The Department of Defense reached a class action legal settlement with more than 30,000 military veterans dismissed under the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and earlier iterations of the policy involving troops’ sexual orientation.
As a part of the proposed settlement, which still needs court approval, veterans whose discharge papers reference sexual orientation as the reason for their separation can now avoid the arduous legal process to get a review. If they were denied an honorable discharge, those veterans would also be eligible for an immediate upgrade review.
Service members who have discharges with characterizations other than honorable often cannot access many of the critical benefits offered to service members who have honorable discharges.
“This proposed settlement is a critical and long-overdue step toward justice for LGBTQ+ veterans who were wrongly discharged under discriminatory policies like ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” said Elizabeth Kristen, a senior staff attorney with Legal Aid at Work, a group that helped file the suit.
“It offers these veterans the opportunity to request changes to their discharge papers, with many eligible to have their discharges upgraded to Honorable status,” she added. “For too long, the process for correcting these records has been complicated, burdensome, and retraumatizing. This settlement will make the process more accessible and less stigmatizing, allowing veterans to finally have their service recognized with the dignity and respect they have long deserved.”
More than 13,000 service members were separated from the military under the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy between 1994 and 2011, which the department ended more than a decade ago. Under the policy, the military wouldn’t ask service members about their sexual orientation, but lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members were barred from being open about their sexual orientation.
Many of those service members were honorably separated, but nearly 2,000 weren’t, Christa A. Specht, director of legal policy at the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, said in October.
“Coming from a family with a long history of military service, I was beyond proud to enlist in 1985 to contribute to my country,” said Sherrill Farrell, a Navy veteran who was one of the plaintiffs. “When I was discharged because of my sexual orientation, I felt that my country was telling me that my service was not valuable – that I was “less than” because of who I loved. Today, I am once again proud to have served my country by standing up for veterans like myself and ensuring our honor is recognized.”
In 2023, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks initiated a records review regarding upgrading those less-than-honorable discharge characterizations instead of waiting for individual members to go through the request process.
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After the latest effort, “more than 96 percent of the individuals who were administratively separated under DADT and who served for long enough to receive a merit-based characterization of service now have an honorable characterization of service,” Specht said.
The lawsuit, which was filed in August 2023, did not seek a monetary return, though the settlement calls for the department to pay $350,000 to cover the plaintiffs’ legal costs.
