Supreme Court gives some military veterans more generous educational benefits

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a decorated veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in a drawn-out fight with the government over 12 months of education benefits from the GI Bill.

The court ruled 7-2 that the Department of Veterans Affairs improperly calculated education benefits for James Rudisill, a retired Army captain who lives in northern Virginia.

Rudisill, who is now an FBI agent, belongs to a category of veterans who have earned recognition under two versions of the GI Bill. One version applied to people who served before the attack of September 11, 2001. Congress passed new legislation after September 11.

But Rudisill served both before and after the attack, including tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Each program provides veterans with 36 months of benefits, with a 48-month limit. Rudisill thought he had 10 months of benefits left under the old program, plus another year under the new system. But the VA denied the additional year.

Rudisill said the decision forced him to abandon his plan to attend Yale Divinity School, be ordained as an Episcopal priest and re-enlist in the military as a chaplain.

His lawyers said the decision could affect roughly 1.7 million veterans, but the VA disputed that the number is “anything in the vicinity” of 1.7 million, noting that its lawyers had not identified any other cases involving the same issue brought forward.

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