US Supreme Court says federal workers on military leave owed full salary

By Daniel Wiessner

April 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday said federal civilian employees are entitled to their full salaries while on military leave during a national emergency, regardless of whether their duty is directly related to that emergency.

The court in a 5-4 ruling penned by Justice Neil Gorsuch rejected the government's claim that military reservists are only entitled to a bump in pay when their duty is substantially connected to a specific emergency.

The court revived claims by air traffic controller Nick Feliciano that the Federal Aviation Administration should have given him his full pay during a two-year period more than a decade ago when he was serving as a Coast Guard reservist.

Federal law requires that federal employees be paid the difference between their military and civilian salaries — known as differential pay — when they are called to service "during a national emergency."

The court said that phrase by its plain meaning applies to someone like Feliciano, who served during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but was not directly involved in those conflicts.

"A reservist's active-duty service during a national emergency bolsters the government’s capacity to address that emergency; his work on everyday matters may free up others to handle emergent ones," Gorsuch wrote.

And marking an unusual alliance, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, members of the court's liberal wing, in dissent.

Thomas wrote that the United States has had at least one national emergency in effect at all times since 1933, with the exception of a one-year period in the 1970s, so the majority's ruling means that federal workers are virtually always entitled to differential pay.

The U.S. Department of Justice and lawyers for Feliciano did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Feliciano escorted military vessels in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor, and was called into service during national emergencies tied to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A federal civil service board and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said that because Feliciano's duty had no direct connection to a national emergency, he was not serving "during" a national emergency and was not owed differential pay.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed. Gorsuch said that Congress did not establish any way to determine whether reservists' duty is related to a national emergency, suggesting that it does not affect whether they are eligible for differential pay.

And in response to Thomas, Gorsuch said it was possible that at some point in the future there could be no national emergencies in effect.

"It is unclear why we should overlook the most natural linguistic interpretation of this statute’s terms based on an assumption that prevailing factual conditions will never change," he wrote.

Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The court sent the case back to the Federal Circuit for further proceedings.

The case is Feliciano v. Department of Transportation, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 23-861.

For Feliciano: Andrew Tutt of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer

For DOT: Nicole Reaves of the U.S. Department of Justice

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US Supreme Court weighs proper pay for federal workers on military leave