In November 2007 we filed an amicus brief in the Federal Circuit supporting Wilfredo Romero, a Department of Defense auditor who lost his security clearance, and his job, apparently because of a misunderstanding between two Department of Defense offices. One office “reciprocally accepted” the other office’s supposed decision revoking his clearance, but no such decision had actually been made in the first place. We were able to explain this confusing situation to the Court in plain English, which Mr. Romero (for whom English is a second language) was not able to do very well in his pro se brief.
In June 2008, the court vacated and remanded the case to the Merit Systems Protection Board, agreeing with us that the court, and the Board, had jurisdiction to determine whether the Department of Defense has followed its own procedural regulations when it revoked Mr. Romero’s security clearance and discharged him, and agreeing with us that it was not clear whether DOD had followed its own regulations.
On remand, the Board ruled against Mr. Romero. We again sought review in the Federal Circuit. In October 2011, the Federal Circuit took a different view of the facts than we had, and held that the proper Department of Defense entity had actually decided to revoke our client’s security clearance. So Mr. Romero lost his job.
