The association for professional foreign service officials is planning on filing suit against the State Department if the department does not provide, by close of business tomorrow, the release of standard "Certificates of Demonstrated Competence" that State fills out for each Ambassadorial nominee.

This move has been in the works for a long time, an American Foreign Service Association spokesperson told ABC News, but finally came to a vote by the AFSA Governing Board this afternoon.

AFSA has submitted FOIA requests for these documents, which are customarily submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before nomination hearings, but those requests have not been fulfilled.

Certificates of Demonstrated Competence have been standard issue since the Foreign Service Act of 1980. An AFSA spokesperson said the association did not want to ask the Senate committee for the documents but rather get them from the source

If the State Department does not comply by close of business Thursday, AFSA is prepared to file suit, the spokesperson said.

This comes amidst a slate of less-than-stellar picks of political bundlers-turned-diplomats including George Tsunis, Noah Mamet and Colleen Bell, respective nominees for Norway, Argentina and Hungary.

Back in mid-February AFSA drafted a uniform set of qualifications for ambassador nominees, including a few that appeared to be a subtle dig at those political bundlers.

From the five-page guidelines: "The nominee has experience in or with the host country or other suitable international experience, and has knowledge of the host country culture and language or of other foreign cultures or languages. He or she has the ability to manage relations between the U.S. and the country or organization of assignment in order to advance U.S. interests, including the interests of U.S. commercial firms as well as individual U.S. citizens and nationals. The nominee skillfully interacts with different audiences - both public and private."

The bar was set pretty high for public rebukes of political appointees to cushy embassy jobs: it last happened in 1994, with late hotelier Larry Lawrence, then-President Clinton's pick for ambassador to Switzerland, who was at the time fighting a case over an IRS claim that he and his wife owed $76 million in back taxes.

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during Lawrence's nomination hearing, then-AFSA chairman Dennis Kux testified, "If the president were to name a real estate mogul to run an aircraft carrier or command an Army corps, he would be regarded as deranged," per a Chicago Tribune report.