Opinion ID: 4523917
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Secretary of the Air Force

Text: Cannot Rewrite DoDI 1320.08 DoDI 1320.08 states that military secretaries “shall” administer continuation boards based on “the policies and procedures prescribed herein.” SAppx118–19. Under this regulation, an officer within six years from retirement “shall normally be selected for continuation.” SAppx119. The regulation then states that, in spite of that rule, an individual officer might still be non-continued if there is some “unusual circumstance[]” in his or her case, e.g., derogatory information in his file. Id. Otherwise, the officer should be continued. Id. Finally, if the military secretary intends to non-continue several O-4 grade officers, the Secretary should notify USD(P&R), which oversees this process on behalf of the Secretary of Defense. Id. The SecAF’s instructions to the Selective Continuation Board directly violated DoDI 1320.08. These instructions decreased the protective threshold for O-4 officers both by increasing the required number of years of active service, and by modifying how that number was to be calculated. The threshold date was now calculated from the earlier “convening date of the board,” as opposed to the later “date of continuation” stated in the regulation. Compare Appx33, with DODI 1320.08, ¶ 6.3. See also Appx23. In addition, although the regulation expressly states that an officer within six years from retirement “shall normally be selected for continuation,” the SecAF’s instructions did not require the Board to justify discharging Engle. Appx33. In fact, they said the opposite. The Secretary told suitability for service. See, e.g., Roth v. United States, 378 F.3d 1371, 1385 (Fed. Cir. 2004). Accordingly, we may “decide whether the military has complied with procedures set forth in its own regulations.” Fisher v. United States, 402 F.3d 1167, 1177 (Fed. Cir. 2005). Case: 18-2038 Document: 39 Page: 15 Filed: 04/09/2020 BAUDE v. UNITED STATES 15 the Board that majors like Engle should not be continued unless the Board “determine[d] that continuation [was] clearly in the best interests of the Air Force.” Id. This is plainly inconsistent with the text of DoDI 1320.08, which provides: “[a] commissioned officer . . . shall normally be selected for continuation if the officer will qualify for retirement . . . within six years . . . .” DoDI 1320.08 ¶ 6.3. The AFBCMR and the Claims Court justified the Se- cAF’s disregard for the regulation, contending that the use of the phrase “shall normally” does not mandate an action but “merely establishes the norm.” Baude, 137 Fed. Cl. at 455. But the text of the regulation does not support such a sweeping reading of that language. The regulation’s use of “shall normally” is not an invitation for department secretaries to decide who deserves to be presumptively continued. It is an instruction that an officer shall normally be continued absent unusual circumstances. See SAS Inst., Inc. v. Iancu, 138 S. Ct. 1348, 1354 (2018) (“The word ‘shall’ generally imposes a nondiscretionary duty.”). Applying this presumption is mandatory, even if continuation is not. Indeed, the SecAF’s instructions themselves reflect this same understanding. As in DoDI 1320.08, the SecAF used “shall normally” to tell the continuation board that it must presumptively continue officers within their newlyminted five-year window. See Appx33 (“Majors who will qualify for retirement within five years . . . shall normally be continued.”). Just as the continuation board did not have discretion to ignore the Secretary’s instruction to presumptively continue officers within five years of retirement, the SecAF did not have discretion to change the DoDimposed regulatory requirement that officers within six years of retirement should be presumptively continued. Kingdomware Techs., Inc. v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1969 (2016), on which the dissent relies, does not suggest that “shall normally” is permissive. In fact, the Court acknowledged in Kingdomware that the word “shall” Case: 18-2038 Document: 39 Page: 16 Filed: 04/09/2020 16 BAUDE v. UNITED STATES “normally creates an obligation impervious to judicial discretion.” 136 S. Ct. at 1977. It has the same effect here. The Secretary must continue officers within six years of retirement unless there is a reason that overcomes the presumption that he must do so. The dissent’s reading of “shall normally,” by contrast, does not require anyone to do anything. See Dissent Op. 8–9. It therefore reads “shall” out of the rule. Indeed, the dissent assumes that the word normally removes any presumption in favor of continuation and effectively turns the word “shall” into no more than a nonce word. Dissent Op. 9. In further efforts to justify its reading of the rule, the dissent asserts that the SecAF’s discretion to “set the criteria for continuation is confirmed in other parts of DoDI 1320.08.” Dissent Op. 9 n.4. Here, the dissent points to paragraphs 6.3.1 and 6.3.2. Id. But these paragraphs— cited by the dissent as demonstrating the limits of the SecAF’s discretion—cap the “Continuation Period” for an officer, i.e., how long the officer can remain in the service after being continued. 7 This case, however, is about whether the Secretary can change who should be continued in the first place. Limits on whether the Secretary can keep officers in the service beyond their continuation date—after they have already been continued—are therefore irrelevant. 7 See, e.g., Air Force Instruction 36-2501, Officer Promotions and Selective Continuation (Jul. 16, 2004), ¶ 7.11 (explaining, under the heading “Determining Continuation Period,” that the Air Force should “[c]ontinue majors until the last day of the month in which he or she is eligible to retire as an officer (normally upon competition of 20 years of total active military service)” unless they “possess critical skills,” in which case they still “may not be continued any longer than the last day of the month in which they complete 24 years of active commissioned service”). Case: 18-2038 Document: 39 Page: 17 Filed: 04/09/2020 BAUDE v. UNITED STATES 17 Because the SecAF was obligated to follow DoDI 1320.08 in overseeing the continuation process here, see DoDI 1320.08, ¶ 5.2, corrective action by the AFBCMR is warranted. See, e.g., Roth v. United States, 378 F.3d 1371, 1381 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (explaining that correction boards are “obligated not only to properly determine the nature of any error or injustice, but also to take ‘such corrective action as will appropriately and fully erase such error or compensate such injustice.’”).