Supreme Court Decides Feliciano v. Department of Transportation

On April 30, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Feliciano v. Department of Transportation, No. 23-861, holding that federally employed military reservists called to active duty during wartime or a national emergency are entitled to differential pay compensation for the difference between their civilian pay and their military pay even if their duty is not directly connected to that national emergency.

A federal statute, 5 U. S. C. § 5538(a) requires the government to provide differential pay to a federal civilian employee reservist when the military orders him or her to active-duty service “under . . . a provision of law referred to in section 101(a)(13)(B) of title 10” of the U.S. Code. Section 101(a)(13)(B), in turn, forms part of the definition of the phrase “contingency operation.” A contingency operation, that statute says, includes a “military operation that . . . results in the call or order to . . . active duty of members of the uniformed services . . . during a war or during a national emergency declared by the President or Congress.”

Petitioner Nick Feliciano, an air traffic controller with the Federal Aviation Administration, also served as a reserve petty officer in the United States Coast Guard. In July 2012, the Coast Guard ordered him to active-duty service, and he largely remained on active duty until February 2017. His orders noted that he was called to active duty to serve “in support of” several “contingency operation[s],” including Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Throughout his active-duty service, Mr. Feliciano served on board a Coast Guard ship escorting other vessels in and around Charleston, South Carolina. The Federal Aviation Administration did not afford Mr. Feliciano differential pay, which led him to seek relief from the Merit Systems Protection Board. After the Board rejected his claims, Mr. Feliciano appealed to the Federal Circuit, claiming that because his orders came during a national emergency, he was entitled to differential pay. The Federal Circuit disagreed, reasoning that a reservist is required to show a “substantial connection” between his service and the national emergency at issue, which Mr. Feliciano did not do.

The Supreme Court reversed, holding that federally employed military reservists called to active duty during wartime or a national emergency are entitled to differential pay, regardless of their specific role. Writing for the Court, Justice Gorsuch explained that the dispute turned on the meaning of the phrase “during a national emergency.” The word “during,” the Court reasoned, normally “denotes a temporal link” and means “contemporaneous with,” and does not generally imply any “substantive connection.” Absent evidence that Congress intended a specialized meaning, the Court was required to rely on its ordinary meaning and not engraft onto the statute “hidden messages.” The Court bolstered its analysis by observing that when Congress intends to require both temporal and substantive connections, it has done so expressly, using phrases like “during and in relation to” or “during and because of” in various statutes. The absence of that language in the relevant statutes, the Court said, was telling.

Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Alito, Kagan, and Jackson joined.