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NVLSP News Articles
According to the Constitution, the law is by, of, and for the people. Congress makes laws, the president enforces them, the courts interpret them. Yet if you want to read federal court documents—to challenge those laws, or analyze them, or simply see them in the making—you must pay. By the page. Federal courts keep their documents locked within a paywalled database called PACER, an acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records. To access documents that are by definition public record, you must pay 10 cents per page. Because a great many people—lawyers, journalists, academics, plaintiffs and defendants—need to view these records, PACER is tremendously profitable. The database isn’t free to run, and some argue that justifies charging people to access it. But a class action lawsuit claims the profits far outweigh those costs. [more]
Released 5/16/16 | Tags: Class Actions
A new non-partisan review by the National Veterans Legal Services Program, Swords to Plowshares, and Harvard Law School’s Veterans Legal Clinic revealed the VA has wrongfully been denying services to post-9/11 veterans. [more]
Released 5/1/16 | Tags: Agent Orange
According to the National Veterans Legal Services Program, more than 13,800 soldiers have been victimized by their own government, used to save money by being improperly taxed. It’s frustrating to even realize this is a problem. [more]
Released 4/30/16 | Tags: Congressional Legislation
Retired service personal in dire need of VA benefits would not be cheered by the allegation that a contractor hired to review the cases of thousands of Vietnam veterans for exposure to Agent Orange may have denied benefits in spite of obvious need, all because the contractor was less than thorough in reviewing cases, or so it has been alleged. [more]
Released 4/27/16 | Tags: Agent Orange
Bart Stichman, joint executive director at the National Veterans Legal Services Program, talks with Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu about a Veterans Affairs Department policy his group says is unfairly denying health care and compensation to more than 100,000 former service members. [more]
Released 4/27/16 | Tags: Discharge Upgrades
The percent of disability claims approved by the Veterans Affairs Department for Persian Gulf War-related illnesses has declined steadily in the past five years, resulting in record lows, according to a new report. [more]
Released 4/26/16 | Tags: Veteran's Benefits
Say the government used money paid to access court information to buy flat-screen monitors — would that violate federal law? That’s the accusation in a lawsuit against the United States of America, that takes aim specifically at the U.S. Administrative Office and its Public Access to Court Records Electronic System, otherwise known as PACER. [more]
Released 4/26/16 | Tags: Class Actions
U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner’s (D-VA) legislation to ensure that veterans who suffer service-ending combat-related injuries are not improperly taxed on the severance payment they receive from the Department of Defense (DoD) has passed the Senate Finance Committee. Under federal law, veterans who suffer combat-related injuries and who are separated from the military are not supposed to be taxed on the one-time lump sum disability severance payment they receive from DoD. Unfortunately, taxes on combat-related disability severance payments have nonetheless been withheld from qualifying veterans for a number of years, in part due to the limitations of DoD’s automated payment system. Veterans are typically unaware that their benefits were improperly reduced as a result of DoD’s actions. [more]
Released 4/26/16 | Tags: Congressional Legislation
Lawmakers have advanced legislation that would reimburse veterans with combat-related injuries potentially thousands of dollars in lost severance pay. [more]
Released 4/25/16 | Tags: Congressional Legislation
The government agency running the PACER system, which provides online access to federal court records, charges more fees than necessary to recoup its costs in providing its services, a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia April 21 alleges. [more]
Released 4/25/16 | Tags: Class Actions