THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2024 47 Mandatory Retirement: Why Still Age 65? AFSA NEWS RETIREE VP VOICE | BY JOHN K. NALAND AFSA NEWS Contact: naland@afsa.org It has been 40 years since Congress made Social Security part of the retirement package for new Foreign Service members. Why, during those four decades, hasn’t Congress raised the Foreign Service mandatory retirement age from 65 to match the Social Security full retirement age of 67 for people born after 1959? Allowing Foreign Service members who have not already voluntarily or involuntarily retired prior to age 65 to work until their full Social Security retirement age would benefit them financially while further employing their skills and experience to advance our nation’s foreign policy goals. But a number of potential downsides have impeded a legislative change. • Keeping large numbers of Foreign Service members— many in upper pay grades— working for two years longer would likely reduce promotion opportunities. Promotions could slow with many Foreign Service members spending longer in each grade. About 20 percent of Foreign Service retirements currently occur at age 65, so the numbers are substantial. • Unless Congress simultaneously increased the size of the Foreign Service, the number of members staying on active duty to age 67 would need to be offset by a reduction in hiring. • Retaining Foreign Service members who were hired 20, 30, or more years earlier could slow efforts to increase diversity if those staying were less diverse on average than those who would have been hired and promoted into their positions. • Foreign Service members with less than 20 years of service as they approach mandatory retirement must work to that age to have their pensions calculated at the 1.7 percent retirement factor instead of 1 percent for those with less than 20 years. Therefore, raising the mandatory retirement age from 65 to 67 would all but compel those members to work two additional years. Some of them might prefer to start their long-awaited retirement without that delay. To weigh the balance between those pros and cons, authoritative projections would be needed of the effects on hiring, promotions, and diversity. Because raising the mandatory retirement age would affect Foreign Service members at all foreign affairs agencies, separate projections would be needed from each agency. Those projections would have to be done by agency human resources analysts with the expertise and access to data required to crunch the numbers. Additionally, it would be useful to survey employees who entered the Foreign Service after age 47 to determine how many would rather retire at age 65 instead of feeling compelled to work to 67 to get the higher retirement calculation. Even if detailed consideration indicated that the pros outweighed the cons, a key reason that no one has taken up this issue over the past 40 years is that revising the Foreign Service Act’s retirement section could have unintended negative consequences. Some lawmakers might seek to insert harmful changes, such as eliminating the option of retiring on a full, unreduced annuity at age 50 with 20 years of service. Clearly, some potential changes could disadvantage far more Foreign Service members than would be helped by raising the mandatory retirement age. So, before moving forward, proponents of raising the retirement age must carefully “take the temperature” on Capitol Hill to gauge the likelihood of passage without unintended harmful consequences. Finally, it is useful to remember why the Foreign Service has had mandatory retirement for age since the Rogers Act in 1924, which was reaffirmed in the Foreign Service Acts of 1946 and 1980. An authoritative explanation can be found in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1979 decision rejecting a suit filed by a group of Foreign Service officers alleging that the policy represented unconstitutional discrimination (Vance v. Bradley). The Supreme Court upheld the policy, finding that Congress advanced legitimate national interests by setting different rules for the Foreign Service as a “relatively small ... and particularly able corps, separate and apart from the Civil Service system.” Those national interests, the Supreme Court decision explained, included the need to maintain the Foreign Service flow-through personnel system and to remove from the Service those whose age may make them less equipped or less ready than younger persons to face the rigors of overseas duty. n A key reason that no one has taken up this issue over the past 40 years is that revising the Foreign Service Act’s retirement section could have unintended negative consequences.
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