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Sep 1, 2024 03:55
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- PeterCat
- Apr 8, 2020
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Believe women.
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This seems important if you're in the Guard.
 Opinion! Technical retirement opinion about National Guard technicians and that’s it.
BABCOCK v. KIJAKAZI, ACTING COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL SECURITY.
TLDR:
Retirement payments made to a “dual-status military technician” are not “based wholly on service as a member of uniformed service” and therefore reduce Social Security payouts, because they are based on employment not subject to Social Security taxes.
Holding / Majority Opinion (Barrett)
The Social Security Act generally reduces the benefits of retirees who receive payments from separate pensions based on employment not subject to Social Security taxes. The reduction is not triggered, though, by payments “based wholly on service as a member of a uniformed service.” We must decide whether this exception applies to civil-service pension payments based on employment as a “dual-status military technician”—a federal civilian employee who provides technical or administrative assistance to the National Guard. We hold that it does not.
Retirees receive Social Security benefits according to a statutory formula based on average past earnings…But the formula originally did not count earnings from jobs exempt from Social Security taxes, so it calculated artificially low earnings for retirees who spent part of their careers in those jobs. As a result, those retirees received an artificially high percentage of their calculated earnings in Social Security benefits—plus, in many cases, payments from separate pensions to boot.
Congress responded to this “windfall” by modifying the formula to reduce benefits when a retiree receives such a separate pension payment. But it exempted several categories of pension payments, including “a payment based wholly on service as a member of a uniformed service.” The upshot is that pensions based on uniformed service do not trigger a reduction in Social Security benefits.
This case concerns the application of the windfall elimination provision to a unique position in federal employment: the “military technician (dual status).”...On one hand, the dual-status technician is a “civilian employee” engaged in “organizing, administering, instructing,” “training,” or “maintenance and repair of supplies” to assist the National Guard. On the other, the technician “is required as a condition of that employment to maintain membership in the [National Guard]” and must wear a uniform while working.
This dual role means that technicians perform work in two separate capacities that yield different forms of compensation. First, they work full time as technicians in a civilian capacity. For this work, they receive civil-service pay and, if hired before 1984, Civil Service Retirement System pension payments from the Office of Personnel Management. Second, they participate as National Guard members in part-time drills, training, and (sometimes) active-duty deployment. For this work, they receive military pay and pension payments from a different arm of the Federal Government, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
[Plaintiff is one of those people and applied for benefits]
The [Social Security Administration] granted his application but determined that his civil-service pension payments, which he received for his work as a civilian technician, triggered the windfall elimination provision. So the agency applied the modified formula to reduce his Social Security benefits by about $100 per month.
[He appealed, then sued, makes it to the Supreme Court]
The dispute is narrow: All agree that Babcock’s separate military pension for his National Guard service does not trigger the windfall elimination provision. And all agree that Civil Service Retirement System pensions generally do trigger that provision. The only question is whether Babcock’s civil-service pension for technician work avoids triggering the provision’s reduction in benefits because it falls within the exception for “a payment based wholly on service as a member of a uniformed service.” The answer depends on whether Babcock’s technician work was service “as” a member of the National Guard.
…
It was not. In context, “as” is most naturally read to mean “[i]n the role, capacity, or function of.” And the role, capacity, or function in which a technician serves is that of a civilian, not a member of the National Guard. The statute defining the technician job makes that point broadly and repeatedly: “For purposes of this section and any other provision of law,” a technician “is” a “civilian employee,” “assigned to a civilian position” and “authorized and accounted for as” a “civilian.”
This statute’s plain meaning “becomes even more apparent when viewed in” the broader statutory context. While working in a civilian capacity, technicians are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They possess characteristically civilian rights to seek redress for employment discrimination and to earn workers’ compensation, disability benefits, and compensatory time off for overtime work. And, as particularly significant in the context of retirement benefits, technicians hired before 1984 are members of the “civil service” entitled to pensions under Title 5 of the U. S. Code, which governs the pay and benefits of civil servants. These provisions demonstrate that Congress consistently distinguished technician employment from National Guard service.
…
Determining whether Babcock’s technician employment was service “as” a member of the National Guard does not turn on factors like whether he wore his uniform to work. It turns on how Congress classified the job—and as already discussed, Congress classified dual-status technicians as “civilian.” Babcock dismisses that distinction as one drawn for purposes of “administrative bookkeeping,” but bookkeeping matters when it comes to pay and benefits.
Babcock’s civil-service pension payments fall outside the Social Security Act’s uniformed-services exception because they are based on service in his civilian capacity. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It is so ordered.
Lineup:
Barrett, joined by everyone but Gorsuch. Dissent by Gorsuch.
Dissent (Gorsuch)
Dual-status military technicians hold “a unique position in federal employment.” Not only do they sometimes serve on active duty, as the petitioner did. By statute, they spend the rest of their time working for the Guard—on matters ranging from training others to administration to equipment maintenance. At all times, they must “maintain membership” in the National Guard and wear a Guard uniform while on the job. The authority to discharge or discipline these individuals, too, rests with the Adjutant General. Given these features of their employment, I would hold that dual-status technicians “serv[e] as” members of the National Guard in all the work they perform for this country day in and day out.
I appreciate the analogy to police officers moonlighting as private security guards. But to my mind dual-status technicians are more like part-time police officers employed in their outside hours by the same police department to train recruits, administer the precinct office, and repair squad cars—all on the condition that they wear their police uniforms and maintain their status as officers. I suspect most reasonable officers in that situation would consider the totality of their work to constitute “service as . . . member[s]” of the police force. So too here I expect most Guardsmen who serve as “dual-status technicians”—who come to work every day for the Guard, in a Guard uniform, and subject to Guard discipline—would consider all of their work to represent “service as . . . member[s]” of the National Guard. I would honor that reasonable understanding and would not curtail servicemembers’ Social Security benefits based primarily on implications extracted from other, separate “bookkeeping” statutes.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-480_b97c.pdf
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Jan 13, 2022 20:26
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- PeterCat
- Apr 8, 2020
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Believe women.
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Probably because it's loving idiotic. No, go ahead, commission a study to determine the best run distance for determining aerobic fitness. Then have dipshit SMA Chandler stick his dick in it and we end up back at 2 miles because something something extra mile something heart. loving boomers.
The APFT is an absolute dogshit way of measuring "overall fitness" for anything besides doing pushups, situps, and an unweighted jog. Precisely none of which are relevant to the modern military. The Army's approach to physical fitness is a complete dumpster fire that, though not solely responsible for the insane litany of ruinous injuries to soldiers that nobody will take ownership for, precisely enables its perpetuation. Half-assed bullshit like the Master Fitness Trainer Course pays lip service to reality while serving as another way to completely absolve anyone of true accountability over the situation. The (actual) minimum combat load for today's forces require literally just more musculature on soldiers to stabilize, distribute, and bear the weight without disintegrating everything from the neck down. Outside of very specific roles, who the gently caress is running a Mog Mile in actual combat anymore? With 50lbs of poo poo jingling along playing their spines like a meat slinky? I was halfway through writing a thesis and grant proposal while I was still in undergrad on the entire litany of bullshit this 1920s zero investment minimum effort approach to physical fitness continues to absolutely loving kneecap a truly effective fighting force.
Being a medic, seeing the consequences of this poo poo firsthand while in, and getting a degree in this after I got out has not helped the blinding anger at aaallllll.
I'm nearly out and I'm trying to get by with the minimum PT effort so I don't give myself a permanent injury prior to retiring, but what existing workout programs would you point people to to better be able to Army? If any?
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Apr 3, 2022 19:20
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Jan 5, 2022 02:45
