The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Veterans Court does not have to re-examine all evidence when reviewing disability benefits denials. It can only overturn a decision if there is a clear mistake.
This standard was questioned by two veterans, Norman Thornton and Joshua Bufkin. Thornton, who served in the Gulf War, said that his PTSD disability rating should be higher. Doctors couldn’t agree on whether Bufkin was eligible for PTSD benefits, so he wasn’t given them, MSN noted.
Their lawyers said the case could have an effect on a lot of veterans. Along with Neil Gorsuch, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the decision makes sure that the Veterans Court will keep giving in to the VA, even though Congress is trying to protect veterans.
Veterans’ groups supported the challenge, asserting that they have consistently received leniency when claiming disabilities. This was made clearer by Congress when it created the Veterans Court in 1988 and told it to follow this standard again in 2002.
Veterans, on the other hand, said the court was too kind to the VA. The federal government said that the Veterans Court’s job is to look over decisions for clear mistakes, not to look at the evidence again.
The court agreed with the VA that one doctor’s opinion was stronger in Bufkin’s case.
After his wife said she would kill herself if he didn’t leave the military, and the military allegedly told him to quit or get a divorce, Bufkin said he was traumatized.
The VA decided that Thornton did not deserve a higher disability rating in his case. The government said that his case wasn’t even close because there was enough evidence against him.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the government and upheld both decisions.
This is the second big ruling of the week for the U.S. Supreme Court.
A divided U.S. Supreme Court turned down the Trump administration’s request to freeze billions of dollars in foreign aid that Congress had already approved.
In a 5-4 ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court did not say right away when the money had to be released. This meant that the White House could keep arguing about it in lower courts.
The order wasn’t signed, but four conservative justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—didn’t agree with it.
That made five justices the majority: Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Chief Justice John Roberts was also in the majority.
The majority said that since the money had already been spent by the due date set by the court last week, the lower courts should “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order.”
Alito wrote in a strong dissent that he was “stunned” by the court’s decision to let the lower court judge order the administration to unfreeze the foreign aid that was at issue in the case.
Alito added: “A federal court has many tools to address a party’s supposed nonfeasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them.”
There were five votes against the decision, but Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said it was “extremely modest.”
“The unsigned order does not actually require the Trump administration to immediately make up to $2 billion in foreign aid payments; it merely clears the way for the district court to compel those payments, presumably if it is more specific about the contracts that have to be honored,” Vladeck said. “The fact that four justices nevertheless dissented – vigorously – from such a decision is a sign that the Court is going to be divided, perhaps along these exact lines, in many of the more impactful Trump-related cases that are already on their way.”
The appeal was sent to the high court in just a few days, which is very fast for the federal judiciary. It is the second case that the justices have heard about Trump’s efforts to increase power in the executive branch and change the government in big ways since he took office in January.
The case is mostly about the billions of dollars in foreign aid that Trump froze in January from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development. He did this to cut spending and get those agencies to work with his plans.
A number of nonprofits that depend on the money for global health and other programs filed a lawsuit, saying that the actions of the administration took away Congress’s power to control government spending and went against a federal law that says how agencies should make decisions.
Amir Ali, a US District Judge, ordered on February 13 that a lot of the money keep going while he looked into the case. A few days later, the plaintiffs said that the administration was still not following the order and blocking the spending. Ali then told the Trump administration that they had to spend the money by Wednesday at midnight.
In a last-minute emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration asked the court to at least put the case on hold for a few days.
The government said that the administration was making “substantial efforts” to look over payment requests and spend the money, but it wasn’t possible for them to do it quickly enough to meet Ali’s deadline.