5 U.S.C. § 8191
Section 8191 · Determination of eligibility
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case City of Whittier v. United States Department of Justice (1979)
Most recently applied in 775 F. Supp. 2d 1110 - United States v. Medearis (January 2011)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The benefits of this subchapter are available as provided in this subchapter to eligible law enforcement officers (referred to in this subchapter as “eligible officers”) and their survivors. For the purposes of this subchapter, an eligible officer is any person who is determined by the Secretary of Labor in his discretion to have been on any given occasion—
(1) a law enforcement officer and to have been engaged on that occasion in the apprehension or attempted apprehension of any person—
(A) for the commission of a crime against the United States, or
(B) who at that time was sought by a law enforcement authority of the United States for the commission of a crime against the United States, or
(C) who at that time was sought as a material witness in a criminal proceeding instituted by the United States; or
(2) a law enforcement officer and to have been engaged on that occasion in protecting or guarding a person held for the commission of a crime against the United States or as a material witness in connection with such a crime; or
(3) a law enforcement officer and to have been engaged on that occasion in the lawful prevention of, or lawful attempt to prevent, the commission of a crime against the United States;
and to have been on that occasion not an employee as defined in section 8101(1), and to have sustained on that occasion a personal injury for which the United States would be required under subchapter I of this chapter to pay compensation if he had been on that occasion such an employee engaged in the performance of his duty. No person otherwise eligible to receive a benefit under this subchapter because of the disability or death of an eligible officer shall be barred from the receipt of such benefit because the person apprehended or attempted to be apprehended by such officer was then sought for the commission of a crime against a sovereignty other than the United States.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Amendments
1968—Pub. L. 90–623 substituted “For the purposes of this subchapter” for “For the purposes of this Act”.
Effective Date of 1968 Amendment
Amendment by Pub. L. 90–623 intended to restate without substantive change the law in effect on Oct. 22, 1968, see section 6 of Pub. L. 90–623, set out as a note under section 5334 of this title.
Effective Date
Section 2 of Pub. L. 90–291 provided that: “The amendments made by section 1 of this Act [enacting sections 8191 to 8193 of this title] are effective only with respect to personal injuries sustained on or after the date of enactment of this Act [Apr. 19, 1968].”