News Room
NVLSP News Articles
A Minnesota veteran’s precedent-setting legal case is forcing the Department of Veterans Affairs to change course after years of denying payment of veterans' emergency medical bills. NVLSP helped represent the veteran. A court ruled a VA policy violated federal law. As a result, the VA estimates it may be on the hook for billions of dollars in previously denied claims. [more]
Released 10/17/17 | Tags: Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, Veteran's Benefits
The federal judiciary's fee-based access to its public online database, known as PACER, is not just anachronistic and counter to history but harms the structural integrity of the modern judiciary, a new research article claims. [more]
Released 9/18/17 | Tags: Class Actions
On September 5th, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a coalition of 17 media organizations submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the case of National Veterans Legal Services Program v. United States of America. The brief argues that the law requires the judicial system to limit the fees it charges people to access its Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system to the cost of disseminating the information requested. Currently, many members of the media face prohibitive costs when trying to obtain court records to inform the public about what is happening in the judicial system. [more]
Released 9/18/17 | Tags: Class Actions
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a coalition of 17 media organizations submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the case of National Veterans Legal Services Program v. United States of America. [more]
Released 9/6/17 | Tags: Class Actions
VA Secretary David J. Shulkin will decide “on or before” Nov. 1 whether to add to the list of medical conditions the Department of Veteran Affairs presumes are associated to Agent Orange or other herbicides sprayed during the Vietnam War, a department spokesman said Tuesday in response to our inquiry. Any ailments Shulkin might add to VA’s list of 14 “presumptive diseases” linked to herbicide exposure would make many more thousands of Vietnam War veterans eligible for VA disability compensation and health care. [more]
Released 8/3/17 | Tags: Agent Orange
Members of the public using the federal court database to access court records may be part of a class action lawsuit, which alleges the U.S. government overcharges for federal court records. Filed April 21, 2016, the suit alleges the cost of producing court records electronically has increased twice since 2002, when Congress passed the E-Government Act of 2002, which sought to cap rising court record costs. NVLSP is one of the plaintiffs. [more]
Released 6/26/17 | Tags: Class Actions
enators and veterans castigated the new head of the Department of Veterans Affairs for proposing to pull benefits from older, disabled veterans to expand care outside the VA in the department's latest budget proposal. [more]
Released 6/15/17 | Tags: Supporters
“They thought, if two well-educated lawyers are having trouble with this process, what is some young servicemember — just back from Afghanistan, potentially suffering from a traumatic brain injury — supposed to do?” recalls Jeff Bozman J.D. ’12, who came to the law school from the Marine Corps in the clinic’s early days. [more]
Released 5/1/17 | Tags: Veteran's Benefits
The federal government was named as defendant in a class action filed March 2 by the National Veterans Legal Services Program (NVLSP) on behalf of combat-disabled veterans who say they were not given their fair share of disability benefits. [more]
Released 3/10/17 | Tags: Class Actions, Combat Related Special Compensation (CRSC)
A retired Marine says the military has been short-changing veterans on retroactive Combat-Related Special Compensation benefits. Plaintiff Simon Soto, who served two tours in Iraq in the Marine Corps, claims branches of the U.S. military have been misapplying a limitations statute to improperly limit veterans’ entitlement to CRSC benefits.The National Veterans Legal Services Program (NVLSP) filed this class action lawsuit on behalf of Soto. The NVLSP is a non-profit organization dedicated to making sure both veterans and those actively serving in the military get the “federal benefits they have earned through their service to our country.” [more]
Released 3/9/17 | Tags: Class Actions, Combat Related Special Compensation (CRSC)