Seattle is a place where vets receive good overall treatment and opportunities. The Veterans Administration (VA) is on track to set a new record for hiring at the Veterans Health Administration for the first quarter of fiscal 2023, and is reducing critical vacancies. However, all is not well. A lawsuit was filed recently claiming that between 2001 and 2020, the VA was more likely to reject the disability compensation claims of black veterans than white veterans.
The case was filed last Monday with the U.S. District Court in Connecticut, and led by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Service Clinic.Â
VA reviewing ‘unacceptable’ racial disparity in veterans receiving benefits. The Department of Veterans Affairs says it is working on a study focused on racial disparities in its benefits claims decisions — an issue that spans decades, according to a federal lawsuit filed.
According to an index of 38 metrics created by data blog Lawnstarter, Seattle, Washington, ranks as the 21st best city for veterans out of the 200 largest U.S. cities. About 26,211 veterans live in Seattle, accounting for 4.1% of the city’s total population, according to five-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Yale Law School filed the lawsuit on behalf of Conley Monk, Jr., a Vietnam veteran whose applications for education, housing and disability compensation were initially denied by the VA. The agency eventually granted his claims in 2015 and 2020.
Head officials at the VA says they have been “aggressively hiring” to build up the VA workforce it needs to handle a surge in PACT Act claims. The agency states that the VA hired a record 48,500 new clinical administrative staff in fiscal 2022, an increase of more than 5,00 staff from fiscal 2021.
