Opinion ID: 483803
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Career Appointments Provision: Text

Text: 18 The central question is whether the Act unequivocally requires that all tenure recommendations be made by a tenure board, or whether in certain circumstances the grievance board may recommend the award of tenure as a necessary remedy to make whole a nontenured employee who has been critically impaired by a superior during her apprenticeship period. Section 3946, entitled [c]areer appointments, requires a tenure candidate first to serve a limited appointment. After this trial period, the Secretary shall decide whether a candidate should receive a career appointment. 5 Such decisions by the Secretary shall be based upon the recommendation of tenure boards, which are composed entirely or primarily of career members of the service. 19 Defendant USIA's main argument is that Sec. 3946 plainly requires all career appointments to be made upon the recommendation of professionally-composed tenure boards, and that the grievance board, made up of non-service individuals, has no implicit power to recommend tenure for whatever reason. A first reading of Sec. 3946 reveals this argument to be a powerful one. Section 3946 contains three commands: An individual must serve a limited appointment before receiving a career appointment; the Secretary must decide whether or not to offer a career appointment himself or recommend that the President offer one; and such decisions must be based upon the recommendation of a board composed of career service members. The second command is of central importance here; the USIA maintains that by requiring the Secretary to decide whether a candidate should receive a career appointment, Sec. 3946 specifically delegates decisionmaking power regarding career appointments to the Secretary (after recommendation from a tenure board) and to no one else. 20 Daniels' response is grounded in other sections of the Act that grant the grievance board ample authority to remedy foreign service officers' injuries at the hands of their superiors. But in order to gain any mileage from those other provisions, Daniels must first explain why Sec. 3946 is not in itself dispositive. She argues that because Sec. 3946 does not explicitly say that only the Secretary can decide whether or not to offer or recommend a career appointment, it leaves open the possibility that another decisionmaker pursuant to powers granted elsewhere in the statute is authorized under certain circumstances to make the tenure decision. In short, Daniels maintains that the absence of a specific bar to another decisionmaker making career appointments is evidence of congressional intent to open an alternative avenue for gaining tenure, so long as that power can reasonably be inferred from a more general grant of authority to a different decisionmaker. 21