The Supreme Court handed down a devastating blow to military families across America.
A grieving widow thought she could finally get answers about her husband's death.
But the Supreme Court just slammed the door on a military widow seeking justice after her husband's tragic death and Clarence Thomas is furious.
Justice Denied on the Way Home for Lunch
Kari Beck's husband, Air Force Staff Sergeant Cameron Beck, was killed on April 15, 2021, in what should have been a routine drive home for lunch.¹
The 29-year-old was riding his motorcycle from his job at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to meet his wife and seven-year-old son for their customary midday meal together.
He never made it.
Blanca Mitchell, a civilian government employee, was distracted by her cellphone while driving a government-issued van.²
She turned directly in front of Beck without looking.
The collision killed him instantly at the scene.
Mitchell later pleaded guilty to criminal negligence and admitted the crash was "100 percent" her fault.³
Any normal person would think this case was straightforward – a distracted government employee killed someone through negligence, so the government should be held accountable.
But Kari Beck learned the hard way that when you're married to someone in uniform, the rules are different.
The federal government hid behind a 75-year-old legal doctrine to escape accountability.
75-Year-Old Precedent Protects Government from Responsibility
When Beck tried to sue for wrongful death under the Federal Tort Claims Act, both the district court and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out her case.⁴
They pointed to Feres v. United States, a 1950 Supreme Court decision that shields the government from lawsuits by servicemembers and their families for injuries "incident to service."⁵
The courts ruled that because Beck was on active duty and the accident happened on base, it qualified as incident to service – even though he was off duty, heading home to eat a sandwich with his family, and killed by a negligent civilian.
Last Monday, November 24, the Supreme Court refused to hear Beck's appeal, letting the lower court ruling stand.⁶
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a blistering dissent, arguing the case was perfect for revisiting this broken precedent.
"I have long called for overruling Feres, which lacks any basis in the FTCA's text," Thomas wrote.⁷
"But we did not need to overrule Feres to get this case right because Staff Sergeant Beck was not killed incident to military service at all. He was killed in Missouri while off duty and going home to eat lunch with his family."
Thomas cut through the legal fog with brutal clarity: "Beck was not ordered on a military mission to go home for lunch with his family. So Mrs. Beck should have prevailed under Feres."⁸
The government argued Beck could have been recalled for duty at any time during his lunch break, so technically he was still on the clock.
That's the kind of tortured reasoning that lets bureaucrats sleep at night while military families get shafted.
Even Liberal Justices See the Injustice
What makes this case particularly outrageous is that justices across the ideological spectrum agree Feres is a disaster.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, hardly a conservative firebrand, wrote her own statement agreeing the doctrine produces "deeply unfair results."⁹
But instead of voting to hear the case, Sotomayor punted to Congress, arguing lawmakers need to fix what the Court created 75 years ago.
"This important issue deserves further congressional attention, without which Feres will continue to produce deeply unfair results like the one in this case," Sotomayor wrote.¹⁰
Here's the problem with that logic: the Supreme Court created this mess in the first place by inventing an exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act that Congress never wrote into the law.
The late Justice Antonin Scalia said it best in a 1987 dissent: "Feres was wrongly decided and heartily deserves the widespread, almost universal criticism it has received."¹¹
Since 1950, the Supreme Court has refused to hear challenge after challenge to Feres, leaving military families without recourse when negligence destroys their lives.
The doctrine has been stretched to cover medical malpractice at military hospitals, sexual assault at service academies, and now a civilian employee's distracted driving.
Government Gets Away With What No Private Company Could
The most infuriating part of this story is the double standard.
If a FedEx driver distracted by their phone killed someone, the victim's family could sue FedEx into oblivion.
If a Walmart employee's negligence caused a death, lawyers would be lining up to take that case.
But because Mitchell worked for the federal government and Beck wore a uniform, his widow gets nothing.
Well, not exactly nothing – Beck received $523,000 in military benefits and monthly VA payments.¹²
The government points to these benefits as proof that military families are compensated for their losses.
But benefits aren't justice.
Benefits don't create accountability.
Benefits don't stop the next distracted government employee from killing someone else's husband.
Thomas pointed out in his dissent that this case would have been "open and shut" for any civilian victim.¹³
The Federal Tort Claims Act explicitly says the government should be liable "in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances."¹⁴
There's even an exception in the law for "combatant activities" during wartime.
Driving home for lunch with your family isn't a combatant activity.
"It is inconceivable that driving home for lunch with one's family while off duty can be characterized as a wartime combatant activity," Thomas wrote.¹⁵
Yet the government successfully argued Beck's death was incident to service simply because he was on active duty when it happened.
That's how far judges have stretched this doctrine beyond any reasonable interpretation.
Four justices needed to vote to hear Beck's case.
Only Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch indicated they would have granted the petition.¹⁶
So Kari Beck and her son are left with their grief and no accountability for the woman who killed Cameron.
The Supreme Court had a chance to correct a 75-year mistake that has denied justice to countless military families.
Instead, they chose to let this shameful precedent stand.
¹ "Beck v. United States," Supreme Court of the United States, November 24, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ "BECK v. UNITED STATES," Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, November 24, 2025.
⁴ Ashley Oliver, "Justice Thomas rebukes SCOTUS for denying widow's case," Fox News, November 24, 2025.
⁵ "Feres v. United States," 340 U.S. 135 (1950).
⁶ Oliver, "Justice Thomas rebukes SCOTUS."
⁷ "BECK v. UNITED STATES," Cornell Law School.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Oliver, "Justice Thomas rebukes SCOTUS."
¹¹ "The Feres Doctrine, Part I: How It Took Root," Military.com, November 16, 2025.
¹² "No. 24-1078 In the Supreme Court of the United States," Brief for the United States in Opposition, 2025.
¹³ Brad Dress, "Clarence Thomas takes aim at Supreme Court doctrine," Newsweek, November 24, 2025.
¹⁴ Ibid.
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ "BECK v. UNITED STATES," Cornell Law School.
