The Social Security Fairness Act (Public Law 118-273) was signed into law on January 5, 2025. It ended the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) for benefits payable after December 2023. SSA says the two rules reduced or eliminated Social Security benefits for over 3.2 million people with a pension from work that didn't pay Social Security taxes. If that's you, your monthly benefit went up and you were owed back pay to January 2024.
What WEP was
WEP reduced the Social Security benefit of workers who also got a pension from a job outside Social Security. It swapped the 90% factor on the first bend point of the benefit formula for a lower one, as low as 40% for people with 20 or fewer years of substantial covered earnings. The dollar cut depended on the year you turned 62. For someone who turned 62 in 2023, the last group WEP reached, the first bend point was $1,115, so the cut topped out at $557.50 a month. It could never exceed half of the non-covered pension.
The rule hit people who split careers between public service and private jobs. Two workers with identical Social Security earnings records could get different benefits because only one of them also had a government pension.
What GPO was
GPO reduced spousal and survivor Social Security benefits by two-thirds of the government pension. It often wiped out the spousal or survivor benefit entirely.
An example: a retired teacher gets $2,400 a month from her state pension. Her husband worked in private industry his entire career. When he dies, she's entitled to a $1,800 survivor benefit. GPO cut that by $1,600 (two-thirds of $2,400), leaving $200 a month. After repeal she gets the full $1,800.
How the payments rolled out
SSA started sending retroactive payments in February 2025 and said most people would get theirs by the end of March. Higher monthly payments first showed up in April 2025. On July 7, 2025 SSA announced it had completed over 3.1 million payments to everyone entitled under the law, five months ahead of its schedule. Back pay covers January 2024 through the month SSA adjusted your benefit.
If you were already getting a reduced benefit, SSA made the change without an application. If your monthly amount still shows the old reduction, call SSA at 1-800-772-1213.
Who isn't affected
The repeal only helps people whose pension came from work that didn't pay Social Security taxes. If your government job paid into Social Security, WEP and GPO never applied to it. Check your W-2s from those years: Social Security tax in Box 4 means the job was covered. SSA's list of people who gain includes some teachers, firefighters and police officers in many states, federal employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System, and people whose work was covered by a foreign social security system.
If you never applied
Some people never filed for a spousal or survivor benefit because GPO would have erased it. If that's you, apply now. Back pay can't start before January 2024.
If you're still working, your Social Security Statement at ssa.gov should now show estimates without WEP. When you claim, SSA uses the full formula.
Why WEP and GPO existed
Both rules were decades old when Congress repealed them. The idea behind WEP was that Social Security's formula replaces a bigger share of pay for low earners, and someone who spent most of a career outside Social Security looked like a low earner on paper even with a full government pension. GPO's logic was similar for spousal benefits, which were meant for spouses with little income of their own. Critics said both rules were crude and hit teachers and other public workers who had earned both benefits. Congress debated repeal for decades before passing it.
What repeal means for your pension and claiming decisions
Some workers used to weigh WEP when choosing between a pension lump sum and an annuity, since WEP was tied to a non-covered pension. That's gone. Decide on the numbers that matter now: segment rates, break-even age, health and survivor needs.
A bigger Social Security benefit also makes delaying it worth more in dollars. If you were born in 1960 or later, waiting from 62 to 70 raises your benefit from 70% to 124% of your full-retirement-age amount. On a $1,500 full benefit that's the difference between $1,050 and $1,860 a month. A government pension can cover the gap while you wait, which is a strong position if you're healthy.
For couples, GPO's repeal matters most to survivors. The government-pension spouse can now collect a full survivor benefit on the private-sector spouse's record, which makes it more valuable for the higher earner to delay to 70.
If your pension was moved to an insurer in a risk transfer, the repeal still applies. It depends on where you worked, not on who pays your pension today.
Use the Social Security calculator to model claiming ages with the full benefit, and the WEP calculator or the GPO calculator to see what the old rules took, so you can check the back pay SSA sent.