The court decision is Navarro v OPM (CAFC No. 2025-1612 (nonprecedential) 12/8/2025).
As the court decision explains, Ms. Navarro applied for FERS retirement in June 2019. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) approved her application several months later, converting it to disability retirement. OPM advised Navarro to apply for Social Security Administration (SSA) disability insurance benefits, cautioning her that she must notify OPM immediately of the amount and effective date of those SSA benefits when she received the SSA notice.
More than two years later in April 2022, SSA notified Navarro that it had approved disability benefits retroactively effective to a few months after her FERS retirement application. (Her FERS application was in June 2019, and the effective date of her SSA disability was November 1, 2019.)
Rather than immediately forwarding the SSA notice to OPM as she had been specifically instructed to do, Navarro testified in her appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) that she called OPM about a week later and spoke to “Anna S.” Supposedly, she told this person at OPM that she had received this notice from SSA and asked “what steps she needed to take to avoid being overpaid.” (Opinion pp. 3-4)
Nothing happened until OPM learned on its own four months later that SSA had approved Navarro’s entitlement to disability benefits. At that point, the agency notified Navarro that her FERS annuity would be reduced and that the overpayment of $40,749 would be collected from that annuity in monthly installments.
Navarro challenged OPM’s decision, claiming it had “mismanaged” the situation, pointing to her conversation with “Anna S.” (P. 3)
OPM reaffirmed its decision, and Navarro appealed to the MSPB. The administrative judge found that OPM had proved the overpayment and the amount, that Navarro was required to set aside the overpayment since she knew she would be obligated to repay it, and that she was not entitled to a waiver. The full MSPB affirmed, and Navarro took her case to the appeals court.
The court sustained OPM’s decision, affirmed the MSPB, and brushed aside her various arguments as to why the overpayment amount must be waived. Citing the relevant law, the court stated, “A FERS disability annuity must be reduced by the amount of Social Security disability a FERS retiree receives.” (P. 4)
OPM need only approve the existence and amount of the overpayment. The court confined its review to whether OPM and MSPB properly determined that Navarro was not entitled to a waiver. Such a waiver can happen only if OPM determines that Navarro was “without fault and recovery would be against equity and good conscience.” (Pp. 4-5)
As the court found, both OPM and the MSPB concluded that Navarro did not meet the test: She did not follow her obligation to set aside SSA money, did not immediately forward the SSA notice to OPM. The court added, “Furthermore, Navarro’s phone call with OPM’s Anna S. shows that she, at a minimum, suspected she was receiving overpayments from OPM.” (P. 5)
When all is said and done, the court affirmed that Navarro is obligated to repay the $40,749.
