Harvard LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic Secures Victory For Survivors of LGBTQ+ Veterans
Department of Veterans Affairs To End Marriage Requirements That Excluded LGBTQ+ Families
Earlier this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that it would expand survivor benefits to spouses who, due to anti-LGBTQ+ laws, were unable to get legally married and were thus ineligible for survivor benefits. This expansion of benefits was secured through a joint effort of Harvard’s LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic and Veterans Legal Clinic on behalf of Lawrence Vilord, the surviving spouse of a Vietnam war combat veteran who was not able to marry his spouse prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
Lawrence Vilord first met Rhett Chalk nearly 50 years ago, shortly after Chalk returned from active duty as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam. They fell in love and built a life together in Miami Beach, Florida, jointly owning a home, starting a business, and exchanging rings to celebrate their commitment. In 2003, Mr. Chalk became quadriplegic after his knee gave out — the result of an injury he sustained in Vietnam. Mr. Vilord became his primary caretaker until Mr. Chalk’s untimely death in 2020.
When Mr. Vilord applied to VA for enhanced Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, a benefit for spouses of deceased disabled veterans, VA denied his claim. Even though he and Mr. Chalk had been together for 44 years and had married in 2017 — following the Supreme Court’s invalidation of Florida’s homophobic marriage laws — their marriage fell short of VA’s eight-year requirement for enhanced benefits. “It was another slap in the face,” Vilord says, “another way to delegitimize who we were.”
Unfortunately, the VA announcement leaves many questions unanswered. VA stated that, going forward, it will recognize “marriage-like” relationships in determining whether durational requirements have been met. The agency has not clarified how it will define “marriage-like,” how it will handle past cases where survivor benefits were denied, and how it will make such decisions in the future.
“For too long, surviving spouses of LGBTQ+ veterans were denied the benefits to which they are entitled” said Alexander Chen, Founding Director of the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at Harvard Law School. “This change by the VA is key to addressing that historic injustice. Now, we must continue fighting to ensure there are no remaining gaps in who is eligible to receive VA benefits, and to guarantee that all LGBTQ+ veterans—and their families—are taken care of by the VA.”