February 20, 2026
Imagine receiving unemployment insurance only to have the State tell you to return the money. Betelehem Dejene challenged the Maryland Department of Labor’s position, with representation from former PJC Murnaghan Fellows Hayley Hahn and Michael Abrams, and in October 2025, the Appellate Court of Maryland ruled that the department cannot require Ms. Dejene to repay the money.
Ms. Dejene had worked for years as a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines but ceased in person work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although she was still technically an employee of Southwest, she was not actively working for them. She received voluntary time off and partial pay as part of Southwest’s emergency pandemic planning, yet her income was significantly reduced. As a result, Ms. Dejene applied for and received unemployment insurance from the Maryland Department of Labor (“MDOL”). After beginning to receive the unemployment insurance, a MDOL claims examiner issued Ms. Dejene a notice stating that because she was still receiving partial pay from Southwest, she did not meet the definition of “unemployed” under the unemployment insurance statute. Ms. Dejene’s unemployment insurance was then stopped, and MDOL requested that she return the money that she had already received.
With representation from the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law, Ms. Dejene appealed all the way through the agency and the circuit court to the Appellate Court of Maryland, where the PJC began representing her, arguing that she was unemployed as defined by the statute.
In a case called In the Matter of the Petition of Betelehem Dejene, the Appellate Court of Maryland reversed the lower court, holding that Ms. Dejene was unemployed despite receiving partial pay from Southwest during the pandemic. While the Court’s decision is unreported, meaning that it does not set binding precedent for other courts to follow, the ruling remains good news for Ms. Dejene. The Court explained that the statutory standard is whether a person is receiving payments that are deemed as “wages”; payment from an employer to an employee only counts as “wages” under the statute if it is given as compensation for services rendered. Because Ms. Dejene was receiving partial pay from Southwest as pandemic compensation, and not for services rendered, the limited payments she received from Southwest to encourage her to wait to return to work were not wages under the statute, and thus, she was entitled to unemployment insurance. The Court ruled that Ms. Dejene is not required to return her unemployment insurance.
Thank you to former Murnaghan fellows Hayley Hahn and Michael Abrams for their advocacy, as well as PJC staff Sabrina Harris, Kelsey Carlson, and Carolina Paul, and former staff Nina Masin-Moyer and Becky Reynolds for their assistance with the case.
