US federal claims court hears gay military members discharge pay suit

News

US federal claims court hears gay military members discharge pay suit

September 23, 2011 11:50:48 am

[JURIST] The US Court of Federal Claims [official website] on Thursday heard arguments [ACLU press release] regarding a class action lawsuit challenging a government policy that halves severance pay of service members who have been honorably discharged for being gay. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] filed the lawsuit [JURIST report] in November 2010 on behalf of all service members involuntarily discharged in the last six years who were otherwise eligible to receive full separation pay, but instead received only half as a result of the separation pay policy. The ACLU argues that the policy is discriminatory and unconstitutional, while the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] maintains that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta [official profile], and not the courts, has sole discretion to determine severance pay allocation. ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Project staff attorney Joshua Block said gay military members deserve equal benefits:

The government is too embarrassed to defend the constitutionality of its policy in open court, so it is inventing new reasons to deny these service members justice. These veterans served their country honorably and deserve the full recognition and benefits that are afforded to other service members. The sums they seek are small to the military, but make a huge difference when readjusting to civilian life.

Judge Christine Odell Cook Miller indicated that she would likely permit the case to continue [AP report] and will issue her official ruling on the government’s motion to dismiss before October 15.

The DOJ asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit just two days after the repeal [JURIST report] of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) [10 USC § 654; JURIST news archive] officially took effect [memo, PDF]. With the repeal of the law, the military can no longer prevent gays and lesbians from serving openly among its ranks. The separation pay policy, unlike DADT, can be changed without congressional approval. The repeal of DADT took effect as scheduled despite opposition from some. Four days before the repeal was scheduled to go into effect, two Republican Congressmen sent a letter to Panetta asking to delay the repeal [JURIST report] of DADT. Earlier this month, lawyers for the DOJ asked the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] to overturn a ruling that the DADT policy is a violation of service members’ constitutional rights, arguing that the impendency of repeal renders the original court decision moot. In July, the Ninth Circuit ruled that DADT would remain partially in effect [JURIST report] during the 60 days prior to its newly-scheduled repeal. The court effectively reiterated its order issued [JURIST report] the previous week, in which it reinstated DADT but explicitly ordered the military to refrain from investigating, penalizing or discharging any of its members as originally provided for under the policy. Hours earlier, Obama, Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff certified DADT’s repeal [JURIST report], scheduling the policy to end on September 20. Obama signed the bill to repeal DADT [JURIST report] in December. The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 [HR 2965 materials] was approved in the Senate in December after being passed [JURIST reports] by the House of Representatives the week before. Since the enactment of DADT in 1993, approximately 13,000 servicemen and women have been discharged from the armed forces as a result of the policy.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.