Supreme Court Delivers Big Win for Military Reservist in Pay Dispute

A Coast Guard reservist who is also a federal employee was entitled to differential pay while on active duty, the Supreme Court has ruled.

In a 5-4 decision, the nation’s highest court rejected the Justice Department’s argument that a federal law calling for differential pay should be applied more narrowly.

The ruling applies to tens of thousands of federal civilian employees who also serve as military reservists.

Pay Dispute Leads to Supreme Court Ruling

Nick Feliciano began working as an air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration in 2005. He also served as a Coast Guard reserve petty officer.

Feliciano began serving on active duty in July of 2012, and he remained on active duty until February of 2017.

During his period of active service, he served on a ship that escorted vessels to and from harbor during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Feliciano’s pay rate for his air traffic controller job was higher than the pay grade that applied while he served on active duty.

He believed that an applicable federal statute entitled him to receive differential pay that would make up the monetary shortfall created by his deployment.

The statute essentially says that federal civilian employee reservists who are called to active duty during a national emergency are entitled to differential pay.

Federal Appeals Court Denies Differential Pay

A federal appeals court ruled against Feliciano, finding he was not entitled to the differential pay he sought. That court said it was not enough for Feliciano to show that he served during a national emergency. Instead, the court ruled that he also needed to show that there was a “substantive connection” linking his service to a particular national emergency. It ruled that Feliciano was not entitled to differential pay because he did not make that required showing.

 The case then reached the U.S. Supreme Court for further review. In essence, the high court was asked to clarify what is meant by “during a national emergency” under the federal differential pay statute.

What Does ‘During a National Emergency’ Mean?

As the Supreme Court put it, the issue was whether the statute guarantees active-duty reservists the extra pay as long as there is an ongoing national emergency – or whether it requires the service to have some sort of “substantive connection” to the emergency.

Diving into the specific meaning of the key phrase at issue – “during a national emergency” – the majority decision began by saying that the word “during” means “contemporaneous with.”  The word “does not generally imply a substantive connection,” it said.

The majority acknowledged that when writing statutes, Congress sometimes gives particular words or phrases special meaning. But that did not happen here, it said. Moreover, it added, Congress usually makes it very clear when it does want a particular word or phrase to have a special meaning.

Feliciano’s offered interpretation of the law is more consistent with the statutory language, the majority decided.

The government’s contrary interpretation of the statute was too limited in its scope, the majority found.

There is also no clear way to determine what kind of “substantive connection” would be sufficient to establish entitlement to differential pay, the majority added. “[T]he statute supplied no principled way for us to resolve what that connection might be,” it said.

What Would Joe Citizen Say?

An ordinary American looking at the statute would be unlikely to say that entitlement to the differential pay depends on whether there is a “substantive connection” to a particular national emergency, the majority ruled.

A dissenting opinion in the case pointed out that the word “during” can sometimes imply more than just a temporal connection, and it argued that the phrase “during a national emergency” necessarily requires more than a temporal overlap. It noted that there are currently dozens of declared national emergencies, including some that have existed for years. But that fact does not change what the statute says, the majority found.

The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the court below, and it remanded the case for further proceedings.

The ruling is great news for a limited class of people: federal civilian employees who also serve as military reservists.

Feliciano v. Dep’t of Transportation, No. 23-681 (U.S. 4/30/25).