Feliciano v. Department of Transportation

Majority — Gorsuch

Joined by: Roberts, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, Barrett

The majority held that the ordinary meaning of the word "during" is simply "at the same time as" or "contemporaneous with," and does not carry an implied requirement of a substantive connection — a point the government itself had previously argued before the Court in an earlier case. The Court reasoned that when Congress wants to require both a time-based and a substantive link, it says so explicitly, using phrases like "during and in relation to" or "during and because of" in other statutes; the absence of such language here signals that only a time-based condition applies. The majority also noted that another provision already in the differential pay framework — covering reservists called up "[i]n time of national emergency" — is conceded by the government to require only a time-based overlap, making it implausible that the nearly identical phrase "during a national emergency" would demand more. The Court further observed that requiring a substantive connection would create an unworkable standard, since the statute provides no principled way to define what kind of connection is sufficient, and would create potential criminal liability for private employers who provide differential pay without knowing what connection is required. Finally, the Congressional Budget Office, when estimating the cost of similar legislation, calculated based on all reservists on active duty — not just those engaged in emergency-related work — providing additional evidence of how an ordinary reader would understand the statutory language.

Dissent reasoning

The dissent argued that the word "during" is context-dependent and does not always mean a mere time-based overlap — in many legal settings, courts have read "during" to require a substantive connection between two events, not just their simultaneous occurrence. Justice Thomas wrote that the key context here is that the statute defines a "contingency operation," a term whose ordinary meaning refers to military operations responding to a specific contingency or emergency, not every military operation that happens to occur while some emergency exists somewhere. The dissent contended that reading "during a national emergency" as purely time-based would effectively make the phrase meaningless, because the United States has had at least one declared national emergency in effect almost continuously since 1933, meaning virtually every military operation would automatically qualify. The dissent also pointed to Congress's later amendments to the statute — which added specific new categories of activations to the list — as evidence that Congress understood the "during a national emergency" catchall to have limited reach; those amendments would have been unnecessary if the catchall already covered all active-duty service during any ongoing emergency. Finally, the dissent noted that the majority's broad reading of "contingency operation" could have unintended consequences across dozens of other laws that use that term, such as provisions governing civilian court-martial jurisdiction and real estate transaction reporting requirements.