The Defense Department has reached a sweeping settlement with tens of thousands of people who were dismissed from military service because of their sexual identity, potentially paving the way for veterans to upgrade their discharge status and receive a range of benefits they had been denied.
The settlement, which the Pentagon agreed to late last week and was filed on Monday in Federal District Court in Northern California, must still be approved by a judge.
It applies to a group of more than 30,000 veterans who received less-than-honorable discharges or whose discharge status lists their sexuality.
Advocacy groups had filed a class-action civil rights lawsuit in 2023 alleging that the Pentagon had failed to remedy “ongoing discrimination” after the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy more than a decade earlier.