Last month, the Federal Circuit issued its opinion in Hamill v. Collins, a veterans case we have been following because it attracted two amicus briefs. In this case, Mr. Hamill appealed an order dismissing his petition after the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims concluded his petition was moot and that no exception to mootness applied. In an opinion authored by Chief Judge Moore and joined by Judges Chen and Stark, the panel vacated the order and remanded the case for the lower court to reconsider a question related to mootness. This is our summary of the Federal Circuit’s opinion.
Chief Judge Moore began by outlining the factual and procedural background:
Mr. Hamill served in the United States Marine Corps from 2009 through 2013 and was discharged from service under “Other Than Honorable” conditions. . . . Upon discharge, Mr. Hamill sought disability compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), other psychiatric issues, and back pain. . . . In 2014, the VA denied his application because his Other Than Honorable discharge barred ‘all benefits administered by the [VA].’ . . . Mr. Hamill did not appeal. . . . In 2017, Mr. Hamill filed a new claim for disability benefits based on PTSD and back pain again, along with other conditions. . . . The VA construed the claim as an implicit attempt to reopen his 2014 character of discharge determination and explicitly denied it. Mr. Hamill did not appeal. . . . In 2021, Mr. Hamill filed (1) another claim seeking compensation for the same disabilities in his 2017 filing and (2) a new claim for several other disabilities. . . . Without mentioning his pending claim for a change in the character of his discharge determination, the VA granted service connection for PTSD and denied service connection for the rest of the claimed disabilities. . . . In 2022, Mr. Hamill’s attorney sent a letter asking the VA to ‘make a decision regarding [Mr. Hamill’s] discharge characterization’ because it failed to do so in its 2021 decision, leaving him with no appealable decision. . . . In response, the VA told Mr. Hamill he should contact the Service Department to change his character of discharge or apply for a correction of military records. . . . Mr. Hamill then petitioned the Veterans Court for a writ of mandamus to compel the VA to adjudicate his character of discharge claim. . . . In March 2023, the Secretary moved to dismiss the petition as moot based on a February 2023 letter the VA sent Mr. Hamill explicitly finding he had not submitted new and material evidence to warrant reopening the VA’s 2014 character of discharge decision. J.A. 3. On the same day, Mr. Hamill filed a request for class certification and class action (RCA). . . . The RCA . . . argued his petition was not moot because certain mootness exceptions applied. . . . A divided panel of the Veterans Court dismissed Mr. Hamill’s case because it concluded his petition was moot and no exception applied. . . . Central to its conclusion was the majority’s determination that Mr. Hamill’s request to reopen the VA’s 2014 character of discharge determination was implicitly denied by the VA’s 2021 service connection decision (i.e., before Mr. Hamill filed his mandamus petition).
After providing this background, Chief Judge Moore explained the court had jurisdiction because in the context of this appeal it “may ‘review and decide any challenge to the validity of any statute or regulation or any interpretation thereof . . . and . . . interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, to the extent presented and necessary to a decision.'”
Chief Judge Moore then turned to the doctrine of implicit denials under the Appeals Modernization Act. After briefly reviewing the doctrine, she explained “[t]he key question in the implicit denial inquiry is whether it would be clear to a reasonable person that [VA’s] action that expressly refers to one claim is intended to dispose of others as well.” She noted that, while the court “upheld the application of the implicit denial rule to several veterans claims pre-dating the AMA,” the court had “not addressed the applicability of the doctrine to claims subject to the AMA regime.”
Chief Judge Moore then discussed changes introduced by the AMA. She explained that, because Statements of the Case and Substantive Appeal “forms are no longer part of the appeals process, the VA’s initial decision plays a key role in informing veterans which review option to pursue.” She observed that, “[r]ecognizing the importance of the VA’s initial decisions in veterans’ decision-making under the new appeals system, Congress sought to enhance the quality of decisions the VA issues to veterans regarding their claims.” She supported this observation with references to both the statutory text and the legislative history. She ultimately concluded that “[t]he AMA not only changed the overall structure of the veterans appeals system but deliberately and clearly heightened the notice requirement for VA’s initial decisions beyond what was previously acceptable in the pre-AMA regime.”
In light of this history, Chief Judge Moore considered Mr. Hamill’s argument that “the AMA is fundamentally incompatible with [the] pre-AMA judicially-created implicit denial doctrine.” She agreed. She said that “[i]t would make little sense for the implicit denial doctrine—a judicial construct created under the legacy system—to proceed unchanged in light of this clear statutory directive for explicit notice of what issues a decision adjudicates.”
In light of her analysis, Chief Judge Moore concluded that, “under the AMA, a veteran has an appealable decision for a particular issue only if the decision gives him explicit notice that the issue is being adjudicated and how it is being decided.” Applied here, she said, “Mr. Hamill’s 2021 VA decision did not meet this explicit notice requirement and could not, as a matter of law, implicitly deny his request to reopen his character of discharge determination.”
Judge Moore next addressed mootness. She pointed out that the panel’s “conclusion that Mr. Hamill’s 2021 VA decision could not implicitly deny his character of discharge claim necessarily means his petition to the Veterans Court, which sought to compel adjudication, was not moot when it was filed in 2022.” She noted, however, that there remained “an open question regarding the effect of the VA’s February 2023 letter to Mr. Hamill, which explicitly found Mr. Hamill had not submitted new and material evidence to warrant reopening his discharge determination.” Because the lower court had not addressed this question, she explained that the panel would exercise the discretion “to remand issues, even jurisdictional ones, to the [lower] court when that court has not had the opportunity to consider the issue in the first instance.”
Finally, Chief Judge Moore noted that the panel “considered the parties’ remaining arguments and f[ou]nd them unpersuasive.”
As a result of her analysis, the panel vacated the lower court’s order and remanded the case for further proceedings.