Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough recently announced formation of an Equity Team to examine racial differences in disability compensation grant rates and “address these concerns, including changes in structure, training, quality control, outreach, and more.” This is encouraging progress, particularly after years of reluctance on the part of the department to acknowledge there might be a problem.

The Advisory Committee on Minority Veterans (ACMV) repeatedly raised concerns—including in their 2013 (PDF), 2015 (PDF), 2016 (PDF), 2017 (PDF), and 2018 (PDF) reports—about the possibility of racially-based disparities in Veteran Benefits Administration (VBA) benefits provision. Citing feedback from minority veterans that they believed ratings were lower for minority than non-minority veterans, especially for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), ACMV made multiple recommendations on ways to improve data collection and analysis throughout the years, pushing for accountability and transparency. VA's response to each of these recommendations was to “concur in principle” and note barriers that would make such analysis difficult rather than taking concrete action to assess whether there was validity to the anecdotes and address alleged systematic discrimination. The ACMV held fast to its longstanding recommendation even after the VBA leadership expressed reluctance to address it due to “litigation concerns.”

These were perhaps not unfounded: a recent lawsuit filed by Marine Corps Vietnam veteran Conley Monk Jr. cites a “statistically significant difference” in VA claims decisions for Black veterans found by analyzing records obtained by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Additional variations by race and ethnicity in whether claims were granted fully, granted partially, or denied appear to exist as well.

Given both the long history of obfuscation by the department and the significance of the claimed disparities, why do I find this announcement encouraging? Because there is recent precedent from which VBA can draw significant lessons. In this case, too, it was records sought under the FOIA and lawsuits that prompted change: supported by the ACLU and Yale Law School Veterans Legal Services Clinic (which is also working with Mr. Monk), Service Women's Action Network engaged in a Battle for Benefits for survivors of military sexual trauma (MST). After the substantial disparity in grant rates for PTSD for MST versus non-MST related claims were made public, VBA eliminated the gap (PDF) (for women) between FY2011 and FY2018. This institutional experience contains important lessons on which the department can draw, although disparities by race/ethnicity are certainly different in key ways than those for a particular condition linked to a given stressor.

Read the full article about VA disability compensation by Kayla M. Williams at RAND Corporation.