SCOTUS Rules Against Veterans Seeking Deeper “Benefit of the Doubt” Review for Rejected VA Claims

The United States Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in support of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), rejecting the argument made by two veterans that the denial of their claims deserved deeper review by the courts.

When veterans apply for service-related benefits from the VA, they are entitled to receive the “benefit of the doubt” if the evidence supporting and opposing their claims is roughly balanced.

In practice, this means that the VA is obligated to grant a veteran’s request for benefits if the evidence for and against their claim is nearly equal.

At the center of this case is the question of whether or not the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims — commonly referred to as the Veterans Court — has an obligation to review how well the Veterans Board applied this standard.

While the veterans bringing this case contend that the Veterans Court has a responsibility to determine whether or not the benefit of the doubt rule was applied correctly, the VA argues that the Veterans Court is only tasked with looking for clear factual errors.

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Seven out of the nine Supreme Court Justices agreed with the VA’s interpretation of this requirement.

The majority opinion was authored by Justice Clarence Thomas and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Neil Gorsuch dissented, arguing that the majority’s view is “unmoored” from the text of law and “ignores [the law’s] overall structure and drafting history.”

According to the majority, determining whether or not the evidence is approximately balanced is “at most a mixed question,” and the standard of review depends upon whether finding an answer “entails primarily legal or factual work.”

Primarily factual questions, including the question of balance, are the domain of the Veterans Board and are therefore not eligible for review by the Veterans Court, which concerns itself with legal questions, seven justices agreed.

The majority opinion argues that working out whether the evidence is balanced “is ‘about as factual sounding’ as any question gets.”

“Taken together, the statutory command to ‘take due account’ of the VA’s application of the benefit-of-the-doubt rule requires the Veterans Court to give appropriate attention to the VA’s work, at least when the issue is properly presented,” the Court states.

The dissenting Justices, on the other hand, contend that “the Veterans Court is essentially being asked to decide whether a legal standard (‘approximate balance’) has been satisfied on the established facts,” which they suggest “poses a legal question.”

“Before the Veterans Court can determine whether the VA erred in deciding that the positive and negative evidence is not in ‘approximate balance,’ it must first have an understanding of what ‘balanced’ evidence looks like in this context,” the dissent contends.

“The reading that the majority adopts today reduces that provision to a rhetorical flourish and all but ensures that the Veterans Court will continue rubberstamping the VA’s application of the benefit-of-the-doubt rule,” the dissenting Justices concluded.

The majority opinion offers a different understanding, pointing to the fact that Congress did not identify a new standard of review when they amended the Veterans Benefits Act in 2002 to require that the Veterans Court “take due account” of the benefit-of-the-doubt application.

“Had Congress intended to impose a new standard of review for challenges to the VA’s application of the benefit-of-the-doubt rule, it would have clearly named a standard—just as it did [in other sections],” the Court said. “But, as we have explained, Congress chose not to announce any new standard in [the amendment]. It instead incorporated the pre-existing standards of review set forth in [another section].”

The veterans petitioning the Court suggested that this reading of the law “renders the provision superfluous,” but the majority of Justices pushed back on this assertion.

“While this Court’s reading of [this clause] might involve some redundancy, the canon against surplusage does not apply here because petitioners have not identified a competing interpretation that would avoid redundancy,” they argued.

The Justices went on to explain that the primary function of this clause is to make it clear that the Veterans Court has an obligation to review challenges to the VA’s application of the benefit of the doubt rule, suggesting that this responsibility had not previously been clearly delineated.

They also note that this leaves open the possibility that the Veterans Court could be required to review the VA’s application of the benefit of the doubt rule regardless of whether or not a veteran directly presents that as an issue on appeal.

“We hold that the Veterans Court must review the VA’s application of the rule the same way it would any other determination—by reviewing legal issues de novo [from the beginning, without regard for what lower courts have found] and factual issues for clear error,” the Justices concluded. “And, we hold that the VA’s determination that the evidence is in approximate balance is a predominantly factual determination reviewed only for clear error.”

Click Here to Read the Supreme Court’s Full Majority and Dissenting Opinions