Procedural Summary:
Issuance of the Board’s Initial Notice of Proposed Rulemaking:
On April 21, 2008 and May 8, 2008, the Office of Compliance published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPR”) in the Congressional Record (154 Cong. Rec. S3188 (daily ed. April 21, 2008) H3338 (daily ed. May 8, 2008))
Why did the Board propose these new Regulations?
Section 206 of the Congressional Accountability Act (“CAA”), 2 U.S.C. §1316, applies certain provisions of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (“USERRA”), Title 38, Chapter 43 of the United States Code. Section 1316 of the CAA provides protections to eligible employees in the uniformed services from discrimination, denial of reemployment rights, and denial of employee benefits. Subsection 1316(c) requires the Board not only to issue regulations to implement these protections, but to issue regulations which are “the same as the most relevant substantive regulations promulgated by the Secretary of Labor . . .” This section provides that the Board may only modify the Department of Labor regulations if it can establish good cause as to why a modification would be more effective for the application of the protections to the legislative branch. In addition, Section 1384 provides procedures for the rulemaking process in general.
What procedure followed the Board’s April 16 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking?
The May 8, 2008 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking included a thirty day comment period, which began on May 9, 2008. A number of comments to the proposed substantive regulations were received by the Office of Compliance from interested parties. The Board of Directors has reviewed the comments from interested parties, made a number of changes to the proposed substantive regulations in response to comments, and on December 3, 2008 adopted the amended regulations.
