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

SOR FORM Notice of Hearing

Decision and appeal

The decision Appeal Board

Other tracks and favorable outcomes

NOID / LOD / LOR Notification Letter Favorable outcome (NOE, SF-312)

The Administrative Judge's decision

In plain terms

This is the judge's written ruling. It states, for each concern in the SOR, whether the finding is for or against the applicant, and gives an overall result: granted or denied. After a hearing, the transcript usually arrives 2 to 6 weeks later, and the decision about two months after the hearing.

If it is favorable

Eligibility moves forward; the favorable-outcome card covers the paperwork that follows.

If it is unfavorable

It is not necessarily final. Either side may appeal to the DOHA Appeal Board. The notice of appeal must be received within 15 days of the date on the decision. The appeal card explains what that review can and cannot do.

What the record shows

Decided hearing-level cases

34% granted · 9,173 granted · 17,654 denied

Year-by-year trends are on the statistics page.

The CASE Prep service explains a decision against the record.

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.