Argument of Speaker
Mr. Speaker: The opinion of the Court in two cases will be announced by Justice Stevens.
Argument of Justice Stevens
Mr. Stevens: In the first of the two cases we resolved the dispute between two different executive agencies an arguable attention between two statutes that were enacted on successive days in 1978.
The agencies are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
On October 12, 1978 Congress enacted the Inspector General Act which created an office of Inspector General in each of several federal agencies including NASA.
The following day Congress enacted the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute which provides certain protections including union representation for a variety of federal employees.
One of those protections is the right to have a union representative present during an interview which an employee reasonably believes may result in disciplinary action.
The question presented by this case is whether an investigator employed in NASA's office of Inspector General can be considered a representative of NASA when conducting such an interview.
The answer is yes.
Like the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the Court of Appeals concluded that the investigator in this case was indeed acting as a representative of NASA during the employee examination at issue.
For the reasons that are stated in the opinion filed with the Clerk, we affirm.
In circumstances such as these an office of Inspector General Investigator (I am avoiding using many of the acronyms that appear in the opinion by the way) is acting for and on behalf of the agency in which it is stationed and needs of the relative independence granted such investigations by the Inspector General Act, nor petitioners' policy arguments altre that conclusion.
Justice Thomas has filed a dissenting opinion in which the Chief Justice, Justice O'Connor and Justice Scalia have joined.
