My experience is within the private sector.  Perhaps a bit different, but we always had a PR submitted by Employee and this was stacked up to your Manager / Director PR.  Both were used in a collaborative process to then complete your PR.  You can "agree to disagree". This is signed" PR stays in your personnel file (you retain copies of both) to protect all parties.  If there was a dispute, our company had a process where your appeal could be forwarded to the BOD (upon your request).  It would be assigned to a BOD member.  This was to insure that the dispute was handled appropriately.  If this fails and is warranted you may be able to file complaint with the EEOC or even the ACLU next steps would be to secure legal counsel.  Just saying...