Feliciano v. Department Of Transportation
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that federal civilian employees who serve as military reservists are entitled to 'differential pay' — a government top-up to keep their income from dropping when called to active duty — whenever their service overlaps in time with any declared national emergency, without having to show their specific duties were related to that emergency.
The decision makes the benefit easier to qualify for and could affect tens of thousands of reservists, since at least one national emergency has been in effect in the United States almost continuously for decades.
How it got here: The Merit Systems Protection Board denied Feliciano's differential-pay claim; the Federal Circuit affirmed; Feliciano asked the Supreme Court to step in and the Court agreed to hear the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Nick Feliciano worked as an air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration while also serving as a Coast Guard reserve petty officer. From 2012 to 2017 the Coast Guard called him to active duty, where he served on a ship escorting vessels in and out of harbor. Because his activation came under a statute not specifically listed in the differential-pay law, the government refused to make up the difference between his lower military wages and his higher civilian salary, arguing he had not proven his service was substantively tied to any particular declared national emergency.
The question before the Court
Do federal civilian employees who also serve as military reservists need to prove their active-duty service was directly tied to a specific national emergency to receive "differential pay," or is it enough that they served while any declared national emergency was ongoing?
The Court's answer
No — a reservist does not have to prove a substantive connection between his service and a particular national emergency. The Court held that the phrase "during a national emergency" requires only that the reservist's active-duty service happen at the same time as any declared national emergency, nothing more.
The majority grounded its ruling in the ordinary meaning of the word "during," which courts have long understood to signal a purely temporal relationship — contemporaneous with, not connected to. The majority also observed that Congress knows how to demand a substantive link when it wants one, using phrases like "during and in relation to" in other laws; the absence of any such extra words in this statute confirmed that timing is all that is required.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Federal civilian employees who serve as military reservists and take a pay cut when called to active duty can now qualify for wage top-up pay without proving their assignment directly supported a specific emergency. Because multiple national emergencies are almost always in effect, this ruling substantially broadens who can claim the benefit and may lead to back-pay claims from reservists who were previously denied it under the stricter standard.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the Federal Circuit to reconsider under the Supreme Court's rule that only a temporal overlap with a declared national emergency — not a substantive connection — is required. Feliciano will likely receive the differential pay he was denied. Other federal reservists previously turned away under the stricter "substantive connection" standard used by the Federal Circuit may now have grounds to pursue similar claims.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly declined to address how its expansive reading of "contingency operation" might affect dozens of other Title 10 provisions that use the term, including rules about military contracting exceptions and civilian court-martial jurisdiction. The majority said it offered "no views" on those downstream consequences.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“Reservists cannot benefit if they are called to serve merely while other, unrelated emergency responses are ongoing.”The dissent's core objection — that the majority's reading awards differential pay regardless of any link to actual emergency response.
Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Alito, Kagan, and Jackson, argued that the broader context of the statute — which defines a 'contingency operation' — requires that a reservist's service actually be part of the military's response to a national emergency, not merely occur while one is happening to be in effect somewhere. He stressed that national emergencies are almost permanently in existence, so the majority's purely temporal reading effectively transforms every military activation into a qualifying 'contingency operation,' draining that term of meaning and making Congress's list of enumerated statutes superfluous. Thomas would have vacated and remanded so the Federal Circuit could assess whether Feliciano's own orders — which referenced the post-September 11 emergency — showed the necessary connection.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court started with the word 'during,' which it said ordinarily 'denotes a temporal link' and means 'contemporaneous with,' relying on its earlier ruling in United States v. Ressam (2008). Under that ordinary meaning, a reservist called to active duty 'during a national emergency' need only serve while an emergency is ongoing — no further connection required.
- The Court looked at how Congress writes laws when it wants both a time requirement and a substantive connection. In other statutes, Congress uses explicit phrases like 'during and in relation to' or 'during and because of.' The complete absence of any such relational language in this statute was a strong signal that Congress intended only a timing condition here.
- The Court examined a neighboring triggering provision, 10 U.S.C. §12302, which authorizes calling up reservists '[i]n time of national emergency.' The government itself argued that phrase is purely temporal, requiring no substantive tie. The Court found it implausible that nearly identical language in the same statutory scheme — 'during a national emergency' — would carry a harder-to-satisfy substantive requirement that the neighboring phrase does not.
- The Court rejected the government's 'surplusage' argument — the claim that a temporal-only reading would be meaningless because a national emergency is always in effect. The Court countered that temporal language still performs real work (denying differential pay if no emergency exists), that Congress could in theory end all emergencies as it did in 1976, and that reading the statute as the government suggested would itself make superfluous other temporal-language statutes the government agrees need no substantive connection.
- The Court also noted that requiring a substantive connection would create serious practical problems: the statute provides no principled way to decide what degree of connection is enough, the government and the Federal Circuit had proposed different standards, and the government's reading would potentially criminalize differential pay given by private employers who had no way to know a substantive connection was required.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms United States v. Ressam (553 U. S. 272)
Confirmed that 'during' ordinarily denotes only a temporal link, not a substantive connection, supporting the majority's reading.