Cite as: 503 U. S. 594 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
lution of the marriage. In this Court the officer challenged the holding on two grounds: first, that his prospective retirement benefits would be current pay, not subject to division as deferred compensation for services performed during the marriage; and second, that applying the community property law to retirement benefits conflicted with the federal military scheme regardless of whether retired pay is current income or deferred compensation. See id., at 221. Citing and quoting Tyler, supra, our opinion noted that military retirees differed in some respects from other retired federal personnel and that these differences had led various courts, "including this one," to opine that military retirement pay is reduced compensation for reduced current services. 453 U. S., at 222. We found no need, however, to decide "whether federal law prohibits a State from characterizing retired pay as deferred compensation," because we sustained petitioner's alternative ground for overturning the judgment below. Id., at 223.
The Kansas Supreme Court reasoned that McCarty's recognition of the Tyler holding, as well as the decisions of several Courts of Appeals, indicated that Tyler controlled the description of military retirement pay. It thus concluded that taxing military retirement pay as current income could not validly be characterized as discriminating in favor of state and local government employees, whose benefits were exempt as being deferred compensation for past services. See 249 Kan., at 198, 815 P. 2d, at 54. For several reasons, we find this reading of our precedents unpersuasive.
First, Tyler's statement that retirement pay is effectively indistinguishable from current compensation at a reduced rate was unnecessary to reach the result that Congress intended to include the retirement benefits of a certain class of retired officers in its provision for increasing the pay of active-duty officers. In holding that such retired officers were eligible for this increase, the Court based its holding on the "uniform treatment" of retired and active officers in
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