50 SEPTEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL By the spring of 2015, we had bipartisan language at the committee staff level for a draft State Department authorization bill that included AFSA-supported items, such as extension of some provisions of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and assignment restriction reform. A State Department authorization bill institutes or changes department programs, but there was no indication it would ever become law: A State authorization bill had not been passed since 2002, and many, including at AFSA and the department, were pessimistic about passage at the time. Complementing the congressional engagement, we discussed the problem with other civil rights stakeholders in the spring of 2015. Japanese American Citizens League Executive Director Priscilla Ouchida wrote an April 22, 2015, letter to the Director General of the Foreign Service about “the lack of diversity at Embassy [Tokyo and] … whether the department’s current assignment and security clearance policies contribute to [AAPI] underrepresentation.” A May 13, 2015, meeting of the Diversity Governance Council with then–Deputy Secretaries Antony Blinken and Heather Higginbottom proved pivotal. There, AAFAA President Tom Wong and I described the personal impact of assignment restrictions in an emotional hour-long discussion that humanized this problematic personnel policy, which led to the department’s first policy review of the issue. Days later, at AFSA’s invitation, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Director of Federal Sector Programs Dexter Brooks, OPM Acting Diversity and Inclusion Program Manager Sharon Wong, and White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI) staff member Maureen Tariq visited the State Department for a May 21, 2015, conversation on assignment restriction programs. About a year later, in October 2016, President Barack Obama put forth a “Memorandum on Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the National Security Workforce,” which included a directive to national security agencies to implement a review process for decisions related to assignment restrictions. And the State Department issued a brand-new FAM section instituting a higher-level review in November 2016, but did not authorize an appeal (see the September 2017 FSJ). The story would have ended there had Sen. Corker not succeeded in an 11th-hour maneuver. On Dec. 5, 2016, he obtained the Senate’s unanimous consent for a bipartisan Department of State Authorities Act, Fiscal Year 2017, which included a new statutory right to appeal any assignment restriction (Section 414) and a mandate that State report on the number and nature of employees affected by the assignment restrictions in the previous three years. The Semantics of an Independent Appeals Process In 2018, when transmitting its required report on employees affected by assignment restrictions, the State Department noted: “HFAC [House Foreign Affairs Committee] do[es] not believe that [12 FAM 233.5] fully adheres to the legislative requirements.” That year, I had been elected president of the 800-member AAFAA. Our board’s focus was “full implementation of an independent appeals process.” On Feb. 22, 2019, we sent Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan Jr. a letter requesting that the department fully implement the statutorily required independent appeals process. The response—“AAFAA tries to draw a semantic distinction between the law’s use of the word ‘appeal’ vice the department’s use of the word ‘review’”—indicated that this was not going to be easy. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s State Department had a record number of AAPIs at senior levels: At one time, three AAPIs were serving in the six under secretary positions. While the political leadership was supportive, progress at the working- and senior career-staff level remained slow. AAFAA built coalitions with the other race, ethnicity, and national-origin employee In May 2015, at AFSA’s invitation, officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Office of Personnel Management, and the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI) met with members of the Foreign Service in the Marshall Center briefing room to discuss the assignment restriction programs, as reported in the July-August 2015 AFSA News. Shown here, from left: AAFAA President Tom Wong, AFSA State Vice President Matthew Asada, and AFSA Staff Attorney Andrew Large. AFSA/FSJ DIGITAL ARCHIVE
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