Background
Babatunde Oguntade served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow assigned to the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he worked on the Claims Attribute Application Programming Interface, an artificial-intelligence tool intended to shorten the time required to process veterans’ disability-benefit claims. After analyzing claims data, Oguntade concluded that the tool was instead delaying decisions—by five days on average and substantially longer for some complicated claims—and communicated his findings to VA officials in March 2021.
Oguntade later discussed the findings in a VA-approved blog post and escalated his concerns to the VA’s chief technology officer after a repackaged version of the tool allegedly entered production without changes to its underlying classifier. The VA eventually deactivated the tool pending further research. Oguntade was removed from his position shortly afterward and filed an individual-right-of-action appeal alleging whistleblower retaliation. The Merit Systems Protection Board dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction, concluding that he had not nonfrivolously alleged a protected disclosure.
The Court’s Holding
The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded. It first held that Oguntade sufficiently preserved his April blog post and May communication as alleged disclosures. Although he had represented himself before the Office of Special Counsel and the Board and had not expressly labeled those communications as protected disclosures, his filings discussed them with enough specificity and clarity to alert the Board that it needed to consider them.
The court further held that Oguntade plausibly alleged a reasonable belief that the VA’s continued use of the allegedly error-prone tool, despite his data-supported warnings, constituted gross mismanagement. His detailed allegations and statistical analyses were enough to establish MSPB jurisdiction at the pleading stage. The court did not decide whether Oguntade would prevail on the merits or whether his disclosures also evidenced a gross waste of funds.
Key Takeaways
- A whistleblower establishes MSPB jurisdiction by making plausible, nonconclusory allegations of a protected disclosure and its contribution to a personnel action; proof of the claim is not required at that stage.
- Pro se filings may preserve alleged disclosures even when the employee does not formally characterize each communication as a protected disclosure.
- Detailed, data-supported allegations that an agency continued using a materially harmful AI tool despite repeated warnings can plausibly allege gross mismanagement.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the distinction between the jurisdictional threshold for a federal whistleblower appeal and the showing required to win on the merits. It also illustrates how concerns about an agency’s deployment and oversight of AI may qualify as protected whistleblower disclosures when supported by specific facts and analysis.
Judge Lourie concurred to emphasize that the ruling should not discourage the VA from experimenting with tools to reduce its claims backlog. He stressed that the decision rested on the particular allegations that the agency continued using the tool while remaining unresponsive to Oguntade’s documented concerns.