People

Dana Montalto

Decades after combat service, local veteran seeks benefits

Larry Vilord and Rhett Chalk

In a potentially precedent-setting case, Veterans Clinic students work to help LGBTQ widower secure VA benefits

Teaching & Learning

How the VA has illegally denied healthcare to thousands of veterans

  • Military fatigues and dog tags on an American Flag with a stethoscope to illustrate health care in the armed services.

    Veterans Legal Clinic report documents VA’s systemic denial of health care to veterans with ‘bad paper’ discharges

    March 6, 2020

    A report published by HLS' Veterans Legal Clinic finds that inadequate training at VA puts more than 400,000 veterans at risk of being unlawfully turned away from treatment for service-related mental health conditions.

  • Veterans Group: Lawsuit Prompts Pentagon to Reopen Database

    January 27, 2020

    The Pentagon will reopen a records database that helps service members who are appealing a less-than-honorable discharge, a veterans group said Friday. The National Veterans Legal Services Program had sued the Defense Department over a lack of access to the database, arguing that the military had been breaking federal law since April. The database contains decisions by military review boards that grant or deny a veteran’s request to upgrade a discharge. Veterans and their lawyers study those decisions in hopes of building successful arguments of their own...Dana Montalto, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Veterans Legal Clinic, told The Associated Press earlier this month that post-9/11 vets have the highest rate of receiving less-than-honorable discharges. She added some veterans can wait years to get a decision from a military review board.