A Massachusetts judge sided with three Afghanistan war
veterans who filed a lawsuit against the state, after being denied
"Welcome Home" bonuses because of their other-than-honorable military
discharges.
In a decision handed down Wednesday, Associate Justice
Michael Ricciuti ordered the Massachusetts Veterans' Bonus Appeal Board to
reconsider rejecting the veterans. Lawyers in the case estimate that beyond
their three clients, the decision means that about 4,000 Massachusetts veterans
are now eligible for the bonuses.
"Veterans with bad paper discharges are among the most
at-risk veterans and yet are often told that they are ineligible for
traditional veteran services and programs," said Laurel Fresquez, an
attorney who represented the three veterans. "Thanks to this decision and
these three veterans, thousands of Massachusetts veterans will finally have a
right to some recognition for their honorable service to our country."
The Massachusetts legislature created the Welcome Home Bonus
in 2005 for post-9/11 service members. Under the program, people who deployed
to Iraq or Afghanistan -- and lived in Massachusetts for a period of least six
months before enlisting -- are eligible to apply for a one-time, tax-free
$1,000 bonus. The program is run by the state treasury.
Jeffrey Machado, Washington Santos and Herik Espinosa --
three Army veterans named in the lawsuit -- each completed enlistments and
re-joined multiple times. They applied for the Welcome Home Bonus and were
denied by the treasury and then the Veterans' Bonus Appeal Board, which argued
their other-than-honorable discharges from their final enlistments made them
ineligible.
Machado, Santos and Espinosa, represented by student
attorneys at Harvard Law School's Veterans Legal Clinic, filed a lawsuit in
2017 in Massachusetts Superior Court. In the complaint, they argued the board
should take into consideration their prior enlistments, which they completed
honorably.
The judge agreed, calling the state's denial "erroneous
as a matter of law, arbitrary and capricious." He said the board's
decision to deny the benefit disincentivized service members from enlisting
multiple times.
"The Bonus Law was designed to reward service to the
country," Ricciuti's order reads. "The board's reading would penalize
such service for military members who voluntarily remain in combat, a result at
odds with the legislature's intent."
In a statement Sunday, Machado, the lead plaintiff, said the
decision meant more than the $1,000 - it was a symbolic win for veterans with
other-than-honorable discharges.
Those discharges, known as "bad paper," can
prevent veterans from receiving federal assistance, such as Department of
Veterans Affairs health care, disability payments, education and housing. Some
lawmakers and veteran advocates have long argued servicemembers with bad paper
were, in many cases, unjustly released from the military because of mental health
issues.
The Government Accountability Office released findings in
2017 that the Defense Department separated approximately 92,000 service members
for misconduct from 2011 through 2015, and 57,000 of them were diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury or other conditions that
can change service members' moods and behaviors and lead to disciplinary
problems.
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