# Department of the Navy v. Egan **484 U.S. 518 (1988).** The controlling Supreme Court decision on judicial and administrative review of security clearance decisions, and the ceiling over every grant, denial and revocation in the federal system. ## Holding The grant of a security clearance is a sensitive and inherently discretionary judgment call committed by law to the appropriate agency of the executive branch. Absent a specific grant of authority from Congress, an outside non-expert body — in that case the Merit Systems Protection Board, reviewing the removal of a laborer at the Trident refit facility whose clearance had been denied — **may not review the merits** of the underlying clearance determination. ## What it is routinely read to mean, and what it does not say The decision is cited for the broad proposition that clearance actions are unreviewable. It is narrower than that. *Egan* addresses review of the **merits** by a non-expert body. It does not hold that the procedures owed in a revocation are unreviewable, that constitutional claims are foreclosed, or that Congress could not legislate a right of review — the opinion expressly conditions its holding on the absence of such a grant. The practical consequence is that revocation functions as an instrument requiring no cause a court will examine, which is what makes it available for purposes unrelated to the information it nominally protects. The live litigation in 2025–26 therefore attacks **motive and procedure** rather than merits. ## See also - [[How a Security Clearance Is Granted and Revoked]] - [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] - [[Intelligence Community Tree]] ---