November 4th 2023.
Conley Monk Jr, a Black veteran, and his father have sued the federal government in November 2022 due to benefits that Monk believes the Department of Veterans Affairs denied them due to racial biases. On Nov. 2, Monk appeared in court to present his case while the VA presented their side. He was supported by a team of lawyers from Yale University.
Outside the courtroom, Monk expressed his hopes for justice. “This is a wonderful day, to know that we have a chance to get some sort of justice,” he said. Deja Morehead, one of Monk’s lawyers from Yale, further stated that Monk and the National Veterans’ Council for Legal Redress argued that they suffered emotional, dignitary, and psychological harms from being subjected to the VA’s racially discriminatory benefits system. She hopes that the court will recognize the legal duty that the VA owes to the Monk family, to generations of Black veterans, to administer benefits in a non-discriminatory manner.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Request Act corroborate Monk’s claims that Black applicants for VA benefits were not approved at a rate comparable to white applicants for VA benefits. According to a March report from NPR, Black applicants for benefits relating to PTSD were rejected thirteen percent more than non-Black applicants. Additionally, a whistleblower at the VA reported that an internal report was created for senior officials at the organization, but was buried in 2017.
Recently, on Nov. 2, the VA released documents to NBC News under a Freedom of Information Act request that show that the VA has engaged in a pattern of denying benefits that was stratified along racial lines from 2003 to 2023. Gary Monk, Conley Monk’s brother, a veteran as well as the executive director of the National Veterans Council for Legal Redress, said, “I feel there’s a lot of guilt with the country with how they treated their veterans, and so the motion to dismiss doesn’t surprise me because they’re continuing to deny us as usual.”
The denial of Black veterans benefits stretches back to the GI Bills promised during WWII. The G.I. Bill was designed with benefits that effectively excluded Black soldiers from the rewards they expected for their service to the nation. Redlining emerged from the New Deal, and the bill’s language, crafted by the Dixiecrats, was deliberately constructed to deny economic opportunities to Black soldiers, contradicting the promises made to them. Black soldiers were often designated as dishonorably discharged so that they could not receive their benefits. On top of this, Black soldiers that were able to get their G.I. Bill benefits soon found that the bill was not nearly as advantageous to them as it was to the white soldiers who were able to take full advantage of the benefits offered by the bill.
Judge Stephan Underhill, an appointee of Bill Clinton, has indicated that he sees the case as a difficult one to decide. However, the Monk family remains hopeful that they will receive justice for the denials of their benefits. Conley Monk told NBC Connecticut, “We’ll continue to fight. We have a good team and I pray to God that we win this case.”
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