“Employees can receive compensatory payments if their firings caused harm that prevented future earnings.”
The VA fired researcher Deborah Perlick in 2017, shortly after she reported $78,000 missing from a traumatic brain injury study. The Merit Systems Protection Board refused her $500,000 claim in 2022 because her one-year contracts carried no guarantee of renewal. Those contracts had been renewed every year since 2010. The Federal Circuit had to tell the board that a short contract is not a license to retaliate.