Former service members sue the Department of Defense after being forced out due to their sexual orientation
Former LGBTQ members of the U.S. Armed Forces are taking legal action against the Department of Defense for denying them honorable discharges due to their sexual identities. The veterans also raise concerns about the disclosure of their sexual orientations on their service records.
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These former service members contend that because their LGBTQ status led to less-than-honorable discharges, they are deprived of several veteran benefits, including health care, loan programs, and college tuition assistance.
They argue that the military’s revelation of their sexual orientations on records violated their privacy, according to a report by NBC News.
Although these plaintiffs were dismissed during the period when the U.S. military had regulations barring LGBTQ individuals from serving, with some being released under the now-defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, they are now challenging the former policies, terming them discriminatory and unjust.
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According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, a research group focusing on LGBTQ issues, more than 13,000 military personnel were discharged from the U.S. Armed Forces for violating the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy.
In 2017, the Trump administration implemented a ban on transgender members in the military, a policy that was later repealed by the Biden administration in 2021.
In a statement regarding the lawsuit, U.S. Army veteran Steven Egland, one of the plaintiffs, stated, “Our government and leaders have long acknowledged that the military’s discrimination against LGBTQ+ service members — and what was done to me — was wrong. The time has come to rectify it by correcting our records. All of those who served deserve to have documents that reflect the honor in our service.”
Egland added, “Because of the circumstances and language of my discharge, which served as a painful reminder of the trauma I experienced, I was never able to proudly say that I served my country.”
One of the central objectives of the lawsuit is to simplify the existing process for veterans to modify their discharges. The current application process is considered complex, time-consuming, and challenging to navigate.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer noted, “The currently available discharge upgrade process is burdensome, opaque, expensive, and, for many veterans, virtually inaccessible. The process not only takes months or years, but also requires veterans to prove that an error or injustice warrants updating their discharge papers to the very entity that caused the error or injustice, despite the Government’s own acknowledgement that DADT was discriminatory.”
In 2021, Democrats in Congress and the Senate introduced measures urging the U.S. government to apologize for the mistreatment of LGBTQ members of the military in previous years.
The lawsuit argues that if the Department of Defense does not reform this process, it perpetuates “Government’s ongoing discrimination” against LGBTQ veterans.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.
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