Justia U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

The case involves a dispute over the interpretation of the Montgomery GI Bill and the Post-9/11 GI Bill, both of which provide educational benefits to veterans. The petitioner, James Rudisill, served in the U.S. Army for nearly eight years over three separate periods, earning entitlements under both bills. He used a portion of his Montgomery benefits for his undergraduate degree and sought to use his Post-9/11 benefits for divinity school. However, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) limited his Post-9/11 benefits to the duration of his unused Montgomery benefits, arguing that by requesting Post-9/11 benefits before exhausting all of his Montgomery benefits, Rudisill could receive only 36 months of benefits in total, not the 48 months to which he would otherwise be entitled.The Board of Veterans’ Appeals affirmed the VA’s decision, but the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims reversed. The Federal Circuit, however, reversed the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, holding that veterans with multiple periods of qualifying service are subject to a limit on the duration of their benefits.The Supreme Court of the United States reversed the judgment of the Federal Circuit. The Court held that veterans who separately accrue benefits under both the Montgomery and Post-9/11 GI Bills are entitled to both benefits. Neither the Montgomery GI Bill nor the Post-9/11 GI Bill restricts veterans with two separate entitlements who simply seek to use either one. Thus, Rudisill may use his benefits, in any order, up to a 48-month aggregate-benefits cap. The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. View "Rudisill v. McDonough" on Justia Law

The Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS) provides for collective bargaining between federal agencies and their employees’ unions and establishes the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to investigate and adjudicate labor disputes, 5 U.S.C. 7101. The Union represents federal civil-service employees (dual-status technicians) who work for the Ohio National Guard. After their prior collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) expired, the Guard, the Ohio Adjutant General, and the Ohio Adjutant General’s Department (petitioners) asserted that they were not bound by the FSLMRS. The Union filed a complaint with the FLRA. An ALJ concluded that the FLRA had jurisdiction over the Guard; the dual-status technicians had collective bargaining rights under the FSLMRS; and repudiating the CBA violated the FSLMRS. The Sixth Circuit upheld the decision.The Supreme Court affirmed. A State National Guard acts as a federal agency for purposes of the FSLMRS when it hires and supervises dual-status technicians serving in their civilian roles. When the Guard employs dual-status technicians, it exercises the authority of the Department of Defense, an agency covered by the FSLMRS. The statutory authority permitting the Ohio Adjutant General to employ dual-status technicians as civilian employees in the federal civil service is found in 5 U.S.C. 2105(a)(1)(F). Dual-status technicians are ultimately employees of the Secretaries of the Army and the Air Force, and the petitioners are the Secretaries’ designees for purposes of dual-status technician employment. View "Ohio Adjutant General's Department v. Federal Labor Relations Authority" on Justia Law

Approximately 30 years after Arellano’s honorable discharge from the Navy, a VA regional office granted Arellano service-connected disability benefits for his psychiatric disorders. Applying the default rule in 38 U.S.C. 5110(a)(1), the VA assigned an effective date of June 3, 2011—the day that it received Arellano's claim—to the award. Arellano argued that the effective date should be governed by an exception in section 5110(b)(1), which makes the effective date the day following the date of the veteran’s discharge or release if the application “is received within one year from such date of discharge or release.” Alleging that he had been too ill to know that he could apply for benefits, Arellano maintained that this exception’s one-year grace period should be equitably tolled to make his award effective the day after his 1981 discharge.The Board of Veterans’ Appeals, Veterans Court, Federal Circuit, and Supreme Court disagreed. Section 5110(b)(1) is not subject to equitable tolling. Equitably tolling one of the limited exceptions would depart from the terms that Congress “specifically provided.” The exceptions do not operate simply as time constraints, but also as substantive limitations on the amount of recovery due. Congress has already considered equitable concerns and limited the relief available, aware of the possibility that disability could delay an application for benefits. View "Arellano v. McDonough" on Justia Law

Enacted pursuant to Article I of the Constitution, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), gives returning service members the right to reclaim their prior jobs with state employers and authorizes suit if those employers refuse to accommodate veterans’ service-related disabilities, 38 U.S.C. 4301. Torres, a state trooper, was called to active duty in the Army Reserves and deployed to Iraq, where he was exposed to toxic burn pits. Torres, honorably discharged, returned home with constrictive bronchitis. Torres asked his former employer to accommodate his condition by re-employing him in a different role. Texas refused. A state court held that his USERRA claims should be dismissed based on sovereign immunity.The Supreme Court reversed. By ratifying the Constitution, the states agreed their sovereignty would yield to the national power to raise and support the Armed Forces. Congress may exercise this power to authorize private damages suits against nonconsenting states, as in USERRA.The test for whether the structure of the original Constitution itself reflects a waiver of states’ immunity is whether the federal power is “complete in itself, and the states consented to the exercise of that power—in its entirety—in the plan of the Convention.” Congress’ power to build and maintain the Armed Forces fits that test. Congress has long legislated regarding military forces at the expense of state sovereignty. USERRA expressly “supersedes any State law . . . that reduces, limits, or eliminates in any manner any right or benefit provided by this chapter, including the establishment of additional prerequisites to the exercise of any such right or the receipt of any such benefit.” View "Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety" on Justia Law

George joined the Marine Corps in 1975 without disclosing his history of schizophrenic episodes. His medical examination noted no mental disorders. George suffered an episode during training. The Marines medically discharged him. George applied for veterans’ disability benefits based on his schizophrenia, 38 U.S.C. 1110. The Board of Veterans’ Appeals denied his appeal from a regional office denial in 1977. In 2014, George asked the Board to revise its final decision. When the VA denies a benefits claim, that decision generally becomes “final and conclusive” after the veteran exhausts the opportunity for direct appeal. George sought collateral review under an exception allowing revision of a final benefits decision at any time on grounds of “clear and unmistakable error,” 38 U.S.C. 5109A, 7111. He claimed that the Board applied a later-invalidated regulation to deny his claim without requiring the VA to rebut the statutory presumption that he was in sound condition when he entered service.The Veterans Court, Federal Circuit, and Supreme Court affirmed the denial of relief. The invalidation of a VA regulation after a veteran’s benefits decision becomes final cannot support a claim for collateral relief based on clear and unmistakable error. Congress adopted the “clear and unmistakable error doctrine” developed under decades of prior agency practice. The invalidation of a prior regulation constitutes a “change in interpretation of law” under historical agency practice, not “clear and unmistakable error.” That approach is consistent with the general rule that the new interpretation of a statute can only retroactively affect decisions still open on direct review. The fact that Congress did not expressly enact the specific regulatory principle barring collateral relief for subsequent changes in interpretation does not mean that the principle did not carry over. View "George v. McDonough" on Justia Law

Social Security retirement benefits are calculated using a formula based on past earnings, 42 U.S.C. 415(a)(1)(A). Under the “windfall elimination” provision, benefits are reduced when a retiree receives a separate pension payment based on employment not subject to Social Security taxes. Pension payments exempt from the windfall reduction include those "based wholly on service as a member of a uniformed service.”A “military technician (dual status),” 10 U.S.C. 10216, is a “civilian employee” assisting the National Guard. Such technicians are required to maintain National Guard membership and must wear uniforms while working. For their work as full-time civilian technicians, they receive civil-service pay. If hired before 1984, they receive Civil Service Retirement System pension payments. As part-time National Guard members, they receive military pay and pension payments from a different arm of the government.The SSA applied the windfall elimination provision to the benefits calculation for Babcock, a dual-status technician. The district court and Sixth Circuit upheld that decision, declining to apply the uniformed-services exception.The Supreme Court affirmed. Civil Service Retirement System pensions generally trigger the windfall provision. Babcock’s technician work was not service “as” a National Guard member. A condition of employment is not the same as the capacity in which one serves. The statute states: “For purposes of this section and any other provision of law,” a technician “is” a “civilian employee,” “authorized and accounted for as” a “civilian.” While working in a civilian capacity, technicians are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They possess characteristically civilian rights concerning employment discrimination, workers’ compensation, disability benefits, and overtime work; technicians hired before 1984 are “civil service” members, entitled to pensions as civil servants. Babcock’s civil-service pension payments are not based on his National Guard service, for which he received separate military pension payments. View "Babcock v. Kijakazi" on Justia Law

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), a military offense, “punishable by death, may be tried and punished at any time without limitation,” 10 U.S.C. 843(a). Other military offenses are subject to a five-year statute of limitations. Three military service members, each convicted of rape at a time when the UCMJ provided that rape could be “punished by death” argued that the five-year limitations period barred their prosecutions because the Supreme Court held in 1977 (Coker v. Georgia) that the Eighth Amendment forbids a death sentence for the rape of an adult woman.Reversing the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the Supreme Court held that the prosecutions were timely. The UCMJ is a uniform code. The most natural place to determine whether rape was “punishable by death” within the meaning of section 843(a) is section 920’s directive that rape could be “punished by death,” regardless of the UCMJ’s separate prohibition on “cruel or unusual punishment.” If “punishable by death” requires consideration of all applicable law, the deadline for filing rape charges would be unclear. That deadline would depend on an unresolved constitutional question about Coker’s application to military prosecutions, on "evolving standards of decency” under the Eighth Amendment, and on whether UCMJ section 855 independently prohibits a death sentence for rape. The ends served by statutes of limitations differ from those served by the Eighth Amendment or UCMJ 855. Factors legislators may find important in setting a limitations period—such as the difficulty of gathering evidence and mounting a prosecution—play no part in an Eighth Amendment analysis. View "United States v. Briggs" on Justia Law

Manufacturers produced equipment for three Navy ships. The equipment required asbestos insulation or asbestos parts to function as intended, but the manufacturers did not always incorporate the asbestos into their products, so the Navy later added the asbestos. Two Navy veterans, exposed to asbestos on the ships, developed cancer. They sued the manufacturers. The manufacturers argued that they should not be liable for harms caused by later-added third-party parts.The Supreme Court affirmed the Third Circuit in rejecting summary judgment for the manufacturers. The Court adopted a rule between the “foreseeability” approach and the “bare-metal defense,” that is "especially appropriate in the context of maritime law, which has always recognized a ‘special solicitude for the welfare’ of sailors." Requiring a warning in these circumstances will not impose a significant burden on manufacturers, who already have a duty to warn of the dangers of their own products. A manufacturer must provide a warning only when it knows or has reason to know that the integrated product is likely to be dangerous for its intended uses and has no reason to believe that the product’s users will realize that danger. The rule applies only if the manufacturer directs that the part be incorporated; the manufacturer makes the product with a part that the manufacturer knows will require replacement with a similar part; or a product would be useless without the part. View "Air & Liquid Systems Corp. v. DeVries" on Justia Law

A state court may not order a veteran to indemnify a divorced spouse for the loss in the spouse’s portion of the veteran’s retirement pay caused by the veteran’s waiver of retirement pay to receive service-related disability benefits.The Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act authorizes states to treat veterans’ “disposable retired pay” as community property divisible upon divorce, 10 U.S.C. 1408, excluding amounts deducted from that pay “as a result of a waiver . . . required by law in order to receive” disability benefits. In their divorce, Sandra was awarded 50% of John’s future Air Force retirement pay, which she began to receive when John retired. Years later, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that John was partially disabled due to an earlier service-related injury. To receive disability pay, John gave up an equivalent amount of retirement pay, 38 U.S.C. 5305. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed a family court order that Sandra receive her full 50% regardless of the waiver. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed. John’s military pay was subject to a future contingency. State courts cannot “vest” that which they lack the authority to give. Family courts remain free to consider the contingency that some military retirement pay might be waived or consider reductions in value when calculating or recalculating the need for spousal support. View "Howell v. Howell" on Justia Law

The Veterans Benefits, Health Care, and Information Technology Act requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to set annual goals for contracting with service-disabled and other veteran-owned small businesses, 38 U.S.C. 8127(a). The “Rule of Two” provides that a contracting officer “shall award contracts” by restricting competition to veteran-owned small businesses if the officer reasonably expects that at least two such businesses will submit offers and that “the award can be made at a fair and reasonable price.” A contracting officer “may” use noncompetitive and sole-source contracts for contracts below specific dollar amounts. In 2012, the Department used the Federal Supply Schedule (FSS), a streamlined method for acquisition of goods and services under prenegotiated terms, to procure medical center Emergency Notification Services from a non-veteran-owned business. The agreement ended in 2013. A service-disabled-veteran-owned small business filed a Government Accountability Office (GAO) bid protest, alleging that the Department procured multiple contracts through the FSS without employing the Rule of Two. The GAO determined that the Department’s actions were unlawful. The Department declined to follow the GAO’s nonbinding recommendation. The Federal Circuit held that the Department was only required to apply the Rule when necessary to satisfy its annual goals. The Supreme Court reversed, first holding that it had jurisdiction because the controversy is “capable of repetition, yet evading review.” Section 8127(d)’s contracting procedures are mandatory and apply to all of the Department’s contracting determinations. An FSS order is a “contract” within the ordinary meaning of that term and does not fall outside Section 8127(d). The Court rejected an argument that the Rule of Two will hamper mundane Government purchases as misapprehending current FSS practices, which have expanded beyond simple procurement to contracts concerning complex services over a multiyear period. View "Kingdomware Techs., Inc. v. United States" on Justia Law