Amber Williams v. Office of Personnel Management

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
AMBER WILLIAMS,
Petitioner
v.
OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT,
Respondent
______________________
2024-2368
______________________
Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection
Board in No. DA-0831-23-0052-I-1.
______________________
Decided: April 16, 2025
______________________
AMBER WILLIAMS, Lubbock, TX, pro se.
ELIZABETH M ARIE D URFEE PULLIN, Commercial Litiga-
tion Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of
Justice, Washington, DC, for respondent. Also represented
by BRIAN M. BOYNTON, D EBORAH ANN BYNUM, PATRICIA M.
M C CARTHY; ROXANN SAMANTHA JOHNSON, Office of Gen-
eral Counsel, Office of Personnel Management, Washing-
ton, DC.
______________________
Case: 24-2368 Document: 26 Page: 1 Filed: 04/16/2025

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WILLIAMS v. OPM 2
Before M OORE, Chief Judge, PROST and HUGHES, Circuit
Judges.
P ER CURIAM.
Amber Williams appeals the Merit Systems Protection
Board’s final order which sustained the Office of Personnel
Management’s denial of Ms. Williams’s application for a
survivor retirement annuity. Because the Merit Systems
Protection Board’s decision was in accordance with the law
and supported by substantial evidence, we affirm.
I
Ms. Williams’s father, Danny Williams, worked for the
Federal Aviation Administration from 1969 until his retire-
ment in 2006. S.A. 5–12, 17.1 When her father died in 2022,
Ms. Williams was unmarried, disabled, and living with
him. S.A. 30–33.
When Ms. Williams was 10 years old, she was diag-
nosed with bronchial asthma and hospitalized with bron-
chitis and pneumonia. Ms. Williams asserts that her
condition worsened and that she was treated for uncon-
trolled asthma in 1993, 1994, and 1996. Ms. Williams also
states that she was prescribed corticosteroids to control her
asthma. When Ms. Williams was 20 years old, she was di-
agnosed with viral meningitis, and her condition worsened.
She was later diagnosed with avascular necrosis (AVN) of
both hips and her left knee. Her doctor, Dr. Weldon L. Ash,
indicated that because of this illness, “[she] was unable to
work.” S.A. 1–2.
Ms. Williams received health coverage from Blue Cross
Blue Shield (BCBS) through her father’s employment with
the FAA, and in 2005, her continued Federal Employee’s
Health Benefits (FEHB) coverage was approved for
1 “S.A.” refers to the supplemental appendix submitted
with the Respondent’s informal brief.
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WILLIAMS v. OPM 3
another three years because the FAA found Ms. Williams
“incapable of self-support.” S.A. 4. The following year,
when her father retired from the FAA, he indicated on his
retirement application that Ms. Williams was an unmar-
ried, dependent child, and he designated her as the sole
beneficiary of any lump-sum benefit payable after his
death.
In 2011, BCBS informed Ms. Williams that she was no
longer eligible for continued disabled dependent FEHB cov-
erage under her father’s family plan due to insufficient
medical documentation that Ms. Williams is permanently
disabled. See S.A. 13–15. In response, Ms. Williams’s doc-
tor submitted a form that stated that her medical condition
began in September 1988, when Ms. Williams was 20 years
old, and that her recovery date was “indefinite[].” Amber
Williams v. OPM, MSPB Docket No. DA-0831-23-0052-I-1,
ECF No. 3 at 8. In 2022, the Social Security Administration
determined that Ms. Williams was disabled for purposes of
entitlement to monthly disability benefits and that the on-
set of Ms. Williams’s disability was January 2004—when
she was 26 years old.
After her father’s death in January 2022, Ms. Williams
applied for death benefits based on his service through the
Civil Service Retirement System. OPM denied Ms. Wil-
liams’s application because she did not meet the eligibility
requirements laid out in 5 U.S.C. § 8341, which state that
an unmarried, dependent child over the age of 18 may be
entitled to a survivor annuity if the child “is incapable of
self-support because of mental or physical disability in-
curred before age 18.” S.A. 34. OPM concluded that the sub-
mitted medical evidence “consistently document[ed] that
[Ms. Williams] incurred disability in September of 1990,
when [she] was over the age of 20 years.” S.A. 34. Ms. Wil-
liams requested reconsideration of OPM’s initial decision,
and OPM issued its final decision stating that Ms. Wil-
liams had not carried her evidentiary burden to show she
incurred her disability before age 18. J.A. 36–37.
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WILLIAMS v. OPM 4
Ms. Williams appealed OPM’s final decision to the
Board. Ms. Williams stated that “her use of prescribed cor-
ticosteroids, prior to 1996, were a concrete factor in the in-
itial stages of the AVN process before she turned 18.”
Amber Williams v. OPM, No. DA-0831-23- 0052-I-1, ECF
No. 3 at 9. The administrative judge found that Ms. Wil-
liams’s AVN began in September 1988, when she was
20 years old, and that Ms. Williams’s “subjective belief”
that the AVN could have been detected earlier or linked to
her childhood corticosteroid use did not prove by prepon-
derant evidence that she suffered from disabling AVN be-
fore turning age 18. Id. at 8–9.
Ms. Williams petitioned for review of the initial deci-
sion to the full Board. Ms. Williams submitted additional
evidence, including a statement from her orthopedic sur-
geon and a document stating that her health insurance
company did not have records older than 10 years ago. Id.
at 24 n.2. The Board determined that none of the docu-
ments provided a basis for review and denied the petition.
Ms. Williams timely appealed. We have jurisdiction
under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9).
II
We must affirm the Board’s decision unless it is “(1) ar-
bitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not
in accordance with law; (2) obtained without procedures re-
quired by law, rule, or regulation having been followed; or
(3) unsupported by substantial evidence.” 5 U.S.C.
§ 7703(c); see also Perlick v. Dep’t of Veterans Affs.,
104 F.4th 1326, 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2024). “Substantial evi-
dence” is defined as “such relevant evidence as a reasona-
ble mind might accept as adequate to support a
conclusion.” Consol. Edison Co. v. Nat’l Lab. Rels. Bd.,
305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938).
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WILLIAMS v. OPM 5
III
Ms. Williams contends that the Board failed to take the
additional evidence she provided into account. The Board
stated that it “generally will not consider evidence submit-
ted for the first time with a petition for review absent a
showing that it was unavailable before the record closed
before the administrative judge despite the party’s due dil-
igence.” Amber Williams v. OPM, No. DA-0831-23-0052-
I-1, ECF No. 3 at 24–25 n.2 (citing Avansino v. U.S. Postal
Serv., 3 M.S.P.R. 211, 213–14 (1980)). The Board’s regula-
tions provide that, “[t]o constitute new evidence, the infor-
mation contained in the documents, not just the documents
themselves, must have been unavailable despite due dili-
gence when the record closed.” 5 C.F.R. § 1201.115(d). The
Board concluded that, because Ms. Williams did not show
that the information contained in the documents—her
childhood medical records and the statement of her ortho-
pedic surgeon—was unavailable before the close of the rec-
ord on April 3, 2023, the documents did not constitute new
evidence. On appeal, Ms. Williams does not argue that the
documents contain new information; she argues that the
Board should have considered the underlying information
regardless. See Pet. Informal Appx. 9–10. We therefore con-
clude that the Board did not abuse its discretion by not con-
sidering these documents when evaluating Ms. Williams’s
petition for review because the documents do not constitute
new evidence.
Further, Ms. Williams does not contend that the docu-
ments contain information that would demonstrate she
was diagnosed with a disability prior to age 18. She asserts
that the documents will show that she was treated with
corticosteroids for her childhood asthma, and she argues
that “[i]t’s now known that even 1 dose of corticosteroids
can start the inflam[m]ation process of AVN, which [] can
lie dormant/asymptomatic for up to 10 years.” Pet. Infor-
mal Reply Br. 1. But the Board explained in its initial de-
cision that this information does not establish that she
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WILLIAMS v. OPM 6
suffered from disabling AVN before turning age 18. In its
final decision, the Board concluded that Ms. Williams did
not explain how the information in the documents is of suf-
ficient weight to warrant a different outcome from the ini-
tial decision. Amber Williams v. OPM, No. DA-0831-23-
0052-I-1, ECF No. 3 at 24–25 n. 2 (citing Russo v. Veterans
Admin., 3 M.S.P.R. 345, 349 (1980) (stating that the Board
generally will not grant a petition for review based on new
evidence absent a showing that it is of sufficient weight to
warrant an outcome different from that of the initial deci-
sion)). We conclude that the Board did not abuse its discre-
tion in denying Ms. Williams’s petition for review, and that
substantial evidence supports the Board’s determination
that Ms. Williams did not demonstrate that she was diag-
nosed with a disability before age 18 that would render her
eligible for a survivor annuity under 5 U.S.C. § 8341.
IV
We have considered Ms. Williams’s remaining argu-
ments and find them unpersuasive. For the reasons pro-
vided above, we affirm the Board’s decision.
AFFIRMED
COSTS
No costs.
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