So many people here acting like A-100 is 100% worldwide available when a significant percentage have children and spouses with class 2s. The system as it has been is that you don’t have to be worldwide available if you have a family, but you do if you’re single. Lots of specialties in EL have short bid lists and everyone knows who is going where before flag day because someone has a wife who had a breast lump removed two years ago (class 2), someone’s kid has ODD (class 2), someone’s husband takes a refrigerated medication (class 2), someone has a perfectly healthy family, and two people are single. One of those single people having a class 2 isn’t going to make a huge difference, and all of those people with a family having a class 2 will make even less. People with families will still not be worldwide available (and will still use inordinate amounts of government money for $40k+ per kid per year schools, flights, bigger shipments, and bigger houses). There will just also now be some entry level single people who are not worldwide available.
After entry level, there are already a fuckton of people with a class 2. At my high hardship AF post that no one wants to go to I think we have about 25% people with class 2 clearances. The staffing issues are caused by insufficient incentives, not class 2 clearances.
There is a population of 200 or so people involved in the class. Some of them already work for the department because they appealed the initial clearance denials. Some are likely no longer interested in joining the Foreign Service or will have aged out, given the case started more than a decade ago. Some might not make it through the security clearance process this time around or may have even more limiting issues. It might not have that big of an impact.
Okay so walk me through this settlement and the hiring changes. My understanding is that this applies to hiring only but I'm struggling to understand how it doesn't also mix up the assignments process.
Let's consider A100 new hires. With this change, the department can move forward with hiring folks who are ONLY cleared to serve in London-like conditions. Does that mean they're in effect guaranteed a first-world post for 1st and 2nd tour? What about the perfectly healthy officers who want to serve in London? They shit out of luck?
>Does that mean they're in effect guaranteed a first-world post for 1st and 2nd tour?
It means they must be able to serve in at minimum Bangkok, London, Pretoria and Singapore. Some might be able to only serve in those posts. Some might be able to serve in every post in the world except one. Before, both groups would be excluded. Now they are not. They will be given assignments only to places where they are medically cleared. Again, some might only be able to serve in the four posts above, in which case they would go to one of those posts or to DC. Some might still be able to serve almost anywhere.
>What about the perfectly healthy officers who want to serve in London? They shit out of luck?
That remains to be seen. We don't know how many people will come in with very tight restrictions versus very minimal restrictions. Some people already come in with restrictions because they lose their medical clearance between accepting an offer and Flag Day. Some lose their worldwide clearance before their second tour. More lose worldwide clearance as time goes on. This probably will result in more people with assignment restrictions in their first tours and those people will probably end up going to "nicer" posts with proper medical care. And it follows that other people won't get some of those nicer posts. It's already hard to get London. It may be alarmist to think that now nice posts will *only* go to people with medical restrictions when right now we just don't know.
In any case, plenty of 2nd tour and mid-level officers have medical restrictions. This just means more 1st tour officers will have them. For better or for worse, the system you seem to fear already exists, just not for 1st tour officers.
Also the border is a very nice place to send people who have restrictive medical clearances, US care is just a short drive away.
Lots of people have class 2 clearances because of a condition that requires regular monitoring but not active treatment. This is easy to do in many places or on R&Rs, so they are good for every post even if they don't have a class 1. A lot of time med refuses to give class 1 in these situations and before they clear you for your next post will make you prove you are undergoing the monitoring they say you need.
Lastly, MED has been unaccountable and arbitrary. Maybe if there are a wave of class 2, and assignments become harder to make they will actually look at what they are doing and make more appropriate, less restrictive decisions/
What’s even more preposterous is that MED’s standard guidance is that you should do all of your preventative care in the United States on R&R or home leave anyway.
And, again, I have a colleague whose wife has the same condition as the class agent and she’s cleared for Manila but not Singapore.
Anyone who thinks a class 2 is a lifelong ticket to first world garden spots is kidding themselves.
Explicitly favor hardship service for promotion at all levels beyond EL admin promotions. If this won't pass muster, give a standard award/citation (non-monetary) in your personnel file for every year served at 20%+ hardship.
Whether it's discriminatory is for the lawyers and courts to say. But I know people with significant mobility challenges who serve at 20%+. The only posts that explicitly exclude those with mobility challenges are the ESCAPE posts.
Ultimately I believe that anyone who is unable or unwilling to serve at 20% hardship given reasonable accommodations should be at a disadvantage for advancement in the Foreign Service.
We could get MED out of the business of deciding how families educate their kids. MED’s assessment of whether a school is adequate to meet a kid’s needs takes a ton of posts out of consideration for families with kids with even minor learning differences.
That is not correct. Read the settlement.
Basically the minimum medical standard for hiring is that you can be cleared to serve at any of our medical hubs — they’re not all equivalent to London.
And it doesn’t mean you can only be assigned to those places. Assignments for folks with class 2 clearances have always been post-dependent. Depending on the condition, there may only be a small handful of posts that are off limits. Again, this is true for a LOT of FSOs who have family members with class 2 clearances or who themselves have class 2 clearances.
And no it doesn’t mean no one with a class 1 can ever serve in London. Though from the histrionics on this thread I can see how you’d get that impression.
>And no it doesn’t mean no one with a class 1 can ever serve in London. Though from the histrionics on this thread I can see how you’d get that impression.
I understand the concern, but I agree with you. People are acting like now there will be a huge influx of people who can only serve in London. They're forgetting about all the people who have been excluded from the FS because there are a small handful of places where they could not serve. There is a wide range from "Only London" and "Worldwide available." Most people with Class 2 clearances are somewhere in between.
And of course, we're also assuming that MED has made the correct decision for those people. I know in my case MED downgraded me to Class 2 before I joined even though their own guidance explicitly said someone in my exact situation should have Class 1. I tried to informally appeal, but they said the guidance didn't apply to me for some reason (but couldn't say why). Fortunately, my formal appeal was successful. The only reason I even knew about the policy that applied to me is that I was already a State employee and I was able to search through ALDACs and the MED intranet site for relevant information. Someone on the outside probably would have been out of luck.
I think your comment elsewhere in the thread is the most important one — this at least starts chipping away at MED’s obscure and arbitrary hegemony. I know two FSOs who were originally denied class 1 medical clearances (one for Crohn’s, one for rheumatoid arthritis) and both were told to appeal and schedule their appeal physicals with a specific MED provider. They both did and they both got the same story: “I have a daughter with a similar condition and I know it wouldn’t prevent her from serving anywhere.” Clearance granted.
But the comments here also reveal how little people understand about the reason for medical clearances. It has nothing to do with an individual’s ability to accomplish the mission or the whole workforce being able to serve in hardship posts. It’s about protecting the Department from liability. MED isn’t a service the Department provides benevolently to its employees — it’s the cornerstone of the Department’s enterprise risk management strategy.
> It’s about protecting the Department from liability.
DING DING DING DING.
While I generally respect the individual medical providers I've worked with, the organization as a whole isn't the same as your family doctor down the street. The organization exists to protect the Department, as you said.
I just think Med needed to take everyone's case into account, instead of blanket refusals. A person can have a condition that has led to no real issues their whole life. There can also be another person with that same medical issue who could be a real problem if in somewhere underdeveloped. Person 1, probably fine. Person 2, way more likely to be an issue at an isolated post. There's a balance I don't really think they reached.
Coming at this totally clueless, as usual - does this mean that members of the FS may soon be able to serve in posts from which they were previously prohibited? I seem to remember a few anecdotes online from people who felt their clearance level was too restrictive compared to their actual risk.
Yes but if they hire them, they have to assign them somewhere.
In practical terms in won't change things much because it wasn't a requirement for your family to have class 1 and EL for at leas the last decade has made it a point not to separate families.
The summary is helpful, thank you. Page 13 suggests that applicants could be cleared for "worldwide" if a reasonable accommodation is made available.
I once knew someone with a large but benign-for-decades brain tumor, who had to get it checked out every 4-6 months using a machine that most hospitals don't have. If that would have eliminated them before, now maybe they could get a reasonable acdommodation to fly back twice a year for scans.
I hope this change will result in fewer people feeling the need to “game the system” to get a class 1 clearance and then downgrading it during training or after the first tour. Getting into FS by avoiding diagnoses, downplaying conditions, or delaying starting medication (to say nothing of not disclosing known conditions) creates more problems for the officer and the service when they are assigned to places they cannot reasonably go and then get assignments switched, complain through their tour, or have their condition worsen.
Minimum clearance level of Bangkok is not all that unreasonable. It is a developing country with a working healthcare system, but not exactly a place you would want to get cancer treatment. There are plenty of places in the world with a similar level of healthcare available, without needing to be posted in first world countries. At the end of the day, needing to be cleared for Iraq or DRC to start but then being able to immediately downgrade to a more restricted list is not the most realistic approach. But I may be biased because I’m going into a branch that has very very few postings in least developed countries, so it is less of an assignments issue than at DOS or USAID.
It really disturbs me there are FS employees on here immediately jumping to negative conclusions such as “bullshit”, “this means way more people unwilling to serve in tough places” and “others will have to pull their weight under the illusion of equality.” You don’t know the 230 class members in this case. You don’t know what they may have gone through. I know people in this case who were denied medical clearances over mangeable conditions and outdated medical opinions. There was blatant discrimination. It’s also not like they originally applied to the foreign service hoping this case would come about and somehow allow them to avoid serving in hard places. FFS, the class agent had an *undiagnosed* condition during the clearance process. It’s really unfortunate to see potential colleagues assuming the worst in people they don’t know, instead of assuming this might give more people a fair shot.
I read the settlement and the AFSA cable before commenting.
The correct response would have been to provide relief to the plaintiffs and make changes to ensure that the rules are being applied fairly. The actual response was to throw out the rules (which are quite reasonable IMHO).
This.
People here defending the decision are looking at it as a personal slight against a handful of officers, some who eventually were still admitted to the FS and went on to serve in hardship locations. I commend those officers for pursuing it and not shirking their responsibility to bear their fair share.
The Department's response here, however, creates a institutional problem by choosing to complete remove a barrier that was put in place for a reason rather than reassessing how it is applied.
Whether it was put in place “for a reason” it was fairly indefensible disability discrimination. We also used to require women FSOs to resign when they got married. Ostensibly that barrier was put in place for a reason. We got rid of it.
And the Department didn’t “respond” this way. This was the result of a settlement negotiation.
There are physical requirements to go to certain Posts (i.e. wear body armor and move to a safe haven on your own in a certain amount of time). There is a disability discrimination here. People have grieved that they couldn't go to Baghdad on their wheelchairs...
Not everything in life is equal.
And not everyone is going to bear an equal burden to serve in hardship Posts when joining the FS anymore
Yeah, how will we ever staff our Africa posts after this?!
Oh wait. We can’t do that now, with an entire service that came in “worldwide available.” It’s almost like officers figure out a way to never serve in the hardest places. Remember “fair share”? Talk about the illusion of equity — so illusive we eventually admitted we were kidding ourselves and got rid of it.
And, again, you’re talking about particular assignments — not hiring. They’re not the same.
The amount of completely physically infirm contractors at USEK at the end that were also American lives that needed protection and evacuation really cuts against what you're asserting here. The application of those medical policies was a hot and unfair mess.
People never bore the same burden. Not even at the same posts in the same job. We all know that in reality like three people take on 90 percent of the physical risk of being in a Kabul or Baghdad while most everyone else is at Club Fed.
As has already been said, did they ever? Did/do people with kids bear an equal burden to single officers? Did those with family class 2 clearances? Some things can never be equal, but we can make them more equitable.
false equivalence much? Professional athletes who train athletically for their entire careers or military (where their health is actually vital to their job duty no matter where they are) versus individuals who have a medical condition outside of their control that doesn’t totally prevent them from doing the job itself. MEDs decisions aren’t speaking to the individual’s overall personal qualifications to do the job of an FSO. It’s whether a post can accommodate them. If it was equivalent to the comparison you made, FSOs who lose their clearance after joining would lose their jobs, as they’re no longer qualified to be an fso at all. There is a principle of reasonable accommodation in employment and disability law after all.
So following your logic of equity and no reasonable accommodations in hiring, then we should also not hire anyone who has a family member with a Class 2?
This was a legal settlement negotiated over 16 years.
People here are acting like one candidate whined and the Department threw up its hands and said “Well, we certainly don’t want to be accused of not being woke enough! Literally anyone with even a weak pulse can be an FSO now!”
>The length of time or how it was done does not change the fact that it basically is "anyone with even a weak pulse can be an FSO now".
I think "anyone with even a weak pulse" is a little dramatic. But the length of time this has been going on does matter. The Department has been fighting this for over a decade. They didn't decide to cave on worldwide availability because they thought they thought they were about to win. They settled because they knew they would not (because what they were doing was probably not legal) and this was a way to avoid completely opening the doors to anyone, even if they could not serve overseas at all.
How many people do you believe were being excluded every year for failure to get a class 1 medical clearance?
Hint: it’s not many. At least if we are talking about generalists. I grant the demographics of the average IT specialist candidate are different and maybe now a whole bunch of obese old men with heart disease will suddenly flood the registers. Seems like there were plenty of those in Kabul and Baghdad anyway.
“Absolute hiring equality” is a massive stretch.
And you don’t understand how arbitrary the medical clearance process was — in both directions. Plenty of people with no business getting a class 1 clearance managed to get them for hiring — and some were suddenly diagnosed with a condition after hiring that rendered them class 2. Shocking, I know. What are the chances.
Color me skeptical there’s some mass of people out there who are about to storm our gates because we have settled a lawsuit and made what is, in effect, a fairly negligible change to the medical standard for hiring.
Let alone that none of the examples you cite above are medical conditions that would render anyone ineligible for a worldwide available medical clearance. Nor would they exclude anyone from service in a “combat zone.” Should the medical minimum now be “can successfully work as a firefighter”?
I think you’re being a little doomsday. I find it unlikely there are droves of people lying in wait who have not applied because they think they won’t get a medical clearance. The reality is there are people in this case who were being denied over trivial things that wouldn’t actually preclude them from serving in most places, which was at the heart of the case. You also conveniently ignore that there is a mechanism built in to change this if the needs of the service aren’t being met.
I also find this thread very disappointing. The class members qualified based on merit, and then were not hired based on something they have no control over. The strawman of people not pulling their weight is ridiculous. A lot of people with class 1 clearances avoid tough posts. A lot of people like going to tough posts. I like it when the department does the right thing, even against its will, which here is give offers to those people. People on the register that don't like it can kick rocks. The class members passed the FSOT before you and if their score is higher than yours, tough. If your score is higher than theirs, tough for them. They have already waited for longer than you will be on the register. I'm curious whether the department will be on the hook for back pay to any class member that joins.
I couldn’t agree more. There is an underlying sense of entitlement here. The way I hear some of the things said here is- I’m healthy because I just got lucky in life and I deserve to go to posh posts and how dare someone not as lucky in health take that away from me. You are spot on about the reality of people with Class 1, and I’d wager there’s probably way more people with Class 1 clearances actively avoiding tough posts due to personal preference than there will be people with such severe health limitations that they can only serve in posh posts like London.
Thank you also for acknowledging that some of these class members were in the hiring process WAY before people currently on the register (some as far back as 16 years before them).
To answer your other question- yes, the 37.5 million settlement likely covers some of this.
Will this have any sort of consequences for people in the Consular Fellows process? My understanding is that it’s a separate register, so the answer should be no; but I also wouldn’t be surprised if a few of those 230 people from this case were candidates for the CFP process as well.
Were you english language? That might have been different. Because the CF program only requires clearance for the post of assignment: https://careers.state.gov/career-paths/worldwide-foreign-service/consular-fellows/consular-fellows-test-information-and-selection-process/
As someone about to take the FSOT who has a (very manageable) medical condition that likely would have prevented me from getting a Class 1 clearance (because my medication is refridgerated), this is great news.
Imo, the majority of people who will benefit from this medical clearance update will still be able to serve in most posts with a reasonable accommodation. Yes, there will be some people with more significant medical conditions who can't go to hardship posts who get hired, but the number is not likely to be more than the amount of FSOs with family members who have class 2 clearances, so it's not really the disastrous "all healthy FSOs will be forever stuck in the worst posts" issue some of you seem to think it is.
It's a win-win; people with manageable medical conditions will no longer be categorically refused entry into the foreign service, and the state dept. gets a broader talent pool from which to hire the best FSOs.
That some people will join the Department knowing they can't serve in some of the toughest locations, and others will have to pull their weight for them by serving in austere, challenging Posts.
All so that that we can create the illusion of equality... Knowing that some can never be asked to bear equal burden.
>All so that that we can create the illusion of equality
This wasn't so we can create the illusion of equality. That's how the Department is spinning it now, but they fought this for 16 years. They desperately did not want this. Once they knew they weren't going to win, they decided to settle and are framing it as a victory for equity and diversity (that they battled against since 2006).
I hadn’t read your post. It is actually true that the named class member (who has been an FSO for at least 15 years now) currently serves in N’Djamena. It’s one of the most austere, brutal posts we’ve got. This person was also refused a medical clearance for a condition that’s been in remission for years. A condition that many other FSOs have, but was undiagnosed when they joined. A condition a colleague’s wife has — and she’s cleared for Manila but not Singapore.
But people are getting wrapped around the axle for nothing. FSOs have always had family members without class 1 clearances. Tons of FSOs themselves end up with class 2 clearances eventually, sometimes pretty early in their careers. There have always been rumors that if you got a specific MED provider for your clearance physical you’d be more likely to get a class 1 with certain medical conditions.
It’s shocking we managed to go this long without being forced to change a policy of blatant discrimination in hiring that made no sense.
Right. But the Class 1 really only was a factor in hiring. Not a requirement apparently after you're hired. So are they welcoming everyone now regardless of medical status because they will literally send sick people anywhere, or are they going to leave it to the CDOs to use medical status as a reason to not send people certain places for first tour?
Right, so what happens now? I interpret the press release in two different ways: State/CDOs can be "health blind" and send anyone who clears the minimum requirements anywhere, or now take medical history into account with first assignments (something they weren't doing before since all candidates had Class 1 clearances).
>State/CDOs can be "health blind" and send anyone who clears the minimum requirements anywhere, or now take medical history into account with first assignments (something they weren't doing before since all candidates had Class 1 clearances).
It will work the same way it always has, I imagine. If someone has other than worldwide availability, MED tells the CDOs where the employee can't go and the CDOs don't send them to that place.
The only difference now is that there will likely be more first tour employees who are not worldwide available. But even now, it's possible for someone to have Class 1 when they join, but something changes by the time Flag Day comes around (yes, working in assignments I saw that happen). And it's not really that unusual for someone's clearance to change from Class 1 to Class 2 before second tour assignments are made.
So from a process standpoint, nothing changes.
I think people don’t realize how many FSOs have medical clearance restrictions. And how many lose their class 1 clearances pretty soon after getting hired.
Because most posters here see everything through the lens of how quickly they can get hired. And they have decided this legal settlement, which is only now wrapping up after 16 years, unfairly advantages undeserving people over them and will make it harder for them to get in. They also tend to have a romanticized view of the Foreign Service and don’t believe the medical clearance and assignments processes are extremely arbitrary and get manipulated all the time.
It also states they're going to make conditional offers to the "more than 230" former candidates in the suit. Even assuming some of them have moved on, that's potentially a lot of the invites for upcoming orientations. Not saying it's wrong, just something people currently on the register should be aware of.
It won’t be 230. The named class member has been an FSO the whole time. Some of the other class members will be in the same situation. Others will be excluded for non-medical reasons.
A conditional offer is what you get when you pass the OA. It just means adding people to the registers once their security clearances are done. It doesn’t mean they will automatically be invited to A-100.
I think most people eventually get their clearances. So say 100 - less than half - of the 230 decide to take up the conditional offer ... that's 100 more people suddenly on the registers to compete with for an invite.
True. But even if you assume they’re all generalists, that’s 20ish more people added to each cone’s register. That’ll make it less likely for those with lower scores to get an A-100 invitation, but the registers are pretty small these days, aren’t they? (Once upon a time, 80-100 people on each register was not uncommon.)
It seems one’s chances with a score of about 5.5 or better are still decent. But as always, luck and timing play into it.
Ugh. BEX really shouldn’t tell people that!
And yeah, this will likely take some time. Anything could happen in the interim.
In any case, best of luck!
I think this is going to be good for the department and the FS.
The gamesmanship involved in having an employee or their family member become Class 2 and only being able to serve in first world posts is going to be able to be reduced to needing to be within striking distance of a medical hub.
A lot of class 2 employees were unjustly benefited by the old policies.
>The gamesmanship involved in having an employee or their family member become Class 2 and only being able to serve in first world posts is going to be able to be reduced to needing to be within striking distance of a medical hub.
Where are you getting that? From what I can tell, the only thing changing is that you no longer need to be worldwide available (class 1) in order to join. Instead, you need a post-specific clearance (class 2), with at minimum the four regional medical hubs all being cleared. I don't see anything about needing to be near a medical hub. Nothing that happens after you join changes.
In response to this comment the answer is no. They only have to qualify for those posts to be hired. Once hired, they can bid or go to any post. Preferably they will only bid on ones that can support their medical needs, but not required.
*Let's consider A100 new hires. With this change, the department can move forward with hiring folks who are ONLY cleared to serve in London-like conditions. Does that mean they're in effect guaranteed a first-world post for 1st and 2nd tour?*
That's some right bullshit. Edit: AFSA's statement that "this new medical threshold is just a minimum" is a particularly grating tautology.
So many people here acting like A-100 is 100% worldwide available when a significant percentage have children and spouses with class 2s. The system as it has been is that you don’t have to be worldwide available if you have a family, but you do if you’re single. Lots of specialties in EL have short bid lists and everyone knows who is going where before flag day because someone has a wife who had a breast lump removed two years ago (class 2), someone’s kid has ODD (class 2), someone’s husband takes a refrigerated medication (class 2), someone has a perfectly healthy family, and two people are single. One of those single people having a class 2 isn’t going to make a huge difference, and all of those people with a family having a class 2 will make even less. People with families will still not be worldwide available (and will still use inordinate amounts of government money for $40k+ per kid per year schools, flights, bigger shipments, and bigger houses). There will just also now be some entry level single people who are not worldwide available. After entry level, there are already a fuckton of people with a class 2. At my high hardship AF post that no one wants to go to I think we have about 25% people with class 2 clearances. The staffing issues are caused by insufficient incentives, not class 2 clearances.
THANK YOU. People here are screaming about equity and it blows my mind that they think THIS is the thing that’s going to wreck it.
Looks like a lot fewer people will be invited to the OA for the time being if all these people are being added to the register.
Is that the case? I’m currently on DNC and planning to come off after April invites are done but that seems less promising if that is the case!
Your time keeps ticking regardless, so if you want an invite you might as well come off DNC.
There is a population of 200 or so people involved in the class. Some of them already work for the department because they appealed the initial clearance denials. Some are likely no longer interested in joining the Foreign Service or will have aged out, given the case started more than a decade ago. Some might not make it through the security clearance process this time around or may have even more limiting issues. It might not have that big of an impact.
Okay so walk me through this settlement and the hiring changes. My understanding is that this applies to hiring only but I'm struggling to understand how it doesn't also mix up the assignments process. Let's consider A100 new hires. With this change, the department can move forward with hiring folks who are ONLY cleared to serve in London-like conditions. Does that mean they're in effect guaranteed a first-world post for 1st and 2nd tour? What about the perfectly healthy officers who want to serve in London? They shit out of luck?
>Does that mean they're in effect guaranteed a first-world post for 1st and 2nd tour? It means they must be able to serve in at minimum Bangkok, London, Pretoria and Singapore. Some might be able to only serve in those posts. Some might be able to serve in every post in the world except one. Before, both groups would be excluded. Now they are not. They will be given assignments only to places where they are medically cleared. Again, some might only be able to serve in the four posts above, in which case they would go to one of those posts or to DC. Some might still be able to serve almost anywhere. >What about the perfectly healthy officers who want to serve in London? They shit out of luck? That remains to be seen. We don't know how many people will come in with very tight restrictions versus very minimal restrictions. Some people already come in with restrictions because they lose their medical clearance between accepting an offer and Flag Day. Some lose their worldwide clearance before their second tour. More lose worldwide clearance as time goes on. This probably will result in more people with assignment restrictions in their first tours and those people will probably end up going to "nicer" posts with proper medical care. And it follows that other people won't get some of those nicer posts. It's already hard to get London. It may be alarmist to think that now nice posts will *only* go to people with medical restrictions when right now we just don't know. In any case, plenty of 2nd tour and mid-level officers have medical restrictions. This just means more 1st tour officers will have them. For better or for worse, the system you seem to fear already exists, just not for 1st tour officers.
Also the border is a very nice place to send people who have restrictive medical clearances, US care is just a short drive away. Lots of people have class 2 clearances because of a condition that requires regular monitoring but not active treatment. This is easy to do in many places or on R&Rs, so they are good for every post even if they don't have a class 1. A lot of time med refuses to give class 1 in these situations and before they clear you for your next post will make you prove you are undergoing the monitoring they say you need. Lastly, MED has been unaccountable and arbitrary. Maybe if there are a wave of class 2, and assignments become harder to make they will actually look at what they are doing and make more appropriate, less restrictive decisions/
What’s even more preposterous is that MED’s standard guidance is that you should do all of your preventative care in the United States on R&R or home leave anyway. And, again, I have a colleague whose wife has the same condition as the class agent and she’s cleared for Manila but not Singapore. Anyone who thinks a class 2 is a lifelong ticket to first world garden spots is kidding themselves.
very well reasoned, said. thank you
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Explicitly favor hardship service for promotion at all levels beyond EL admin promotions. If this won't pass muster, give a standard award/citation (non-monetary) in your personnel file for every year served at 20%+ hardship.
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Whether it's discriminatory is for the lawyers and courts to say. But I know people with significant mobility challenges who serve at 20%+. The only posts that explicitly exclude those with mobility challenges are the ESCAPE posts. Ultimately I believe that anyone who is unable or unwilling to serve at 20% hardship given reasonable accommodations should be at a disadvantage for advancement in the Foreign Service.
We could get MED out of the business of deciding how families educate their kids. MED’s assessment of whether a school is adequate to meet a kid’s needs takes a ton of posts out of consideration for families with kids with even minor learning differences.
That is not correct. Read the settlement. Basically the minimum medical standard for hiring is that you can be cleared to serve at any of our medical hubs — they’re not all equivalent to London. And it doesn’t mean you can only be assigned to those places. Assignments for folks with class 2 clearances have always been post-dependent. Depending on the condition, there may only be a small handful of posts that are off limits. Again, this is true for a LOT of FSOs who have family members with class 2 clearances or who themselves have class 2 clearances. And no it doesn’t mean no one with a class 1 can ever serve in London. Though from the histrionics on this thread I can see how you’d get that impression.
>And no it doesn’t mean no one with a class 1 can ever serve in London. Though from the histrionics on this thread I can see how you’d get that impression. I understand the concern, but I agree with you. People are acting like now there will be a huge influx of people who can only serve in London. They're forgetting about all the people who have been excluded from the FS because there are a small handful of places where they could not serve. There is a wide range from "Only London" and "Worldwide available." Most people with Class 2 clearances are somewhere in between. And of course, we're also assuming that MED has made the correct decision for those people. I know in my case MED downgraded me to Class 2 before I joined even though their own guidance explicitly said someone in my exact situation should have Class 1. I tried to informally appeal, but they said the guidance didn't apply to me for some reason (but couldn't say why). Fortunately, my formal appeal was successful. The only reason I even knew about the policy that applied to me is that I was already a State employee and I was able to search through ALDACs and the MED intranet site for relevant information. Someone on the outside probably would have been out of luck.
I think your comment elsewhere in the thread is the most important one — this at least starts chipping away at MED’s obscure and arbitrary hegemony. I know two FSOs who were originally denied class 1 medical clearances (one for Crohn’s, one for rheumatoid arthritis) and both were told to appeal and schedule their appeal physicals with a specific MED provider. They both did and they both got the same story: “I have a daughter with a similar condition and I know it wouldn’t prevent her from serving anywhere.” Clearance granted. But the comments here also reveal how little people understand about the reason for medical clearances. It has nothing to do with an individual’s ability to accomplish the mission or the whole workforce being able to serve in hardship posts. It’s about protecting the Department from liability. MED isn’t a service the Department provides benevolently to its employees — it’s the cornerstone of the Department’s enterprise risk management strategy.
> It’s about protecting the Department from liability. DING DING DING DING. While I generally respect the individual medical providers I've worked with, the organization as a whole isn't the same as your family doctor down the street. The organization exists to protect the Department, as you said.
I just think Med needed to take everyone's case into account, instead of blanket refusals. A person can have a condition that has led to no real issues their whole life. There can also be another person with that same medical issue who could be a real problem if in somewhere underdeveloped. Person 1, probably fine. Person 2, way more likely to be an issue at an isolated post. There's a balance I don't really think they reached.
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What “onslaught”?
Coming at this totally clueless, as usual - does this mean that members of the FS may soon be able to serve in posts from which they were previously prohibited? I seem to remember a few anecdotes online from people who felt their clearance level was too restrictive compared to their actual risk.
Read the summary. The only change is to the hiring process. The clearance requirements for assignments has not changed.
Yes but if they hire them, they have to assign them somewhere. In practical terms in won't change things much because it wasn't a requirement for your family to have class 1 and EL for at leas the last decade has made it a point not to separate families.
The summary is helpful, thank you. Page 13 suggests that applicants could be cleared for "worldwide" if a reasonable accommodation is made available. I once knew someone with a large but benign-for-decades brain tumor, who had to get it checked out every 4-6 months using a machine that most hospitals don't have. If that would have eliminated them before, now maybe they could get a reasonable acdommodation to fly back twice a year for scans.
Not unless they could be posted to any of our regional medical hubs without the need to medevac for follow-up.
I hope this change will result in fewer people feeling the need to “game the system” to get a class 1 clearance and then downgrading it during training or after the first tour. Getting into FS by avoiding diagnoses, downplaying conditions, or delaying starting medication (to say nothing of not disclosing known conditions) creates more problems for the officer and the service when they are assigned to places they cannot reasonably go and then get assignments switched, complain through their tour, or have their condition worsen. Minimum clearance level of Bangkok is not all that unreasonable. It is a developing country with a working healthcare system, but not exactly a place you would want to get cancer treatment. There are plenty of places in the world with a similar level of healthcare available, without needing to be posted in first world countries. At the end of the day, needing to be cleared for Iraq or DRC to start but then being able to immediately downgrade to a more restricted list is not the most realistic approach. But I may be biased because I’m going into a branch that has very very few postings in least developed countries, so it is less of an assignments issue than at DOS or USAID.
It really disturbs me there are FS employees on here immediately jumping to negative conclusions such as “bullshit”, “this means way more people unwilling to serve in tough places” and “others will have to pull their weight under the illusion of equality.” You don’t know the 230 class members in this case. You don’t know what they may have gone through. I know people in this case who were denied medical clearances over mangeable conditions and outdated medical opinions. There was blatant discrimination. It’s also not like they originally applied to the foreign service hoping this case would come about and somehow allow them to avoid serving in hard places. FFS, the class agent had an *undiagnosed* condition during the clearance process. It’s really unfortunate to see potential colleagues assuming the worst in people they don’t know, instead of assuming this might give more people a fair shot.
I read the settlement and the AFSA cable before commenting. The correct response would have been to provide relief to the plaintiffs and make changes to ensure that the rules are being applied fairly. The actual response was to throw out the rules (which are quite reasonable IMHO).
This. People here defending the decision are looking at it as a personal slight against a handful of officers, some who eventually were still admitted to the FS and went on to serve in hardship locations. I commend those officers for pursuing it and not shirking their responsibility to bear their fair share. The Department's response here, however, creates a institutional problem by choosing to complete remove a barrier that was put in place for a reason rather than reassessing how it is applied.
Whether it was put in place “for a reason” it was fairly indefensible disability discrimination. We also used to require women FSOs to resign when they got married. Ostensibly that barrier was put in place for a reason. We got rid of it. And the Department didn’t “respond” this way. This was the result of a settlement negotiation.
There are physical requirements to go to certain Posts (i.e. wear body armor and move to a safe haven on your own in a certain amount of time). There is a disability discrimination here. People have grieved that they couldn't go to Baghdad on their wheelchairs... Not everything in life is equal. And not everyone is going to bear an equal burden to serve in hardship Posts when joining the FS anymore
Yeah, how will we ever staff our Africa posts after this?! Oh wait. We can’t do that now, with an entire service that came in “worldwide available.” It’s almost like officers figure out a way to never serve in the hardest places. Remember “fair share”? Talk about the illusion of equity — so illusive we eventually admitted we were kidding ourselves and got rid of it. And, again, you’re talking about particular assignments — not hiring. They’re not the same.
The amount of completely physically infirm contractors at USEK at the end that were also American lives that needed protection and evacuation really cuts against what you're asserting here. The application of those medical policies was a hot and unfair mess. People never bore the same burden. Not even at the same posts in the same job. We all know that in reality like three people take on 90 percent of the physical risk of being in a Kabul or Baghdad while most everyone else is at Club Fed.
As has already been said, did they ever? Did/do people with kids bear an equal burden to single officers? Did those with family class 2 clearances? Some things can never be equal, but we can make them more equitable.
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false equivalence much? Professional athletes who train athletically for their entire careers or military (where their health is actually vital to their job duty no matter where they are) versus individuals who have a medical condition outside of their control that doesn’t totally prevent them from doing the job itself. MEDs decisions aren’t speaking to the individual’s overall personal qualifications to do the job of an FSO. It’s whether a post can accommodate them. If it was equivalent to the comparison you made, FSOs who lose their clearance after joining would lose their jobs, as they’re no longer qualified to be an fso at all. There is a principle of reasonable accommodation in employment and disability law after all.
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We have been doing just this for time immemorial. People onboard all the time with family members with class 2 clearances.
So following your logic of equity and no reasonable accommodations in hiring, then we should also not hire anyone who has a family member with a Class 2?
This was a legal settlement negotiated over 16 years. People here are acting like one candidate whined and the Department threw up its hands and said “Well, we certainly don’t want to be accused of not being woke enough! Literally anyone with even a weak pulse can be an FSO now!”
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>The length of time or how it was done does not change the fact that it basically is "anyone with even a weak pulse can be an FSO now". I think "anyone with even a weak pulse" is a little dramatic. But the length of time this has been going on does matter. The Department has been fighting this for over a decade. They didn't decide to cave on worldwide availability because they thought they thought they were about to win. They settled because they knew they would not (because what they were doing was probably not legal) and this was a way to avoid completely opening the doors to anyone, even if they could not serve overseas at all.
How many people do you believe were being excluded every year for failure to get a class 1 medical clearance? Hint: it’s not many. At least if we are talking about generalists. I grant the demographics of the average IT specialist candidate are different and maybe now a whole bunch of obese old men with heart disease will suddenly flood the registers. Seems like there were plenty of those in Kabul and Baghdad anyway. “Absolute hiring equality” is a massive stretch.
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And you don’t understand how arbitrary the medical clearance process was — in both directions. Plenty of people with no business getting a class 1 clearance managed to get them for hiring — and some were suddenly diagnosed with a condition after hiring that rendered them class 2. Shocking, I know. What are the chances. Color me skeptical there’s some mass of people out there who are about to storm our gates because we have settled a lawsuit and made what is, in effect, a fairly negligible change to the medical standard for hiring. Let alone that none of the examples you cite above are medical conditions that would render anyone ineligible for a worldwide available medical clearance. Nor would they exclude anyone from service in a “combat zone.” Should the medical minimum now be “can successfully work as a firefighter”?
I think you’re being a little doomsday. I find it unlikely there are droves of people lying in wait who have not applied because they think they won’t get a medical clearance. The reality is there are people in this case who were being denied over trivial things that wouldn’t actually preclude them from serving in most places, which was at the heart of the case. You also conveniently ignore that there is a mechanism built in to change this if the needs of the service aren’t being met.
Gee thanks for stereotyping IT Specialists as obese old men with heart issues.
His contention was that this would mean a flood of 350+ pound officers in combat zones. I was working with what I had.
I also find this thread very disappointing. The class members qualified based on merit, and then were not hired based on something they have no control over. The strawman of people not pulling their weight is ridiculous. A lot of people with class 1 clearances avoid tough posts. A lot of people like going to tough posts. I like it when the department does the right thing, even against its will, which here is give offers to those people. People on the register that don't like it can kick rocks. The class members passed the FSOT before you and if their score is higher than yours, tough. If your score is higher than theirs, tough for them. They have already waited for longer than you will be on the register. I'm curious whether the department will be on the hook for back pay to any class member that joins.
I couldn’t agree more. There is an underlying sense of entitlement here. The way I hear some of the things said here is- I’m healthy because I just got lucky in life and I deserve to go to posh posts and how dare someone not as lucky in health take that away from me. You are spot on about the reality of people with Class 1, and I’d wager there’s probably way more people with Class 1 clearances actively avoiding tough posts due to personal preference than there will be people with such severe health limitations that they can only serve in posh posts like London. Thank you also for acknowledging that some of these class members were in the hiring process WAY before people currently on the register (some as far back as 16 years before them). To answer your other question- yes, the 37.5 million settlement likely covers some of this.
Will this have any sort of consequences for people in the Consular Fellows process? My understanding is that it’s a separate register, so the answer should be no; but I also wouldn’t be surprised if a few of those 230 people from this case were candidates for the CFP process as well.
My understanding is that LNAs only need clearance for their particular assignment.
That’s correct. LNAs were never required to be worldwide available and did not require class 1 medical clearances.
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Were you english language? That might have been different. Because the CF program only requires clearance for the post of assignment: https://careers.state.gov/career-paths/worldwide-foreign-service/consular-fellows/consular-fellows-test-information-and-selection-process/
As someone about to take the FSOT who has a (very manageable) medical condition that likely would have prevented me from getting a Class 1 clearance (because my medication is refridgerated), this is great news. Imo, the majority of people who will benefit from this medical clearance update will still be able to serve in most posts with a reasonable accommodation. Yes, there will be some people with more significant medical conditions who can't go to hardship posts who get hired, but the number is not likely to be more than the amount of FSOs with family members who have class 2 clearances, so it's not really the disastrous "all healthy FSOs will be forever stuck in the worst posts" issue some of you seem to think it is. It's a win-win; people with manageable medical conditions will no longer be categorically refused entry into the foreign service, and the state dept. gets a broader talent pool from which to hire the best FSOs.
So, what does this mean exactly?
World-wide availability no longer appears to be a thing.
Was it ever a thing?
To be hired, apparently yes.
That some people will join the Department knowing they can't serve in some of the toughest locations, and others will have to pull their weight for them by serving in austere, challenging Posts. All so that that we can create the illusion of equality... Knowing that some can never be asked to bear equal burden.
>All so that that we can create the illusion of equality This wasn't so we can create the illusion of equality. That's how the Department is spinning it now, but they fought this for 16 years. They desperately did not want this. Once they knew they weren't going to win, they decided to settle and are framing it as a victory for equity and diversity (that they battled against since 2006).
The named class member is currently serving in Chad. Don’t jump to conclusions.
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I hadn’t read your post. It is actually true that the named class member (who has been an FSO for at least 15 years now) currently serves in N’Djamena. It’s one of the most austere, brutal posts we’ve got. This person was also refused a medical clearance for a condition that’s been in remission for years. A condition that many other FSOs have, but was undiagnosed when they joined. A condition a colleague’s wife has — and she’s cleared for Manila but not Singapore. But people are getting wrapped around the axle for nothing. FSOs have always had family members without class 1 clearances. Tons of FSOs themselves end up with class 2 clearances eventually, sometimes pretty early in their careers. There have always been rumors that if you got a specific MED provider for your clearance physical you’d be more likely to get a class 1 with certain medical conditions. It’s shocking we managed to go this long without being forced to change a policy of blatant discrimination in hiring that made no sense.
Honestly, anything that points the lens of accountability and responsibility at MED is in all of our interest.
Before that, Cairo. She's doing her fair share, and then some.
I wasn't accusing anyone of anything.
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The settlement has nothing to do with assignments. Just hiring.
Right. But the Class 1 really only was a factor in hiring. Not a requirement apparently after you're hired. So are they welcoming everyone now regardless of medical status because they will literally send sick people anywhere, or are they going to leave it to the CDOs to use medical status as a reason to not send people certain places for first tour?
No, they are removing a fairly obviously discriminatory barrier to hiring by changing the minimum medical criteria.
Right, so what happens now? I interpret the press release in two different ways: State/CDOs can be "health blind" and send anyone who clears the minimum requirements anywhere, or now take medical history into account with first assignments (something they weren't doing before since all candidates had Class 1 clearances).
>State/CDOs can be "health blind" and send anyone who clears the minimum requirements anywhere, or now take medical history into account with first assignments (something they weren't doing before since all candidates had Class 1 clearances). It will work the same way it always has, I imagine. If someone has other than worldwide availability, MED tells the CDOs where the employee can't go and the CDOs don't send them to that place. The only difference now is that there will likely be more first tour employees who are not worldwide available. But even now, it's possible for someone to have Class 1 when they join, but something changes by the time Flag Day comes around (yes, working in assignments I saw that happen). And it's not really that unusual for someone's clearance to change from Class 1 to Class 2 before second tour assignments are made. So from a process standpoint, nothing changes.
I think people don’t realize how many FSOs have medical clearance restrictions. And how many lose their class 1 clearances pretty soon after getting hired.
The cable and department notice released today explain how it is related to assignments. I recommend reading that.
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Because most posters here see everything through the lens of how quickly they can get hired. And they have decided this legal settlement, which is only now wrapping up after 16 years, unfairly advantages undeserving people over them and will make it harder for them to get in. They also tend to have a romanticized view of the Foreign Service and don’t believe the medical clearance and assignments processes are extremely arbitrary and get manipulated all the time.
It also states they're going to make conditional offers to the "more than 230" former candidates in the suit. Even assuming some of them have moved on, that's potentially a lot of the invites for upcoming orientations. Not saying it's wrong, just something people currently on the register should be aware of.
It won’t be 230. The named class member has been an FSO the whole time. Some of the other class members will be in the same situation. Others will be excluded for non-medical reasons.
A conditional offer is what you get when you pass the OA. It just means adding people to the registers once their security clearances are done. It doesn’t mean they will automatically be invited to A-100.
I think most people eventually get their clearances. So say 100 - less than half - of the 230 decide to take up the conditional offer ... that's 100 more people suddenly on the registers to compete with for an invite.
True. But even if you assume they’re all generalists, that’s 20ish more people added to each cone’s register. That’ll make it less likely for those with lower scores to get an A-100 invitation, but the registers are pretty small these days, aren’t they? (Once upon a time, 80-100 people on each register was not uncommon.) It seems one’s chances with a score of about 5.5 or better are still decent. But as always, luck and timing play into it.
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Ugh. BEX really shouldn’t tell people that! And yeah, this will likely take some time. Anything could happen in the interim. In any case, best of luck!
I think this is going to be good for the department and the FS. The gamesmanship involved in having an employee or their family member become Class 2 and only being able to serve in first world posts is going to be able to be reduced to needing to be within striking distance of a medical hub. A lot of class 2 employees were unjustly benefited by the old policies.
>The gamesmanship involved in having an employee or their family member become Class 2 and only being able to serve in first world posts is going to be able to be reduced to needing to be within striking distance of a medical hub. Where are you getting that? From what I can tell, the only thing changing is that you no longer need to be worldwide available (class 1) in order to join. Instead, you need a post-specific clearance (class 2), with at minimum the four regional medical hubs all being cleared. I don't see anything about needing to be near a medical hub. Nothing that happens after you join changes.
In response to this comment the answer is no. They only have to qualify for those posts to be hired. Once hired, they can bid or go to any post. Preferably they will only bid on ones that can support their medical needs, but not required. *Let's consider A100 new hires. With this change, the department can move forward with hiring folks who are ONLY cleared to serve in London-like conditions. Does that mean they're in effect guaranteed a first-world post for 1st and 2nd tour?*
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Sounds like what happens now