(Minghui.org) The Zhuozhou City Court in Hebei Province dismissed the local social security center’s lawsuit against Ms. Jia Fengxian for “owing” them “pension debt.”
Ms. Jia, a 60-year-old retiree from the Zhuozhou City Landscaping and Greening Section, was arrested on August 22, 2019, for talking to people about Falun Gong. She was sentenced to seven months on September 6, 2019.
Starting in February 2026, the Zhuozhou City Social Security Center suspended Ms. Jia’s pension payments, and ordered her to return the 480,000 yuan she received.
The Social Security Center cited Notice 69, issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in 2012, as the legal basis for suspending Ms. Jia’s pension. Effective since November 5, 2012, the notice requires pension reduction or suspension for retirees of government agencies or state-owned enterprises who were subjected to administrative or criminal punishment.
The Social Security Center claimed that since Ms. Jia was jailed for seven months, her pension should be suspended per Notice 69.
Ms. Jia insisted that her pension was earned by her years of hard work and refused to return anything. On May 21, 2026, she received a letter from the Social Security Center, ordering her to return the money by May 30. The letter stated that if she had objections, she could apply for administrative reconsideration within sixty days from the date of receipt of the letter, or file an administrative lawsuit with a local court within six months. That afternoon, she received another notice from the Zhuozhou City Court, that she was scheduled to appear in court for her pension case on June 9. The social security center previously sued her before she got a chance to sue them.
During the hearing on June 9, Ms. Jia’s lawyer defended her, but when she was about to testify in her own defense, the judge stopped her. The lawyer representing the Social Security Center indicated that they were working to seize some of her family’s real estate to pay for her pension “debt.”
On June 25, the court ruled to dismiss the case because the Zhuozhou Social Security Center had no standing in filing the lawsuit against Ms. Jia. The defendant and the plaintiff were not considered “equal civil subjects,” per the ruling.
The ruling did not state whether Ms. Jia’s pension should be reinstated. As of the time of writing, the Social Security Center has not appealed the case.