A group of LGBTQ veterans fired from the U.S. military because of their sexual orientation are suing the Pentagon for refusing honorable discharges and listing their sexual orientation on their service records.
in a class action lawsuit lawsuit In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, plaintiffs are asking the Department to grant honorable discharges to veterans so they can take advantage of all benefits, including medical care, college tuition assistance, and loan programs. there is
They also demand that sexuality be removed from their veteran documents, and the documents plaintiffs need to submit to access some veterans’ benefits violate their privacy. claims.
“Our government and leaders have long acknowledged that the military discriminated against LGBTQ+ military personnel and what was done to me was wrong,” said one of the plaintiffs, veteran Stephen Egglund. said in a statement. “The time has come to set it right by correcting the record. All those who have served are entitled to documents that reflect their honor in our service.”
A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the pending lawsuit.
Some of the plaintiffs were dismissed under the military’s 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that allowed homosexuality and lesbianism to serve in the military if they remained covered up. Some were dismissed because of previous laws that prohibited women and lesbians. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a statement that they had suspended their military service.
is more than 13,000 military personnel discharged According to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School, an LGBTQ research institute, he was disciplined by the U.S. military for violating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) police.
Since the policy’s repeal, advocates for LGBTQ veterans have called on the U.S. government to automatically adjust the discharge status of former military personnel and apologize.
The Trump administration banned public military service and enlistment for transgender Americans in 2017, but the Biden administration lifted it in 2021.
Democrats in both houses of Congress have introduced separate measures in 2021, calling on the government to apologize for its abuses of LGBTQ military personnel.
Tuesday’s lawsuit points out that there is an existing application process through which veterans can apply for a change of discharge status, but the process is “complicated and intimidating,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Currently available discharge escalation processes are cumbersome, opaque, costly, and virtually inaccessible to many veterans,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in a statement. “Not only will this process take months or even years, but veterans will find that mistakes and injustices, if any, have been made, despite the government’s own admission that the DADT was discriminatory. We need to prove to the very entity that caused the fraud that we need to renew our discharge notices.”
Without the Pentagon’s changes, the lawsuit claims that “continued discrimination by the government” against LGBTQ veterans will continue.
“The circumstances and words I used when I was discharged made the trauma I went through a painful memory that prevented me from proudly saying that I had contributed to my country,” Eglund said in a statement.
