diff --git a/.gitea/scripts/sop-tier-check.sh b/.gitea/scripts/sop-tier-check.sh
index d1bd2c235..7063ee3fb 100755
--- a/.gitea/scripts/sop-tier-check.sh
+++ b/.gitea/scripts/sop-tier-check.sh
@@ -363,6 +363,10 @@ _passed_clauses=""
 _failed_clauses=""
 
 for _raw_clause in $EXPR; do
+  # Skip operator tokens produced by bash word-splitting on spaces.
+  # The expression "managers AND engineers" splits into three tokens;
+  # without this guard "AND" is evaluated as a literal team name.
+  [ "$_raw_clause" = "AND" ] || [ "$_raw_clause" = "OR" ] && continue
   # Normalise: strip parens, replace commas with spaces so bash word-split
   # can iterate the OR-set members. The previous form
   #   _clause=$(echo ... | tr ',' '\n' | tr -d '[:space:]' | grep -v '^$')