Justice Thomas Blasts Supreme Court for Rejecting Widow’s Wrongful Death Case

In a powerful dissent Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas sharply rebuked his fellow justices for refusing to hear the case of a military widow, arguing that the Supreme Court effectively let the federal government escape responsibility for her husband’s death at the hands of a negligent government employee.

The case involves Air Force Staff Sergeant Cameron Beck, who was off-duty and riding his motorcycle to lunch with his family in 2021 when he was killed by a civilian government worker who admitted she was distracted by her phone. Despite the civilian’s guilty plea, Beck’s widow was barred from suing the government, with lower courts citing the infamous 1950 Feres v. United States decision which blocks military families from suing the government for injuries or deaths “incident to service.”

Justice Thomas had had enough.

“We should have granted certiorari,” Thomas wrote. “Doing so would have provided clarity about Feres to lower courts that have long asked for it.”

The majority of the Court declined to even hear the case, leaving in place a ruling that wrongfully expanded the reach of Feres, according to Thomas. He emphasized that Beck wasn’t on a mission, wasn’t under orders, and wasn’t performing any duty. He was just a husband heading to lunch.

“He was not ordered on a military mission to go home for lunch with his family,” Thomas wrote. “So Mrs. Beck should have prevailed under Feres.”

In other words, a civilian killed a servicemember on his day off and the government shrugged.

This isn’t just legal hair-splitting. It’s about basic fairness. Imagine being told your spouse’s life has no legal value simply because they wore a uniform even when they weren’t in uniform, on duty, or acting in any military capacity.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, while agreeing with the Court’s decision not to take the case, admitted the law is broken. In a rare acknowledgment, she wrote that Congress must intervene to fix the “deeply unfair results” that rulings like this produce.

The Feres doctrine has long shielded the federal government from accountability even in clear cases of negligence by non-military personnel. Thomas has spent years arguing that it’s time to either rein it in or repeal it altogether. Yet once again, the Supreme Court refused to act.

Let’s be clear about what this means:

• A military widow can’t sue the government, even when her husband is killed by a reckless, admitted civilian offender

• The government remains immune thanks to a precedent born from Cold War-era legal thinking

• The Court had the chance to fix this and refused

It’s another reminder that real reform doesn’t come from D.C. insiders or unelected justices. It takes pressure from the American people. Justice Thomas is doing his part to call out injustice. Now it’s time for Congress to answer or for voters to send in leaders who will.

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