Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-480_b97c.pdf
Page Number: 9

6 

BABCOCK v. KIJAKAZI 

Opinion of the Court 

service. 

That  distinction  holds  true  even  though  Babcock  also 
served at other times in a different capacity as a member of
the National Guard.  His civil-service pension payments are
not  based  on  that  service,  for  which  he  received  separate 
military pension payments that do not trigger the windfall 
elimination provision.  Nor are we moved by Babcock’s ar-
gument  that  the  statutory  requirement  for  technicians  to 
maintain  National  Guard  membership  makes  all  of  the 
work that they do count as Guard service.  A condition of 
employment is not the same as the capacity in which one 
serves.  If a private employer hired only moonlighting police
officers to be security guards, one would not call that em-
ployment “service as a police officer.”  So too here: the fact 
that the Government hires only National Guardsmen to be 
technicians does not erase the distinction between the two 
jobs.

Babcock protests that the distinction is not meaningful. 
He  argues  that  the  word  “as”  may  sometimes  bear  the
looser meaning “in the likeness of ” or “the same as,” rather 
than “in the capacity of.”  Reply Brief 4–5.  With this looser 
meaning  of  “as,”  the  uniformed-services  exception  would 
apply to “a payment based wholly on service [in the likeness 
of or the same as] a member of a uniformed service.”  The 
technician  job  satisfies  this  functional  test,  Babcock  says, 
because whatever its classification, the job’s qualifications, 
duties, and dress code render it indistinguishable from Na-
tional  Guard  service.    According  to  Babcock,  Congress’ 
choice to designate the technician’s work as “civilian” is ir-
relevant to the uniformed-services exception.  Brief for Pe-
titioner 3. 

We are unpersuaded.  To begin with, the only reason Bab-
cock advances for choosing his functional interpretation of
“as” is that Congress used the word “capacity” (or the argu-
ably analogous “status”) in other provisions and did not do 
so in the uniformed-services exception.  See, e.g., 32 U. S. C.