lawyers that brings whistleblower award suits. In Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 568 U.S. 145 (2013), the Supreme Court held that there should be no equitable tolling because the Medicare concerns who were seeking reimbursement decision reviews before administrative boards were sophisticated companies who elected continuously to participate in the Medicare system and were well-represented by counsel. The Myers court pointed out that, by contrast, the Tax Court generally is a place where petitions are filed pro se by people who have never filed before — like Myers himself. So, it distinguished Auburn.

It troubles me that the DOJ did not give statistics to support its argument on how many whistleblowers (percentagewise) file pro se and represented Tax Court petitions. In any event, whistleblowers can’t be said to have elected to participate in the award system. Mr. Myers simply felt that his former employer had misclassified both him and other similar workers as independent contractors and suggested an audit.

Observations

I am told by people who do appellate work full time that the D.C. Circuit is stingy with grants of rehearings en banc. So, I am not expecting the petition to be granted. Then, the question will be whether the Solicitor General seeks cert.

This may be a similar situation to when, as an amicus, I helped persuade the Ninth Circuit in Volpicelli v. United States, 777 F.3d 1042 (9th Cir. 2015), that the filing deadline in section 6532(c) for a district court wrongful levy suit is not jurisdictional and is subject to equitable tolling under recent Supreme Court case law. The DOJ also filed a petition for a rehearing en banc with the Ninth Circuit – pointing to a clear conflict with opinions of other Circuits holding the filing deadline jurisdictional and not subject to equitable tolling (though those opinions predated the 2004 change in Supreme Court case law on jurisdiction). The Ninth Circuit did not grant the en banc rehearing. Then, the DOJ did not pursue the matter by filing a cert. petition.

But, I would be happy to see the jurisdiction and equitable tolling issues elevated to the Supreme Court. So, I am not hoping for a similar SG abandonment of the Myers case. In the rehearing petition, the DOJ argues that this is a matter of exceptional importance to the IRS. But, then, people seeking rehearing always say that.

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