The appeals court for the Federal Circuit has upheld a
lower court’s decision to deny additional overtime pay
to thousands of criminal investigators employed in
various federal agencies between 1984 and 1995.
The court of federal claims initially granted the
government’s dismissal of the “takings complaint” issued
by 14,302 former GS- 9-13 criminal investigators in the
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the Drug
Enforcement Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, the
Customs Service, and the Secret Service, according to
the appeals court decision, 04-5012.
It said the appellants were seeking the difference in
overtime compensation between what they got under federal
employees pay law, and what they claim they are entitled
to under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes
minimum overtime pay at time-and-a-half.
The appellants had been found exempt from the FLSA as
“executive, administrative, or professional” employees,
so they filed an “action at law” against the government
under the Tucker Act, according to the decision.
It said they also filed at the same time an administrative
claim before the Government Accountability Office — the
other course of action federal employees may take to
recover unpaid overtime — challenging the exemption
ruling and seeking damages stemming from the
“misclassification.”
Later, the appellants argued that the dismissal of their
case was in effect a “taking of their private property
without just compensation.”
However, the claims court found that the appellants failed
“to state a claim upon which relief may be granted,” and
the appeals court affirmed, saying that the “appellants do
not have a cognizable property interest in either the
underpaid overtime compensation or in an administrative
claim thereto within the meaning of the Takings Clause of
the Fifth Amendment.”
