Boards for Correction of Military Records

The Boards for Correction of Military Records are the highest administrative remedy within a military department: the Secretary's own board, empowered under 10 U.S.C. § 1552 to correct any error or remove any injustice in a service member's record. There is one per department: the ABCMR (Army), the BCNR (Navy and Marine Corps), the AFBCMR (Air Force and Space Force), and the Coast Guard BCMR. Their jurisdiction is remarkably broad, covering discharge upgrades (including the court-martial discharges the DRBs cannot reach), adverse evaluation reports, removal of GOMORs and Letters of Reprimand, corrections of rank and date of rank, retirement-point audits for Reserve and Guard service, promotion restorations, medical retirement corrections, reenlistment code changes, and Survivor Benefit Plan election corrections. Petitions are filed on a DD Form 149 (or DHS Form 4640 for the Coast Guard) within three years of discovering the error, though that time bar is routinely waived in the interest of justice. The proceeding is almost entirely a paper record; the brief is the case. Advisory opinions from the service are common, the petitioner carries the burden of overcoming a presumption that official records are correct, and if the board denies relief, the next stop is federal court under the Administrative Procedure Act, where a highly deferential standard of review makes the BCMR the last real opportunity to fix the record.

BCMR petitions are built the way federal court briefs are built: investigating the underlying facts, developing a full documentary record, and drafting a legal brief that anticipates and closes off likely service objections. When the service issues an adverse advisory opinion, we rebut it. When the board denies relief, we handle reconsideration and, where warranted, federal court review under the APA.