As a veterans law attorney in Chicago, I have a client who was introduced to the Marine Corps in 2012 when he was a 17-year-old high school student on the South Side. The military recruiter showed him how the Marine Corps would pay for his college education, allow him to see the world and provide marketable skills for the workforce.
After a year in the service, in 2013, my client was deployed to Afghanistan and made it home physically unharmed. However, he reported he began experiencing nightmares, hyper-vigilance and suicidal ideation — all tell-tale signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. One night, he had a difficult time sleeping and ate a THC gummy to help him sleep.
He was drug-tested by his command, and the urinalysis came back positive. Although his command had several choices, including providing treatment and rehabilitation, they discharged my client, who is a Black man, with a general discharge for violating the military’s drug policy.
Because of his discharge, my client is no longer eligible to access the one thing he valued most: a free education. Not only was this benefit taken from him, but drug abuse is also now listed on his discharge papers, making it harder for him to find a job. He now has a disability that interferes with his ability to work. Those barriers to generational wealth that he believed would be broken by his military service only intensified.
This is not a rare story. Many clients report they served their country to get out of poverty, and they made a bad choice that took their opportunities away.
From 2014-2020, over 100,000 veterans were separated from the military with a lower than honorable discharge.
How Illinois can do more for many veterans
Illinois has begun to change some of its policies around military discharges. In 2021, Illinois passed a law that made an explicit exception for veterans who received lower than honorable discharges due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Most recently, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has indicated that he will sign legislation that allows disabled veterans with lower than honorable discharges to receive a property tax exemption, instead of only relying on the military’s determination of “honorable service.” The legislature has looked to the Veterans Affairs more liberal finding of a veteran’s discharge to determine eligibility.
But there is more to do. Pritzker and the Illinois legislature must take the same type of action on the Illinois Veterans Grant. The Illinois Veterans Grant waives tuition for honorably discharged veterans who attend state institutions.
Over 25%-30% of lower-than-honorable discharges are given to Black service members, who only account for 18% of military discharges. Meanwhile, recruiters often typically target low-income and otherwise vulnerable communities with the promise that the military will pull them out of poverty.
But for many Black veterans, the opposite happens.
Illinois can lead this country in breaking another barrier of systemic racial inequality, by providing disabled veterans with education benefits — regardless of their discharge status.
Yelena Duterte is an assistant professor of law and director of the Veterans Legal Clinic at the University of Illinois Chicago’s School of Law. She is a Public Voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
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