Several former LGBTQ members of the U.S. Armed Forces are suing the Department of Defense for denying them honorable discharges because of their sexual identities, and for listing their sexualities on their service records.
The former service members have argued that because they did not receive honorable discharges due to their LGBTQ status, they do not have access to all veteran benefits, including health care, loan programs and college tuition assistance.
They also alleged that the U.S. military disclosing their sexual orientations on their records was an action that violated their privacy, according to an NBC News report.
Though the plaintiffs were discharged when the U.S. military had laws in place that barred LGBTQ individuals from military service – some of them being dismissed under the military’s now-defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy – they appealed to current U.S. leadership and called the previous policies discriminatory and wrong.
According to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, an LGBTQ research group, over 13,000 military personnel were discharged from the U.S. Armed Forces for violating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT).
The Trump administration instituted a ban on transgender members of the military as well in 2017, a policy which the Biden administration repealed four years later.
In a statement about the lawsuit, plaintiff and U.S. Army veteran Steven Egland claimed, “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 argued, “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.”
There is an existing application veterans can access to amend their discharges, however the lawsuit against the DOD alleges that it is “complicated and intimidating,” and can take up to months and years.
One of the main goals of the lawsuit is to provide an easier and convenient way for members kicked out due to their sexuality to update their discharges.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer said, “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.”
Democrats in Congress and the Senate introduced measures in 2021 urging the U.S. government to apologize for its treatment of LGTBQ members of the military in previous years.
The lawsuit argued that if the DOD does not amend this process, it means the “Government’s ongoing discrimination” against LGBTQ veterans will continue.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.
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