State Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Women, Great Schools

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has granted additional pension fund credits to two teachers who had started teaching between 1957 and 1966, withdrew their retirement funds prior to 1966, and later returned to teaching.

The court held that the plaintiffs, who were represented by WEAC legal counsel Joanne Huston, did not forfeit membership in the retirement system when they withdrew their deposits from their accounts, and that they should have been given credit for their years of service when their pension benefit was calculated at retirement.

The ruling will affect other members who were originally enrolled in the Wisconsin Retirement System between 1957 and 1966, withdrew money from the system prior to 1966 and returned to the profession after 1966 and made another withdrawal. Many who left the profession for indefinite periods of time prior to 1965 were women who left teaching to raise families when salaries were low and child care hard to find.

The majority decision, written by Justice Louis Butler Jr., said while Joan Solie and Ann Baxter had relinquished their right to state deposits in the old State Teachers Retirement System, they did not waive their years of creditable service or any other rights to membership in the system. The STRS was merged into the Wisconsin Retirement System in 1982. Solie and Baxter retired in the 1990s. The WRS, like the old teachers pension formula group, utilizes creditable service as a factor in determining benefits.

"This is a victory for WEAC members, especially women members who face many forms of employment and wage discrimination," WEAC President Stan Johnson said. "I'm proud that WEAC's Office of General Counsel was able to convince the state's high court to restore some equity for our members."

This is the last issue to be litigated in a series of cases that began with Schmidt v. Employee Trust Funds Board, a 1990 Supreme Court decision that held that teachers who started teaching after 1957, did not elect to join the formula group retirement plan in 1966, and withdrew their money prior to 1973 did not waive anything other than the matching deposits made by the employer and that the right to years of service was one of the rights retained by teachers following a separation benefit.

After the DETF refused to apply the Schmidt ruling to the many other teachers similarly denied credit, the Benson v. Gates case, decided by the court of appeals, amplified Schmidt and required the DETF to begin a massive records review and to restore credit wrongfully denied. The DETF continued to deny credit to teachers for a variety of reasons, all of which were litigated successfully by WEAC attorney Sam Karter in the 1990s in the Circuit Court case Olson, Rinehart and Wuebben.

Under an agreement with the Wisconsin attorney general's office, teachers who meet the same criteria as Baxter and Solie will be eligible to receive a higher monthly pension benefit, retroactively to their retirement date. If teachers purchased the years of service, they will receive reimbursement for the money they spent to repurchase their credits. This decision will affect at least 30 teachers, and possibly many more.

"WEAC will work to ensure that WEAC members whose pensions need to be adjusted as a result of this case are identified and notified," Johnson said.

Posted April 25, 2005