Issuing a GOMOR — Filing Determination, Due Process

// 01The regulation, verbatim

unfavorable information will be shared with the recipient for acknowledgment of his or her rebuttal opportunity, prior to filing. Recipients will be provided 7 calendar days (active duty Soldiers (all components) or USAR Soldiers in Troop Program Units (TPUs)), or 30 calendar days (Army National Guard/Reserve Soldiers not on active duty) to make a statement, or to decline, in writing, to make such a statement.

AR 600-37 ¶3-7a-b, p.6

The statement may include evidence that rebuts, explains, or mitigates the unfavorable information

AR 600-37 ¶3-7a-b, p.6

There are only two filing options: filing in the performance portion of the AMHRR, or local filing. Commanders do not have the option to file memoranda in the restricted portion.

AR 600-37 ¶3-5a, p.5

the memorandum can then be directed for filing

AR 600-37 ¶3-7c, p.6

// 02What this means in practice

Here is what you need to internalize before you ever sign a memorandum of reprimand, admonition, or censure: the regulation never actually uses the word "GOMOR." You'll hear that term everywhere in the field, but AR 600-37 calls it a "memorandum of reprimand, admonition, or censure," and that's worth knowing because it tells you this instrument covers a wider range of unfavorable information than the slang suggests. What matters more, though, is the sequence the regulation requires — because the sequence is where these actions get overturned, not the underlying misconduct.

You do not get to write the memo, sign it, and file it. Before any filing determination, the regulation requires that "unfavorable information will be shared with the recipient for acknowledgment of his or her rebuttal opportunity, prior to filing." That's not a courtesy step you can compress when you're busy. It's the mechanism that makes the eventual filing determination defensible. Skip it, rush it, or paper over it, and you haven't just cut a corner — you've built a memo that a review authority or the DASEB can knock down later without ever touching the merits of what the Soldier did.

The timeline is specific, and you need to get it right by component, not by habit. Active duty Soldiers, and USAR Soldiers in Troop Program Units, get 7 calendar days to respond. Army National Guard and Reserve Soldiers not on active duty get 30 calendar days. Notice what that means practically: if you're commanding in a mixed formation — and most of you are, at some point, dealing with TPU Soldiers, IMA augmentees, or ARNG Soldiers on orders — you cannot run one clock for everybody. Check the Soldier's status before you calculate the suspense date. Miss that distinction and you've shortchanged someone's due process before you've even gotten to the substance of the reprimand.

What can the Soldier actually put in that response? The regulation's language here is precise, and it is NOT the same language you'll see in an Article 15 packet, so don't cross-contaminate your own vocabulary when you're advising a Soldier or a trial defense counsel is watching you closely. AR 600-37 says the statement "may include evidence that rebuts, explains, or mitigates the unfavorable information." Rebuts, explains, or mitigates. That's the standard. It is broader than a simple denial — a Soldier can concede the underlying facts and still explain the circumstances, or mitigate by showing context, performance history, or corrective action already taken. Your job during this window is not to referee what's persuasive. Your job is to make sure the opportunity was real: that the Soldier saw the actual unfavorable information, understood the rebuttal window, and had a fair chance to use it.

Now, filing. This is where new commanders most often assume there's a third door, and there isn't. AR 600-37 is unambiguous: "There are only two filing options: filing in the performance portion of the AMHRR, or local filing. Commanders do not have the option to file memoranda in the restricted portion." Read that twice if you need to. If you've been thinking of the restricted portion as a middle-ground option — something less severe than performance-portion filing but still "on the record" — that option does not exist for this instrument. You are choosing between the performance portion, which travels with the Soldier's career record and boards will see, or local filing, which stays at the local level with a cap of 18 months. There is no quieter third bucket. Plan your recommendation accordingly, and don't let a well-meaning staff officer talk you into believing otherwise.

When the rebuttal statement comes back — or doesn't — it has to actually inform your filing determination, not just sit in the packet as proof you followed a checklist. The regulation requires that rebuttal statements be "reviewed and considered by the officer authorized to direct filing... before a final determination is made to file the memorandum." That's you, or whoever holds that filing authority in your command. You have to read it. You have to weigh it. The filing determination has to happen after that consideration, not in parallel with it and not before it.

And if the Soldier simply doesn't respond? You are not stuck. The regulation anticipates this directly: if the recipient refuses to acknowledge, the reprimanding official documents the refusal, and "the memorandum can then be directed for filing." Silence or refusal does not freeze the process — it just means you (or whoever is documenting the acknowledgment) note that the Soldier was given the opportunity and declined it, and then filing proceeds on that basis. Document the refusal itself carefully; that documentation is what protects the filing determination later if anyone asks whether the Soldier's rights were honored.

One more piece you need to hold in your head as distinct from everything above: the DASEB appeal process. That's governed separately, later in the regulation, and it applies to memoranda that have already been filed — a Soldier petitioning to have a filed memo removed or transferred after the fact. Do not confuse this with the pre-filing rebuttal window you're responsible for right now. They are sequential, separate processes with separate standards, and conflating them in your own head — or worse, in your counseling of the Soldier — will lead you to give bad advice at exactly the moment the Soldier needs accurate information most.

The throughline across all of this: your reprimand's legal durability isn't decided by how well-written the memo is. It's decided by whether you can show, cleanly, that you gave the Soldier the correct window, let them use the correct standard, actually considered what came back, and then chose from the only two filing options that exist. Get that sequence right and the memo holds. Get it wrong and you've handed the Soldier's counsel their argument for free.

// 03What most get wrong

The mistake that sinks more GOMORs than any substantive dispute over the underlying misconduct is a due-process shortcut in the rebuttal window — usually one of two flavors. First: commanders run the wrong clock. They default to 7 days out of habit without confirming the Soldier's component status, then apply that suspense to an ARNG or non-TPU Reserve Soldier who was actually entitled to 30 calendar days. When that gets caught — by a review authority, a defense counsel, or the DASEB later — the filing determination is vulnerable regardless of how justified the reprimand was on the merits.

Second, and just as common: the commander treats the rebuttal statement as a formality to be collected and filed, not something to actually read and weigh before deciding where the memo goes. AR 600-37 requires the statement be "reviewed and considered... before a final determination is made to file the memorandum." If your filing decision was effectively made before the statement arrived — because you'd already told your XO "performance portion, no matter what" — you've created a sequencing problem that undermines the whole action.

The corrective takeaway: before you start the rebuttal clock, confirm the Soldier's exact component status and calculate the correct suspense date in writing. Then hold your filing determination open, genuinely open, until you've read whatever comes back — or documented a refusal — and only then decide performance portion versus local filing.

// 04Regulations cited in this lesson

• AR 600-37 ¶3-7a-b, p.6
• AR 600-37 ¶3-5a, p.5
• AR 600-37 ¶3-7c, p.6

// 05More in Adverse Actions for New Commanders & 1SGs

• Initiating a Flag Correctly
• Article 15 from the Commander's Chair
• AR 15-6 Investigations — When You Need One
• Relief for Cause — the AR 15-6 Prerequisite
• Writing Memos That Hold Up
• QMP/QSP Awareness

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