Watching ‘Fight or Flight,’ Acting out Shooting Builds TSA Worker’s Traumatic Injury Case

Federal Focus

A Transportation Security Administration worker had to watch a training video on shootings and participate in an active shooter role play scenario, which triggered his PTSD and supported his workers' compensation argument. Simply Research subscribers have access to the full text of the decision.

Case

D.A. and Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, No. 23-0564 (ECAB 02/20/25)

What Happened

A security administrator for the Department of Homeland Security filed a traumatic injury claim alleging that he watched a video called "Fight or Flight" and discussed it in depth and acted out an active shooter scenario while in the performance of duty. According to the administrator, this video and discussion retriggered his PTSD and caused severe depression, anxiety, and night terrors.

The agency controverted the claim, contending that the administrator first stated that his condition was due to an illness he contracted and that he changed his story to claim that it was from the mandatory training. The administrator stopped coming to work for several weeks.

The Office of Workers' Compensation Programs denied the administrator's claim, finding that he had not met the requirements to establish an injury on the Federal Employees' Compensation Act because he had not established a compensable employment factor.

The administrator appealed the decision to the Employees' Compensation Appeals Board.

Rule of Law

To establish an emotional condition in the performance of duty in the federal government, a claimant must submit:

(1) Factual evidence identifying an employment factor or incident alleged to have caused or contributed to his or her claimed emotional condition.

(2) Medical evidence establishing that he has a diagnosed emotional or psychiatric disorder.

(3) Rationalized medical opinion evidence establishing that the accepted compensable employment factors are causally related to the diagnosed emotional condition.

What ECAB Said

According to ECAB, the administrator made his case based on the facts he presented.

"Appellant has alleged that he sustained an emotional/stress-related condition while performing his regularly or specially assigned duties when he participated in a mandatory active shooter training for new hires," ECAB wrote. "He has established that watching and discussing the 'fight or flight' video and subsequently acting out a scenario of a shooter in the hallway constituted a compensable employment factor."

ECAB sent the case back to OWCP to consider the medical evidence with regard to whether the administrator established an emotional condition in the performance of duty causally related to the compensable employment factor.

Takeaway

As detailed in Lillian Cutler, 28 ECAB 125 (1976), when a disability results from an employee's emotional reaction to her regular or specially assigned duties or to a requirement imposed by the employment, the disability comes within the coverage of FECA.

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