The Coast Guard Cutters, from top, Sanibel, Tybee and and Hammerhead idle together near Nobska Lighthouse in Falmouth, Mass., in 2023. (Ryan L. Noel/U.S. Coast Guard)
The Coast Guard was using a method to determine back pay that shortchanged hundreds of veterans and must stop, according to federal court documents filed Friday in a yearslong lawsuit over retention panels found to have illegally thinned noncommissioned officers from the service.
The ruling from Judge David Tapp comes about one year after finalizing his original ruling that the Coast Guard’s use of what it called performance-based panels from 2010 to 2014 to force senior enlisted members into retirement violated federal law and the due process afforded troops when separated from the service.
At the time, senior enlisted members could reenlist indefinitely, and many were planning to stay in the service for a full 30-year career. Service leaders felt this limited promotion opportunities for lower enlisted members, so the Coast Guard held Active Duty Enlisted Career Retention Screening Panels to remove more than 800 members as a “reduction in force,” according to court documents.
A spokesperson for the Coast Guard said the service is aware of the court’s opinion and “continues to work with the plaintiffs and to develop a process to calculate and distribute back pay.”
Six veterans filed a federal lawsuit in 2018 in the Court of Federal Claims, and 237 veterans signed onto it. Tapp determined their forced retirements were illegal and ordered all of them to receive back pay and benefits as determined by the Coast Guard.
That is where the second round of trouble began.
The Coast Guard began using a regulation known as high-year tenure to calculate payments, according to court documents filed by Nathan Mammen, attorney for the veterans. The regulation pushes out service members who do not promote up in rank within a certain time.
“To align with the Coast Guard’s position, the court must assume a promotion would not have occurred during the constructive service period. Such an assumption is not based on fact or evidence,” Tapp wrote in his order. “To make such a determination based only on the Coast Guard’s retroactive determination, absent disclosure of the process utilized, facts, or evidence, would be improper.”
For Jenn Rehberg, a veteran on the lawsuit, it meant her backpay was about $400,000 less than she expected. She retired as a chief petty officer with 22 years of service. She was on indefinite enlistment, was twice named sailor of the year and expected to reach master chief and 30 years before her career ended.
Under the high-year tenure method of calculating her back pay, the Coast Guard had only bumped her retirement up by two additional years of service.
“It was almost like being stabbed in the back again,” Rehberg said earlier this year.
The Coast Guard has 60 days to appeal the judge’s ruling. The service did not state whether it intends to do so. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
