New Study Examines VA Disability Compensation Awards for Race Discrimination During Military Service
The study found that the VA has increasingly provided reparations for the psychological impact of prejudice in tandem with the Nation's awakening over systemic racial discrimination.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. , July 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Veteran's benefits attorney and Fellow of the National Institute of Military Justice, Dr. Evan R. Seamone, has published the first ever study examining the award of disability benefits by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for the impact of prejudice during military service. The Administrative Law Review article, "Disability Compensation for the Psychological Impact of Race Discrimination: Lessons from the Board of Veterans' Appeals," https://administrativelawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/07/74.2-Seamone_Final_Crop.pdf, documents trends in case decisions in the 26 years between 1993 and 2019.
Seamone found that the VA historically denied more discrimination claims than it granted consistently through 2015. However, since 2017, approval rates skyrocketed in a sharp reversal of outcome trends. The modern era marks the best success rates for VA discrimination appeals and distinguishes the VA from other courts in which discrimination claims have proven the most likely to fail, such as civil rights employment law cases for racial discrimination in the federal courts.
Seamone used natural language processing and machine learning to classify discrimination cases in a database of over 1 million VA appellate opinions. Through a detailed analysis of 535 race discrimination and 118 sexual and gender identity minority discrimination decisions, the study provides an in-depth understanding of the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful claims, including:
- Veterans who claimed anxiety or depression as a result of discrimination won claims much more frequently than those who claimed Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD);
- Claims for more than one mental health disorder as a result of discrimination (as opposed to just one type of mental disorder) were substantially more likely to succeed;
- For veterans claiming PTSD, the greatest obstacle was establishing, through psychiatric evaluation, that the discriminatory events met the threshold for "trauma" under PTSD Criterion A of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders;
- PSTD claims for discrimination also frequently failed to meet the VA regulatory requirement for independent corroborating evidence that the discriminatory stressor event occurred. Contrary to the stringent requirement for evaluating PTSD claims, VA regulations do not require independent corroborating evidence to establish other mental health disorders;
- Review of written decisions revealed that over two dozen BVA decisions contained "sanitized" descriptions of the discriminatory events, which made it impossible to determine the type and nature of the discrimination.
Seamone draws on these findings to recommend a requirement for judges to articulate specific facts in all discrimination cases to ensure that the public can accurately assess case trends. He further recommends that mental health evaluators use established and objective psychiatric tests designed to measure the impact of racial discrimination, such as the Race-Based Traumatic Stress Symptom Scale or the UConn Racial/Ethnic Stress & Trauma Survey. Because veterans and their advocates may believe that discrimination claims will fail, Seamone advocates for greater outreach to veterans to educate them that VA discrimination claims are not only winnable, but most likely to succeed at the present time.
To learn more about Evan Seamone's scholarly interests and publications, visit his SSRN author page at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1502236 and his LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-seamone.
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SOURCE Dr. Evan R. Seamone
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