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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

Intent-to-deny, denial, and revocation letters on the non-contractor tracks

In plain terms

Not every case follows the contractor process described in the other cards. Service members and Department of Defense civilians receive differently named letters, a notice of intent to deny, a letter of denial, or a letter of revocation, on a separate track within the Department of Defense. The Department of Energy runs a different process again, described in its own card.

How that track works

Under the guidance in force since February 2026, a DOHA administrative judge conducts the personal appearance and issues a recommended decision, but the final decision belongs to the individual's own agency review board, the Personnel Security Appeals Board (PSAB). Deadlines on this track differ from the contractor deadlines shown elsewhere on this page and are often shorter, so the dates in the letter received are the ones to follow, not the contractor timelines here.

The CASE Prep service covers this track.

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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