The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider if the federal government may, after six years, cut off combat-related special compensation to a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Veterans are allowed to seek retroactive combat-related special compensation (CRSC) but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has determined that such payments are subject to the federal Barring Act, which provides a six-year statute of limitations.
The Supreme Court will review whether the CRSC statute, a federal law known as 10 U.S.C. Section 1413a that authorizes such compensation, contains a method for settling claims that supplant the Barring Act.
Settlement refers to when the government renders a final administrative determination about its liability on a claim.
“An individual may experience this as emotionally or physically harmful or life-threatening and may affect mental, physical, social, and/or spiritual well-being,” the association’s website reads.
“[People suffering from PTSD] have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people.”
The petitioner, Simon A. Soto, enlisted in August 2000 in the U.S. Marine Corps, which operates within the U.S. Department of the Navy. An Iraq War veteran, Soto served in a mortuary affairs unit during his first two tours. It was his responsibility to “search for, recover, and process the remains of war casualties,” according to the petition.
On one mission, he was traumatized when he participated in recovering “over 300 pieces of five or seven soldiers” who were killed. Beginning in December 2005, he was treated for what was later diagnosed as PTSD. In April 2006, he was medically retired from active duty.
After that, Soto was put on the temporary disability retirement list, which meant he was entitled to military retirement pay. Later, the Navy removed Soto from the list and awarded him permanent disability retirement, under which he continued to be entitled to military retirement pay, the petition said.
Based on his PTSD diagnosis, he applied to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for service-related disability benefits. In June 2009, the department ruled that he would be given a disability rating of 50 percent for PTSD as of April 2006, a 30 percent rating as of November 2006, and a 100 percent rating as of December 2009.
To be eligible, an applicant must be retired and “entitled to or receiving military retirement pay,” possess a VA disability rating of no less than 10 percent, and have Department of Defense “retirement payments reduced by the amount of your VA disability payments.”
The Navy found Soto’s PTSD was related to combat, which qualified him for CRSC as of July 2010. This finding came even though he met the CRSC enrollment criteria as of January 2008, which was the date a law that extended CRSC to medical retirees came into force, the petition said.
This led to the Navy deciding to give Soto just six years of retroactive CRSC payments, covering July 2010 to June 2016.
Soto argues he is actually entitled to about eight-and-one-half years of payments, covering January 2008 to June 2016.
The Navy said that the statute of limitations applies, so to qualify for full retroactive CRSC payments, a person has to file a CRSC claim within six years of a VA rating decision that might make a person eligible for CRSC, or by the date the person became entitled to retirement pay—whichever date is most recent. Filing later than six years after initial eligibility means the person will only receive six years entitlement to retroactive payments.
The petition said the federal government “has used this six-year statute of limitations policy to pay no more than six years of retroactive CRSC to thousands of other deserving United States military combat veterans.”
Soto filed a proposed class action lawsuit in federal district court in Texas in 2017 claiming that based on the CRSC statute the government was enforcing a “nationwide and unlawful policy to pay no more than six years of retroactive CRSC.”
The court ruled in his favor in December 2021, finding that that statute “has its own settlement mechanism because it defines eligibility for CRSC, helps explain the amount of benefits and instructs the [Department of Defense] to prescribe procedures and criteria for individuals to apply for CRSC.”
The court held that the CRSC statute was “outside the reach of the Barring Act and—by extension—its six-year statute of limitations,” the petition said.
The court also determined that the government owed Soto and other veterans compensation that it wrongly withheld.
A divided Federal Circuit reversed in February 2024, finding the statute of limitations in the Barring Act “applies because the CRSC Statute does not contain its own settlement mechanism.”
“The CRSC statute lacks the sort of clear language authorizing the [Department of Defense] to settle CRSC claims sufficient for an exception to the Barring Act,” then-Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Soto’s attorneys, J. Simone Jones and Tacy Flint of Sidley Austin in Chicago, Illinois, and the U.S. Department of Justice. No replies were received by publication time.
