1. United States
2. Md.
3. Letter

If the official who fires you also decides your appeal, you do not have an appeal. That became the rule for the U.S. Foreign Service on August 21, 2026, and nobody voted on it. A Justice Department legal opinion concluded that the Foreign Service Grievance Board's final authority is unconstitutional. The board Congress created in 1980 - the one that could overturn a firing and order someone reinstated - now only issues recommendations. The Secretary of State decides. Nothing was repealed. A memo was written, and a safeguard that stood since 1980 became advisory. I am asking you to put it back in statute. The constitutional question is not frivolous. Under Arthrex (2021), officials wielding significant executive power must answer to someone politically accountable. But there are two answers, and only one leaves an appeal worth filing: change how such a board's members are appointed and removed so the accountability test is met, or route the appeal back to the agency being appealed. The second is what happened, and it took no vote. Please choose the first, in statute: 1. Determinations affecting federal employment - suitability, fitness, eligibility, discipline - remain appealable to a body independent of the agency that made it. 2. That jurisdiction is set by statute and may not be transferred to the determining agency by regulation or by executive branch legal opinion. 3. The burden of proof rests on the agency to show the determination applied conduct-based criteria uniformly. 4. Aggregate outcomes are published annually by agency, ground and result, so the pattern stays visible even when an individual case is not. This is not a favor to federal employees. It is enforcement capacity. Civil servants who can be overruled by the officials they investigate stop investigating, and that is the cheapest capture available: it costs nothing, needs no appropriation, and never comes to a vote. Independent review is the premium that keeps enforcement worth funding. Congress built this safeguard. A memo unbuilt it. Please rebuild it where it cannot be reinterpreted away. The full provision text is Act IX of the Rational Foundation Plan: rules-not-rulers.org/wtp/government-transparency-act/