A former Army soldier serving a 40-year prison sentence has pushed a legal question all the way to the nation’s highest court — one that could reshape how veterans across the country challenge decisions about their benefits. The case raises a fundamental question: when the federal government’s own review system may fall short, where does a veteran go for justice?
Floyd Johnson enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1983 and served until 1985. Nearly three decades later, in 2013, he was convicted on felony charges in Florida and sentenced to 40 years in prison. While incarcerated, Johnson was diagnosed with service-connected post-traumatic stress disorder and awarded an 80% disability rating by the Department of Veterans Affairs. But because federal law restricts disability benefits for veterans imprisoned for more than 60 days, that rating was cut to 10%.
Johnson initially filed suit on his own behalf in a Florida district court, arguing that Congress violated his constitutional rights by capping benefits for incarcerated veterans. That court dismissed his case in 2022. He then appealed to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, where he gained legal representation and refocused his challenge — this time targeting the Veterans Judicial Review Act of 1988.
What the Veterans Judicial Review Act Does
The Veterans Judicial Review Act created the current pathway for veterans to contest denied or disputed disability claims. Under that system, a veteran first goes to the Board of Veterans Appeals (BVA). If that result is unsatisfactory, they can appeal to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and then to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Johnson’s legal team, led by attorney Jeffrey Chen of the Atlanta-based firm Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore, argued that this structure improperly limits veterans to that single pipeline — effectively blocking them from filing suit in a federal district court, even when constitutional questions are at stake. They also pointed out that courts in other parts of the country have allowed veterans to bring such cases to district courts, creating an uneven legal landscape depending on where a veteran lives.
“A veteran’s access to the courts should not vary depending on where he lives. This case presents an ideal vehicle for resolving this conflict on an important question of federal law,”
Johnson’s attorneys wrote in their Supreme Court petition.
What the Justices Said
During oral arguments on Monday, the justices pressed both sides on the structure of the veterans’ appeals system. Justice Sonia Sotomayor described the existing setup as unusual — though not for the reasons Johnson’s legal team raised. She highlighted that while the BVA is barred by regulation from addressing constitutional questions, veterans can still appeal BVA decisions, yet the government has no reciprocal right of appeal under the law.
“We have to take the system as it exists, and that’s a very odd system, is it not? It leads to your conclusion … which is let constitutional questions go to the court because that’s where the government would have a right to defend the law,”
Sotomayor said.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, meanwhile, pushed back on the notion that Johnson lacked a meaningful path to raise constitutional claims. She noted that if the BVA violated a veteran’s constitutional rights, the veteran could still appeal up through the Court of Veterans Appeals and eventually reach the federal circuit, where constitutional matters are resolved.
“He has that route. He still has a way of pressing the constitutional claim,”
Barrett said.
Chen countered that limiting reviews to the BVA process would
“empower the inferior officers of the BVA to render final decisions”
and sidestep the law.
“None of the government’s proposed workarounds is consistent with the Veterans Judicial Review Act,”
he said.
The Government’s Position
Kevin Barber, Assistant to the Solicitor General, defended the current framework. He argued that a prior case cited by Johnson’s team predated the Veterans Judicial Review Act and no longer applied because the law had overhauled the entire process.
“VJRA fundamentally changed the statutory scheme. … It’s the current statute that matters,”
Barber said.
Barber also rejected the claim that the VA is unable to decide constitutional challenges.
“True, the Board of Veterans Appeals in the past has been inconsistent on its authority, sometimes deciding such claims and sometimes not, but as we see it, the board can and must decide veterans’ constitutional claims,”
he said.
“Petitioner’s contrary view would conflict with the statutory text and deprive veterans of their ability to bring such claims to the agency. It would even compel the VA to enforce a hypothetical benefit statute that was blatantly unconstitutional.”
A Broader Impact
The stakes of this case extend well beyond one man’s prison cell. According to the Department of Justice, an estimated 107,400 veterans are currently held in state or federal prisons, though not all receive VA disability benefits. Johnson’s case does not directly challenge the law that caps those benefits for incarcerated veterans — but his attorneys have made clear he intends to take up that fight once the current legal question is settled.
The reach of the underlying statute is significant. As Johnson’s attorneys noted in their Supreme Court petition,
“Section 5313, the statute Mr. Johnson challenges, limits the benefits of thousands of veterans. Moreover, 30 percent of all veterans experience service-connected disabilities, and veterans with PTSD are disproportionately at risk of incarceration.”
Elsewhere in veterans’ legal news, two veterans are battling in court over defamation and for-profit claims processing, and nearly 500,000 veterans are set to receive a three-month break from life insurance premiums. On the military family front, a new presidential commission is targeting quality-of-life issues for military spouses, and officials are warning the military community about scammers exploiting troops’ goodwill. In other service-related coverage, the longtime AAFES director recently retired after expanding benefits for veterans and service members.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling in the case early next year. For video coverage of related defense and military topics — including Ukraine’s emerging robotic warfare strategy, a retired Green Beret’s mine-clearing mission, and a new NORAD warning system contract — additional reporting is available through Army Times.
