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An Interview You Must Be Offered — and First Place in a Layoff

In filling any classified state position, the employing agency must offer an interview to any veteran or gold star spouse who meets the minimum qualifications. In a reduction in personnel, a veteran or gold star spouse must be retained ahead of competing employees in the same classification with equal seniority, status and performance reviews.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

In filling any classified state position, the employing agency must offer an interview to any veteran or gold star spouse who meets the minimum qualifications. In a reduction in personnel, a veteran or gold star spouse must be retained ahead of competing employees in the same classification with equal seniority, status and performance reviews.

What it's worth: An interview the agency must offer for a classified vacancy, and retention priority in a layoff

  • No dollar figure is claimed. The interview limb is a shortlisting right; the retention limb is worth a salary in the year a reduction happens and nothing at all in every other year.

Who is entitled to it

  • The section reaches a veteran, and a gold star spouse — the surviving spouse of a veteran eligible for a gold star lapel pin.
  • Your discharge is other than dishonorable, which is the test the section sets.
  • You are in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

Deadline: At the point of applying, and again at any reduction in force
  1. 1The discharge test here is unusually wide: service on active duty in the armed forces, INCLUDING the Reserves and the National Guard, with a discharge other than dishonorable. General and other-than-honorable discharges are not excluded by the words of the section.
  2. 2Meet the published minimum qualifications for the position; that is the whole merit gate for the interview limb.
  3. 3Say so on the application. Neither limb operates on a status the agency does not know about.
  4. 4A gold star spouse has the same rights as a veteran here. The definition is the surviving spouse of a veteran eligible to receive a gold star lapel pin under 10 U.S.C. §1126.
  5. 5The retention limb is the one to remember years later: in any reduction in personnel in state service, a veteran or gold star spouse is retained ahead of other competing employees in the same classification with equal seniority, status and performance reviews. It is a tie-breaker, not an override of seniority.
Form
Declare veteran or gold star spouse status on the state application
File with
Bureau of Human Resources and the hiring agency
Documents you will need
dd214
No renewal
Once granted it does not need renewing.
CorrectionMaine’s veteran preference is not a points system, and the section that used to be cited for one — 5 M.R.S. §7054 — is repealed. §7054-B, enacted by PL 2015, c. 438, replaced it with two concrete rights: an interview the agency must offer, and layoff retention. A candidate expecting a score bump on a Maine state examination will not find one.
Worth knowingThe retention preference only breaks a TIE. It operates among competing employees in the same classification with equal seniority, status and performance reviews — it does not lift a veteran above a more senior colleague.
Worth knowingGold star spouses are given the same standing as veterans throughout the section, which is rarer than it sounds: most state preference statutes treat a surviving spouse as a derivative claimant rather than an equal one.

Sources

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.