National Veterans Advocacy in Action
By invitation of the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Associate Teaching Professor Rose Carmen Goldberg traveled to Washington, D.C., in July to participate in a congressional roundtable on Capitol Hill. She was accompanied by rising 3L students Connor Callahan and Nathan Pinard, who interned this summer with the Veterans Clinic, as well as Clinic Fellow Rose Valera. The trip allowed the group to observe how Goldberg translates their client-centered work into national policy advocacy and to see their research on proposed legislation manifest in real-time policy discussion.
Professor Goldberg’s comments at the roundtable gave voice to the experiences of veterans across King County and Washington, specifically those whose military service ended in less-than-honorable discharges connected to mental health conditions, military sexual trauma or racism.
A less-than-honorable discharge often triggers a cascade of harms: exclusion from essential VA disability benefits and healthcare, discrimination in civilian life and higher rates of incarceration and suicide.
Goldberg emphasized that to remedy these discharges, veterans are often left navigating complicated legal systems with few places to turn for help. The problem, she told the congressional committee, is not simply that individual veterans cannot access attorneys. The systems designed to assist them are themselves barriers to justice, even for represented veterans.
Her advocacy focused on concrete ways to change those systems.
Among Goldberg’s proposals was prioritizing and expediting applications by veterans to upgrade discharges connected to mental health conditions, military sexual trauma or racism. As things stand now, veterans can wait up to four years for decisions on their applications, leaving them without access to the healthcare and disability benefits they need.
She also pressed for greater transparency from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs about which veterans are being excluded from benefits and healthcare and the reasons for those exclusions. She called for more robust VA outreach to veterans with bad paper discharges to make them aware they can apply not only to the U.S. Department of Defense for a discharge upgrade, but also to the VA for a Character of Discharge review.
“Under the Character of Discharge process, the Department of Veterans Affairs can grant veterans access to full disability benefits and healthcare despite their discharge status. However, this remedy is not advertised and is effectively a secret,” said Goldberg. “Vanishing few veterans know this is an option and go their entire lives struggling without the benefits and healthcare to which they are entitled.”
Without meaningful outreach, a potential remedy remains effectively hidden from the very people who need it.
For Goldberg, these policy proposals grow directly out of the Veterans Clinic’s day-to-day work. The clinic represents veterans while also identifying patterns in the obstacles its clients encounter. Those experiences give students and faculty a window into how legal systems operate in practice and where they fail.
“One of the Veterans Clinic’s strengths is its ability to elevate the lived experiences of our clients to the highest levels of government,” Goldberg explained. “At the same time that students help veterans one-on-one, by building close relationships and robust cases, we push for legislative reforms to increase access to justice for all veterans.”
The visit offered the students a rare opportunity to see firsthand how the individual legal problems they encounter in the clinic connect to the broader policy debates taking place on Capitol Hill. In preparation for the roundtable, the students researched proposed legislation addressing bad paper discharges and the discharge upgrade process, including legislation concerning veterans discharged following military sexual trauma, service-related mental health conditions and LGBTQ status.
Valera, who served as an active-duty Army Judge Advocate for roughly five years, contributed to roundtable preparations as well. Her deep expertise and insights into the military rules and procedures that result in less-than-honorable discharges have enriched the Veterans Clinic’s work in this area. “Valera’s work with the students this summer on this project and others has also expanded their understanding of how bad paper discharges actually happen in the first place,” said Goldberg.
Goldberg’s participation underscored the role that law school clinics play in changing systems that harm their clients. Clinical legal education is not limited to resolving an individual client’s immediate legal problem. It also equips students to recognize systemic failures, develop policy arguments and bring the experiences of their clients into broader conversations about legal reform.
At the roundtable, Goldberg served as a bridge between veterans seeking assistance in Washington state and policymakers considering how federal systems should respond to them. Her advocacy was grounded not in abstract policy questions, but in the stories and legal challenges of real people whom the clinic had come to know. By bringing those experiences to Capitol Hill, she demonstrated how clinical legal work can reach far beyond the individual case.
“It was an honor to participate in the congressional roundtable and give voice to what the Veterans Clinic hears from veterans across King County and Washington every day,” Goldberg said. Many veterans who seek help from the clinic, she explained, were discharged from the military in circumstances involving mental health conditions, sexual assault or racism. “Because of their discharge status, they may be unable to access basic VA benefits, including disability compensation and healthcare, while also facing discrimination in civilian life.”
There was broad agreement at the roundtable that the current systems can and should do more for veterans with less-than-honorable discharges. But Goldberg recognized that agreement alone will not produce change: reform will require sustained advocacy, coalition building among veterans’ rights organizations, engagement from lawmakers and continued attention to the experiences of veterans navigating these systems.
“I was very interested in this topic, as much of my work in the clinic relates directly to it,” Connor Callahan, a rising 3L from Mastic, New York, reflected. “It was heartening to hear so many experts at the highest level of policymaking concerned about the problems I see so many veterans struggle with through my work in the clinic.”
Nathan Pinard, a rising 3L from Auburn, Washington, initially worried that the roundtable might be overly academic or impersonal relative to the profound human effect that discharge status can have on veterans’ lives. Instead, he found the discussion deeply grounded in compassion and the realities of veterans’ lives.
“Each of the speakers incorporated their own individual passions and lived experiences into their arguments,” Pinard observed, “which brought a lot of nuance and depth to the broad discussion about bad paper discharges.”
The students' participation in the visit to the Capitol illustrated one of the Veterans Clinic’s distinctive strengths: connecting individual representation with systemic advocacy. In the clinic, students work closely with veterans to understand their experiences, develop legal arguments and pursue remedies for their individual circumstances. At the same time, those experiences provide a foundation for identifying larger failures in the systems governing veterans’ benefits and discharge status.
For the Veterans Clinic, this visit demonstrated precisely why its students are trained to both advocate for the veteran in front of them and work toward a legal system that better serves veterans as a whole.