Feliciano v. Department Of Transportation
605 U. S. ____ (2025) (2025)
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Rule of Law:
A federal civilian employee serving as a military reservist who is called to active duty under the catchall provision of 10 U.S.C. § 101(a)(13)(B) is entitled to differential pay if their service merely coincides in time with a declared national emergency; the reservist does not need to show a substantive connection between their service and the emergency.
Facts:
- Nick Feliciano was employed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as an air traffic controller.
- Concurrently, Feliciano served as a reserve petty officer in the United States Coast Guard.
- In July 2012, the Coast Guard ordered Feliciano to active duty under 10 U.S.C. § 12301(d), which authorizes activation with the reservist's consent.
- Feliciano remained on active duty for most of the period until February 2017.
- His military orders stated he was called to serve 'in support of' contingency operations, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
- During his service, Feliciano worked aboard a Coast Guard ship escorting vessels to and from harbor.
- The government did not provide Feliciano with differential pay to make up the difference between his lower military salary and his higher civilian salary during this period of active duty.
- Throughout Feliciano's active-duty service, one or more national emergencies declared by the President or Congress were continuously in effect.
Procedural Posture:
- Nick Feliciano sought relief from the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the court of first instance for this type of claim, arguing the FAA unlawfully denied him differential pay.
- The MSPB rejected Feliciano's claims.
- Feliciano, as appellant, appealed the MSPB's decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, an intermediate appellate court.
- The Federal Circuit affirmed the MSPB's decision, holding that Feliciano had failed to show the required 'substantive connection' between his service and a national emergency.
- The United States Supreme Court, the highest court, granted Feliciano's petition for a writ of certiorari to review the judgment of the Federal Circuit.
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Issue:
Does the phrase 'during a national emergency' in 10 U.S.C. § 101(a)(13)(B) require a federal civilian employee serving as a military reservist to prove a substantive connection between their active-duty service and a particular national emergency to qualify for differential pay under 5 U.S.C. § 5538?
Opinions:
Majority - Gorsuch, J.
No. A federal civilian employee called to active duty 'during a national emergency' under the catchall provision of 10 U.S.C. § 101(a)(13)(B) is entitled to differential pay if the service temporally coincides with a declared national emergency, without any showing that the service bears a substantive connection to that emergency. The ordinary meaning of the word 'during' denotes a temporal link, meaning 'contemporaneous with,' and does not generally imply a substantive connection. This interpretation is supported by contextual clues; when Congress intends to require a substantive connection, it does so expressly with phrases like 'during and in relation to.' Furthermore, requiring a substantive connection would create interpretive difficulties, as the statute provides no principled way to determine what kind of connection would suffice. The government's argument that a temporal reading renders the phrase superfluous due to the perpetual existence of national emergencies is unpersuasive because it relies on a contingent factual assumption that prevailing conditions will never change.
Dissenting - Thomas, J.
Yes. A reservist is called to serve 'during a national emergency' for the purposes of differential pay only if their service is substantively connected to an operation responding to that national emergency. The meaning of 'during' depends on context, and here the context is the definition of a 'contingency operation,' a term that inherently implies an exigent circumstance. A purely temporal reading would make nearly all military operations 'contingency operations' due to the perpetual state of declared national emergencies, rendering the specific list of triggering statutes in the law superfluous. This broad interpretation would also have unintended ripple effects on dozens of other statutes that use the term 'contingency operation.' Post-enactment amendments by Congress would have been unnecessary if the temporal catchall already covered those situations, further indicating Congress intended the phrase to have a limiting, substantive meaning.
Analysis:
This decision significantly clarifies and likely expands the eligibility for differential pay for tens of thousands of federal civilian employees who are also military reservists. By adopting a strict textualist interpretation of 'during,' the Court rejected the judicial creation of a 'substantive connection' test where Congress had not legislated one. This ruling places the burden on Congress to amend the statute if it desires a more restrictive standard for differential pay. The decision will likely reduce litigation over eligibility by simplifying the inquiry to a purely temporal question, but it also validates the dissent's concern that, in an era of perpetual emergencies, the statutory condition may have little practical limiting effect.
