abstract. Over four million Americans must hold security clearances to work. But because courts have regarded security-clearance decisions as committed to the Executive’s discretion, they generally decline to review claims that adverse decisions violate employees’ and applicants’ constitutional rights. Recently, the judiciary has begun to recognize its competency to adjudicate some of these constitutional claims without improperly encroaching on the Executive. As the national-security workforce grows larger and more diverse, this Essay outlines an emerging exception to the bar on judicial review of security-clearance decisions: courts’ ability to review substantiated claims that adverse decisions violate constitutional rights.
In a “striking act of retaliation against an outspoken critic,” President Trump announced in 2018 that he had revoked former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan’s security clearance.1 Commentators remarked that even this obviously retaliatory decision was within the Executive’s nearly unchecked authority to deny, revoke, and suspend security clearances.2 Through this announcement, President Trump bypassed the normal process for revocations, which would have required civil servants to “put their names on a document moving to revoke someone’s security clearance for . . . protected activities under the First Amendment”—an act one prominent intelligence lawyer was confident they “would not” do.3
For all the President’s tough talk,...
On September 14, 2026, the Department of Justice announced that Accenture Federal Services, Accenture plc, and Accenture LLP agreed to pay $25 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations that ...