What Is the Social Security Fairness Act?
A 2025 federal law that closed the book on decades of WEP/GPO complaints — here's exactly what it did and who it reaches.
💬 GLP Retirement MinuteSigned into law. The Social Security Fairness Act fully repealed both the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO).
Benefits payable after December 2023. People who had been affected by WEP or GPO in that window became eligible for retroactive payment of the difference.
Public employees nationwide who'd had Social Security benefits reduced due to a non-covered pension — teachers, police, firefighters, and other state/local government workers across many states, not just Michigan.
See Does My MPSERS Pension Reduce Social Security? — for most Michigan educators, WEP and GPO rarely applied in the first place, since MPSERS-covered work generally pays into Social Security. This repeal matters most for anyone with mixed-state or mixed-system career history.
Contact the Social Security Administration directly at ssa.gov to check your specific record — this isn't something MPSERS or ORS can look up on your behalf, since it's a federal Social Security matter.
This law didn't change anything about MPSERS itself — it changed a federal Social Security rule that had complicated retirement planning for public employees for over 40 years. If you'd been told to expect a reduction because of WEP or GPO, that expectation no longer applies.