A Proposed Legal Settlement Could Upgrade The Discharges Of Thousands of Ex-Soldiers

Speaker 1: 00:00 Thousands of former soldiers with less than honorable discharges might get upgrade. Soon this month, a federal judge is expected to approve a settlement that would force the army to possibly upgrade those discharges to honorable. If there's evidence of a mental health condition, Deseret Diorio reports, the agreement calls on the army to go back and look at thousands of less than honorable discharges. For soldiers who served during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. If they had a condition like post-traumatic stress or a brain injury, they can become eligible to upgrade their discharges and get access to benefits through the department of veterans affairs. Joshua Britt is a law school student at Yale university. He helped file the lawsuit at Yale's veterans legal services clinic to change how the army handles past and future upgrade requests. Speaker 2: 00:52 Opening up the possibility of receiving an honorable discharge for our class members can be a very positive thing for them. It opens up a wide range of government benefits. They may have been intelligent before. Yes. Speaker 1: 01:04 If approved the settlement would expand reapplication rights for some former soldiers and grant automatic reconsideration for others. The lawsuit started four years ago with Iraq war veteran, Steven Kennedy. He came home with depression and PTSD, which spiraled into alcohol abuse. And self-harm the army gave him a general discharge, blocking him from some veterans benefits and denied his upgrade applications until he sued Speaker 2: 01:31 You can't get the benefits you need to actually recover from the thing that got you discharged in the first place. Speaker 1: 01:37 VA estimates, as many as 20% of Iraq war veterans experience PTSD, honorable discharges are the gold standard among veterans that designation comes with full access to veterans affairs benefits like health care, disability benefits and higher education, but discharge status. Isn't just about benefits. Bart Stitcher is with the national veterans legal services program. He says there's a stigma attached to less than honorable discharge. Speaker 2: 02:06 If you don't get an honorable, it's a ticket to underemployment because employers often ask if you served in the military. And if so, what type of discharge did you get? And if it's anything other than honorable, then it's very likely that they won't hire you. Speaker 1: 02:24 2014, the Pentagon directed discharge review boards to give liberal consideration to veterans with PTSD. Stitcher says the military tends to ignore them. Speaker 2: 02:35 Post-traumatic stress disorder, TBI, uh, military sexual trauma that existed while you were in service that is supposed to be considered as mitigating circumstances that warrant and upgrade the boards weren't paying any attention to that. Speaker 1: 02:53 The settlement would bring another big change. The army discharge review board could conduct upgrade by phone. Joshua Britt at the legal services clinic says the move will make the process much less burdensome for soldiers Speaker 3: 03:07 In the past. Veterans would have to travel to Washington DC to appear personally before the board. So the telephonic program should expand access. Speaker 1: 03:16 Judge in Connecticut is scheduled to hear public comments March 24th before finalizing the settlement. The director of the army review boards said in a statement, the settlement was reached after months of negotiation and called it a fair way to address soldier's concerns. If it's approved, Kennedy wants to see similar changes made to discharge review boards in the rest of the military. Speaker 3: 03:39 The army is making this change. I think it's really hard to make the argument that the Navy shouldn't be doing the same thing for most of the other Navy and the Marines Speaker 1: 03:46 Or better yet Kennedy hopes to eventually break the connection that ties benefits to discharge status. I'm Deseret Diorio on long Island. Speaker 4: 03:56 This story was produced by the American Homefront project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans funding comes from the corporation for public broadcasting. Speaker 3: 04:10 Uh,