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Don’t Let a Loss of Jurisdiction Sink Your Security-Cleared Career
A loss of jurisdiction in the security clearance adjudication process can be a major red flag for employers and potential sponsors for a security clearance.
According to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), a loss of jurisdiction is a designation reflected in the Defense Information System for Security (DISS) that is placed on an individual’s eligibility for access to classified information when they have lost affiliation with the Department of Defense as a military member, federal employee, or employee with a cleared government contractor.
In more simplistic terms, if you lose sponsorship for your clearance, whether through voluntary or involuntary separation, the Consolidated Adjudication Services are no longer able to make an eligibility determination on your security clearance.
Typically, a loss of jurisdiction occurs when there is something that needs to be adjudicated, such as a pending Statement of Reasons or an incident report placed in DISS, and a separation of sponsorship occurs before those issues can be adjudicated. Since the loss of sponsorship indicates that you no longer require a security clearance, DCSA Consolidated Adjudication Services would no longer have jurisdiction to make an eligibility determination on a person’s security clearance (i.e., DCSA “lost jurisdiction” to make a determination because you don’t have a need for a security clearance).
This is commonly referred to as a “flag” or “red flag” in your DISS to potential employers due to the unresolved nature of the potential security concerns that notifies a potential employer that there could be delays in you obtaining security clearance eligibility. These “flags” can make it difficult to obtain employment in the future unless the loss of jurisdiction is resolved.
The most common way to “resolve” a loss of jurisdiction is to obtain new sponsorship and for the security manager or facility security officer to submit a Customer Service Request (CSR) in DISS for a new action to request adjudication of a person’s security clearance eligibility. This can occur once they have taken over sponsorship of that person’s security clearance. Essentially, once you obtain sponsorship for your security clearance, your new organization can notify DOD to continue or begin a new adjudication of your security clearance.
Another, more complicated way to “resolve” a loss of jurisdiction is to file a Request to Amend one’s DISS records sent directly to DISS in the event there is any false and/or derogatory information in your record. You will still need to obtain sponsorship for your security clearance in order to actively use it, however, this would resolve any pending incident reports contained in your file and thus make it significantly easier to obtain sponsorship by removing the “flag” in your DISS that employers typically shy away from.
This is a complicated way to resolve a loss of jurisdiction, as DCSA will only remove an incident report if it can be unequivocally proven through sufficient and solid evidence that the information contained in the incident report is false or incorrect. Absent this specific evidence, DCSA will not remove the incident report.
The resolution of a loss of jurisdiction process can be complicated, especially if you have not taken the necessary steps to mitigate the concerns that previously caused your clearance to be flagged via an incident report and/or statement of reasons. If you are unable to properly navigate this process, then you face further delays in the adjudication of your security clearance and potential future career.
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Great article. Some additional information on this very topic from a clearance holder like me. Not sure what happened but I lost all of my clearance information in DISS (used to be JPAS). My TS, the SCI and the CI Poly all showed I had not had a position/job that held my clearance in over two years, which wasnt the case. I was out of work for personal reasons for 2-3 months. After DCSA dug around, they found my TS and the CI Poly portion but because I had been out for a few months, my SCI pulled up as “pending”. This was Oct 2023. In Dec 2023, there was an adjudication, but I didn’t have a company to sponsor me at that time. Now, Feb 27th, 2024, companies who are looking to hire me have their FSO’s go into DISS and they see the missing SCI, so they pass me up on the opportunity. I believe these FSO’s are used to seeing SCI’s as active and don’t realize they can go in and process the SCI if I am to be hired. I am still trying to figure all this out but have learned a lot in this process.