Published: December 2024
President Biden Signs the Social Security Fairness Act
About GPO and WEP
On Jan. 5, 2025, President Joe Biden signed into law the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act, capping off a 40-year effort to repeal the punitive and discriminatory Government Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination Provision laws.
Additional Resources
- Updates from the Social Security Administration
- GPO/WEP Explained, Mass Retirees
- NEA FAQ: Social Security Fairness Act, NEA
- LANDMARK Victory! GPO and WEP repealed, NEA
For far too long, many elected leaders were not well-informed about how these unfair provisions hurt millions of public employees across the nation. Fortunately, educators stepped in with the facts:
- More than 2.8 million public sector employees in 26 states were impacted by GPO and WEP. Educators were affected in 15 of those states (see map), because they pay into their state pension system, but not into Social Security.
- WEP assumed that none of these public employees earn Social Security benefits – which failed to take into account that many educators hold second jobs and summer gigs that require them to pay Social Security taxes. The provision was often devastating to career-changers, who did not receive the full benefit of the years they did pay into Social Security.
- GPO reduced spousal or survivor benefits. More than 70 percent of those affected by GPO lost their entire spousal or survivor benefit.
Some widowed educators received that survivor’s benefit while they were still working. But the minute they retired and started receiving pension payments, they no longer received the benefit that their loved one earned.
