Opinion ID: 4523917
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Lt. Col. Engle’s Involuntary Discharge

Text: On March 7, 2011, Engle, who had served in active duty for over 14 years, was passed over for promotion from major to lieutenant colonel for the second time. Baude, 137 Fed. Cl. at 444. As a result, on March 21, 2011, a Selective Continuation Board met to evaluate Engle. Id. Unbeknownst to Engle, however, the SecAF had issued a memorandum of instructions to the Selective Continuation Boards that dramatically changed the policy set forth in the regulation. The SecAF’s new instructions stated: Majors who will qualify for retirement within five years of the convening date of the board shall nor- mally be continued. Officers not within five years of retirement may be recommended for continua- tion, but only if you determine that continuation is clearly in the best interest of the Air Force . . . Appx33 (emphases added). This meant Officers now needed at least an additional year of service to be continued as a matter of course. Id. The memorandum also in- structed the Board to calculate the five-year period, i.e., how far an officer was from retiring, based on when the Board convened, as opposed to the “date of continuation,” as required by the regulation, extending the additional Case: 18-2038 Document: 39 Page: 7 Filed: 04/09/2020 BAUDE v. UNITED STATES 7 service needed by even more. 3 Compare Appx33, with DoDI 1320.08, ¶ 6.3. In addition, the SecAF’s instructions introduced a presumption of non-continuation into the regulation. The Board could only recommend an officer for continuation who was not within five years of retirement as of the convening date if it determined that “it is clearly in the best interests of the Air Force to do so.” Appx33. As explained below, for officers like Engle—who were less than six years from retirement but not less than five, and who had nothing disqualifying in their record—the Secretary’s instructions (1) redefined the time window for presumptive continuation, (2) turned the regulatory presumption on its head, and (3) provided no guidance regarding what should be deemed clearly in the best interests of the Air Force. Rather than presume that these officers should be continued, the instructions told the continuation board to presume they should not be. 4 And, they told the Board that the 3 Air Force Instruction 36-2501 7.11.3 explains that the “date of continuation” is “normally” measured from seven months after approval of the board results. Appx23. 4 The Secretary’s decision to shift the protective window from six years to five, reflected in his instructions to the board, was an uncontested break from the military’s normal policy, which, to date, had adhered to the terms of the governing regulation. The Air Force acknowledged as much when members of Congress asked why the same board that rejected Engle suddenly did not continue 157 majors. See Appx1003 (“In practice, the Air Force (AF) has generally continued to retirement all Majors twice passed over for promotion . . . .”); see also Appx1009 (“In accordance with the ‘normal’ policy contained in the DoDI, the Air Force has traditionally continued officers who are within 6 years of retirement eligibility until 20 years of service, Case: 18-2038 Document: 39 Page: 8 Filed: 04/09/2020 8 BAUDE v. UNITED STATES burden for overcoming that presumption was a high one, which the officers were to bear. Based on the Secretary’s instructions, the continuation board rejected Engle along with 156 other officers. If—as the original regulation required and had always been interpreted by the Air Force—the Board had been told it should normally continue Engle, he almost certainly would have been continued. It is undisputed that Engle had no derogatory information in his record that would have disqualified him from continuation. Indeed, the government concedes as much. See Oral Arg. at 20:42–51, available at http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/default.aspx?fl= 2018-2038.mp3 (“We are unaware of any derogatory information or any decision regarding Engle that was personal in nature, that is not what the record here shows.”). Nevertheless, the SecAF approved the continuation board’s recommendations on November 30, 2011, and Engle was terminated from the Air Force. Baude, 137 Fed. Cl. at 445. Less than six months after he was formally discharged, Engle was involuntarily called back up from the reserves and deployed to Kyrgyzstan. Despite having been passed over for the position while in active service, moreover, Engle was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel while serving in active duty in the reserves. See Oral Arg. at 10:05–10:31 (“[Counsel]: He was actually called back up [from the reserves] involuntarily and deployed to Kyrgyzstan and less than six months after his involuntary discharge in this case, and while serving in active duty in the reserves, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.”).