[Propriety of Charging Annual Leave for Attending Court Hearing]

A former employee of the Department of Labor appealed a Claims Group decision which allowed Labor to charge her 4 hours of annual leave for time she spent observing the oral argument in a case in which she was a plaintiff. The case had challenged in a district court the validity of the action removing her from her position as an administrative law judge on a benefits review board. The district court ruled that the employee was improperly separated; however, the U.S. Court of Appeals subsequently upheld her separation. The former employee argued that she was entitled to have the time she spent in court considered official time and that the charge of annual leave was improper because her court attendance was an official act. She also claimed that Labor's action was arbitrary because a third member of the board, who was a defendant in the case, was allowed to attend the same hearing without a charge to annual leave. GAO stated that the granting of annual leave is within an agency's administrative discretion. In this case, GAO found that the employee was absent from her regular worksite attending personal business. In prior decisions, GAO has held that there is no alternative but to charge annual leave to employees who sue the Government and who do not prevail. Accordingly, GAO found that Labor did not abuse its discretion by charging the employee annual leave. GAO would not question Labor's exercise of its discretion in not charging leave to another employee because he was not a plaintiff in the case, but a defendant, and his attendance could properly have been viewed as official business. Accordingly, the action of the Claims Group was sustained.