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CASE

Correspondence in a DOHA case

Each letter in a contested case: what it is, what it means, what to do, what happens next, and what the decided record shows. Select the letter you received.

Before any decision

Interrogatory (LOI)

The government's case

SORFORMNotice of Hearing

Decision and appeal

The decisionAppeal Board

Notice of appeal, briefing, and the Appeal Board's ruling

In plain terms

If a decision goes against the applicant (or against the government), either side may ask the DOHA Appeal Board to review it. An appeal is not a second hearing: no new evidence is taken, no witnesses are heard, and the Board defers to the trial judge's findings on who was believable. A panel of three Appeal Board judges reviews the existing file for legal error. It can uphold the decision (affirm), send it back for further proceedings (remand), or overturn it (reverse).

The deadline

The notice of appeal must be received within 15 days of the date on the judge's decision. The Board then sets the schedule for written arguments (the published windows are 45 days for the opening brief, 20 days for the reply, and a 10-day window to file a cross-appeal), but the Board's own scheduling letter fixes the exact dates.

Work out your exact dates with the deadline calculator.

What the record shows

Of 3,836 decided appeals in the record, 3,372 were affirmed, 214 remanded, and 250 reversed. Appeals are not common: only about a quarter to a third of hearing decisions are appealed. The outcome depends heavily on who is appealing. In our records the government prevails in roughly 70% of the appeals it files, while appeals brought by applicants rarely succeed. Browse appeal rulings.

The CASE Prep service shows how the Board has treated comparable claimed errors.

If the document received is not correspondence in a contested case (a questionnaire, a release, a fingerprint request, a processing notice, or an access agreement), see the clearance document directory, which identifies each form and notice by its number.

How the process worksThe letters sit inside a published sequence: interrogatories, the SOR, a hearing or the written record, a decision, and an appeal.

A contested case follows a published path: a Statement of Reasons, the government's written list of its concerns (an SOR), a written answer, a hearing or a decision on the written record, the judge's decision, and in some cases an appeal.

Read the stages of a DOHA case · Ask a question about the process

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Decided public cases: descriptive, never a prediction.