Manuel Gonzalez, Jr. v. Douglas A. Collins, Secretary of Veterans Affairs

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
MANUEL GONZALEZ, JR.,
Claimant-Appellant
v.
DOUGLAS A. COLLINS, SECRETARY OF
VETERANS AFFAIRS,
Respondent-Appellee
______________________
2026-1213
______________________
Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims in No. 24-2760, Judge Scott Laurer.
______________________
Decided: May 11, 2026
______________________
MANUEL G ONZALEZ, J R., San Antonio, TX, pro se.
L AURA O FFENBACHER ARADI, Commercial Litigation
Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of Jus-
tice, Washington, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also repre-
sented by MARTIN F. HOCKEY , J R., P ATRICIA M. MCCARTHY ,
BRETT SHUMATE; EVAN SCOTT G RANT , Y. K EN L EE , Office of
General Counsel, United States Department of Veterans
Affairs, Washington, DC.
______________________
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GONZALEZ v. COLLINS 2
Before P ROST and T ARANTO, Circuit Judges, and K OVNER ,
District Judge.1
P ER CURIAM .
Manuel Gonzalez, Jr., appeals a decision of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans Court”)
dismissing his appeal to that court for lack of jurisdiction.
We affirm in part and dismiss in part.
BACKGROUND
I
In March 2011, Mr. Gonzalez—a U.S. Air Force vet-
eran—requested service-connected disability benefits from
the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) for various con-
ditions. In February 2013, a VA regional office (“RO”)
granted the request as to one condition but not the others.
Later, in April 2022, Mr. Gonzalez requested that the
VA revise its February 2013 decision due to clear and un-
mistakable error (“CUE”). The RO denied that request in
January 2023 and provided Mr. Gonzalez with a notice of
his appeal rights. Mr. Gonzalez then tried to appeal the
RO decision to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (“Board”) by
filing a VA Form 21-0958 Notice of Disagreement. VA
Form 21-0958 was used for appeals to the Board under the
so-called legacy appeals system—a system that was phased
out in accordance with the Veterans Appeals Improvement
and Modernization Act of 2017 (“AMA”), Pub. L. No. 115-
55, 131 Stat. 1105.
In March 2024, Mr. Gonzalez contacted the VA hotline
to inquire about his appeal. The Board responded with a
March 18, 2024 letter saying that “no appeal has been
1 Honorable Rachel P. Kovner, District Judge,
United States District Court for the Eastern District of
New York, sitting by designation.
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GONZALEZ v. COLLINS 3
docketed at the Board.” App’x 15.2 The letter advised
Mr. Gonzalez that, if he was dissatisfied with the RO’s Jan-
uary 2023 decision, he should refer to the page titled “Your
Right to Seek Review of Our Decision” that had been pro-
vided contemporaneously with that decision. See App’x 15.
Mr. Gonzalez wrote back, disputing that no Board appeal
had been docketed. On April 9, 2024, the Board responded
with another letter, which said that “the Board is unable to
make a decision until the appeal is correctly filed” and ad-
vised Mr. Gonzalez that, “[t]o appeal a claim denied by the
[VA], [he should] complete the VA Form 10182, Decision
Review Request: Board Appeal, which is available at
www.va.gov/decision-reviews/board-appeal/.” App’x 23
(emphasis removed). In July 2024, the VA sent another
letter to Mr. Gonzalez saying essentially the same thing:
We received mail indicating that you would like us
to review a claim . . . that we previously denied. VA
regulations require you to file this request on the
proper form.
We received VA Form 21-0958, Notice of Disagree-
ment (NOD) on February 8, 2024. . . . [T]he NOD
form changed to VA Form 10182 for any benefit de-
cision made on or after February 19, 2019.
App’x 29.
II
Mr. Gonzalez appealed the Board’s March 18, 2024 let-
ter to the Veterans Court. The government moved to dis-
miss his appeal for lack of jurisdiction, arguing that there
was no Board “decision” to appeal. The Veterans Court in-
itially agreed with the government and therefore dismissed
the appeal. See App’x 27 (“Because in its March 18, 2024[]
letter the Board did not grant or deny a VA benefit,
2 “App’x” refers to the appendix included with the
government’s informal response brief.
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GONZALEZ v. COLLINS 4
[Mr. Gonzalez] may not appeal the contents of the letter to
this [c]ourt—the letter does not contain the kind of Board
decision that 38 U.S.C. §§ 7252 and 7266(a) refer to.”).
Before the Veterans Court entered judgment, Mr. Gon-
zalez sought reconsideration of the dismissal, which the
court granted. The court concluded that its recent decision
in Cardoza v. McDonough, 37 Vet. App. 407 (2024)—which
had issued less than two weeks after its dismissal of
Mr. Gonzalez’s appeal—compelled the conclusion that the
March 18, 2024 letter was indeed an appealable Board de-
cision. App’x 39–40.
Months later, however, the Veterans Court—acting
through a different judge this time—effectively reconsid-
ered the reconsideration and once again dismissed the ap-
peal. It reasoned that the March 18, 2024 letter was not
an appealable Board decision after all. See App’x 7–8. The
court acknowledged Cardoza but did not explain why it did
not control. Nor did the court otherwise explain why the
prior decision on reconsideration was incorrect. Instead,
the court viewed that decision as having only preliminarily
resolved the jurisdictional issue. The court also relied
heavily on the absence of subsequent argument from
Mr. Gonzalez as to why the March 18, 2024 letter consti-
tuted an appealable Board decision. See App’x 2–3, 6–7.
And, it added, even if the March 18, 2024 letter were an
appealable Board decision (that is, even if the court had
jurisdiction), it would still dismiss, because (1) the only is-
sue on appeal would be whether Mr. Gonzalez’s VA
Form 21-0958 “initiated a valid appeal”; and (2) Mr. Gon-
zalez had not supplied any argument on that issue.
App’x 7.
Mr. Gonzalez then sought a panel decision from the
Veterans Court under Rule 35 of the Veterans Court’s
Rules of Practice and Procedure. A panel granted the re-
quest but ordered that the most recent single-judge deci-
sion remained the decision of the court. App’x 42–43. The
Veterans Court then entered judgment.
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GONZALEZ v. COLLINS 5
Mr. Gonzalez timely appealed to this court.
D ISCUSSION
This court has limited jurisdiction to review Veterans
Court decisions. Although we have jurisdiction to “decide
all relevant questions of law,” we generally may not review
either “a challenge to a factual determination” or “a chal-
lenge to a law or regulation as applied to the facts of a par-
ticular case.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(1)–(2).
Even giving Mr. Gonzalez’s filings in this appeal a lib-
eral reading due to his pro se status, we discern (at most)
just one argument raising a legal issue within our limited
jurisdiction. Specifically, Mr. Gonzalez appears to argue
that res judicata principles render a tribunal’s prior rulings
in a given proceeding final and not subject to change in that
same proceeding. See Appellant’s Informal Br. 2 (arguing
with reference to the Cardoza-based reinstatement of his
Veterans Court appeal and the later dismissal). This view
of the law is incorrect. Res judicata principles of claim and
issue preclusion generally become relevant only after a fi-
nal judgment has been entered in a different proceeding;
they do not bar reconsideration of rulings (let alone inter-
locutory ones) within the same proceeding. See, e.g., First
Mortg. Corp. v. United States, 961 F.3d 1331, 1338
(Fed. Cir. 2020) (elements of claim preclusion); Shell Petro-
leum, Inc. v. United States, 319 F.3d 1334, 1338 (Fed. Cir.
2003) (elements of issue preclusion); Senza-Gel Corp. v.
Seiffhart, 803 F.2d 661, 667 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (deeming res
judicata effects “simply inapplicable” within the given case
because no final judgment had been entered); see also
Mitchell L. Firm, L.P. v. Bessie Jeanne Worthy Revocable
Tr., 8 F.4th 417, 420–21 (5th Cir. 2021) (rejecting the no-
tion that “a judgment in [a] first action is ‘res judicata’ on
itself,” because “res judicata is a doctrine that bars a second
action based on a valid final judgment in the first action”
(emphasis in original)). We therefore reject Mr. Gonzalez’s
argument in this regard.
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GONZALEZ v. COLLINS 6
Mr. Gonzalez’s other arguments do not raise issues
within our limited jurisdiction. For example, he argues
that the Veterans Court panel “engaged in conduct preju-
dicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the
business” of that court. Appellant’s Informal Br. 2. But
this argument does not raise a legal issue within our juris-
diction. Similarly, in his informal reply brief, Mr. Gonzalez
appears to argue that Rule 35 of the Veterans Court’s Rules
of Practice and Procedure required the full Veterans Court
to review his appeal. See Informal Reply Br. 9. But this
argument is essentially “a challenge to a law or regulation
as applied to the facts of [this] particular case,” which we
lack jurisdiction to review. See 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2).
We note finally that this entire dispute (starting with
the noted absence of a Board-docketed appeal) apparently
stems from Mr. Gonzalez’s use of what the VA considers to
be the wrong form. We note further the government’s rep-
resentations in this appeal that (1) “because Mr. Gonzalez
is attempting to appeal the denial of a CUE motion, the
question of whether his VA Form 21-0958 initiated a valid
appeal of the January 2023 RO decision would have no
bearing on the effective date of any award”; and (2) “he may
simply file a new CUE motion at any time given that the
underlying decision being challenged for CUE is [an RO]
decision.” Appellee’s Informal Br. 9 n.2.
CONCLUSION
We have considered Mr. Gonzalez’s remaining argu-
ments and find that none raises an issue within our limited
jurisdiction. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm in part
and dismiss in part.
AFFIRMED-IN-PART, DISMISSED-IN-PART
COSTS
No costs.
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