Background
Tiffany M. Campbell served in the U.S. Army from January 2006 to January 2009. After she sought service connection for post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions, a Department of Veterans Affairs regional office assigned her a 70% disability rating for PTSD in May 2009. She later received total disability based on individual unemployability, or TDIU, effective September 2016.
Campbell sought revision of the 2009 rating decision for clear and unmistakable error, arguing that her PTSD claim and evidence of unemployability had reasonably raised an informal TDIU claim that the regional office failed to decide. Following an earlier remand from the Veterans Court, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals concluded in 2023 that the record had not reasonably raised TDIU in 2009 and that reasonable minds could differ over whether the evidence showed unemployability. The Veterans Court affirmed, and Campbell appealed to the Federal Circuit.
The Court’s Holding
The Federal Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. Under 38 U.S.C. § 7292, the court may review legal questions decided by the Veterans Court, but generally may not review factual determinations or the application of law to the facts of a particular veterans-benefits case.
The court determined that the Board and Veterans Court had applied Roberson v. Principi, including its requirement that the VA sympathetically read a veteran’s filings to identify claims supported by a liberal construction of the allegations. Campbell’s challenge concerned how that rule was applied to evidence about her job search and service-connected symptoms—not whether the correct rule was used. Reassessing that fact-specific application fell outside the Federal Circuit’s jurisdiction.
Key Takeaways
- The Federal Circuit generally cannot review the Veterans Court’s application of law to the particular facts of a benefits claim.
- A claimant cannot create Federal Circuit jurisdiction merely by characterizing disagreement with a fact-specific result as use of an incorrect legal standard.
- Because the Board and Veterans Court applied Roberson’s sympathetic-reading rule, the Federal Circuit could not reconsider whether the 2009 record reasonably raised a TDIU claim.
Why It Matters
The nonprecedential decision illustrates the narrow scope of Federal Circuit review in veterans-benefits cases. When the Veterans Court has identified and applied the governing legal rule, a dispute over whether particular evidence satisfied that rule ordinarily presents an unreviewable application-of-law-to-fact question.
For veterans and their counsel, the decision underscores that an appeal must present a genuine legal or constitutional issue within the Federal Circuit’s statutory jurisdiction, rather than seek a new assessment of the evidentiary record.