A class action lawsuit against the U.S. Government resolved itself through settlement on January 3, 2025, in Farrell v. Department of Defense. The suit was first filed in 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by discharged military veterans.

The lawsuit had been brought by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, gender non-conforming, nonbinary, and intersex (“LGBTQ+”) veterans, all of whom were discharged from the U.S. Armed Forces under “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” (“DADT”) and “similar” policies.

The U.S. government repealed the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy in 2010, at the time expressing condemnation about past military discriminatory actions. The plaintiffs sued the United States Department of Defense in 2023 for “discriminatory policies” and paperwork that the plaintiffs received when discharged from the military.

In legal documents, the plaintiffs alleged that the DD-214 forms used by veterans to access benefits included their sexual orientation, real or perceived, and their discharge status. Their status, they claim, was sometimes dishonorable based upon their sexual orientation, and noted in their paperwork.

As noted by the court in its denial of the defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint, the U.S. military has a formal process in place, that “allows veterans to apply for a “correction” of their discharge papers, but Plaintiffs alleged the procedure is lengthy and burdensome and that by failing to systematically correct the paperwork of all veterans who were discharged under these discriminatory policies, Defendants are violating the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs and the putative class members under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”

Court documents share the allegations by plaintiffs that their discharges were unconstitutional.

As claimed in the suit, the plaintiffs say that paperwork they received upon their discharge “burdens them with discharge rankings below Honorable, and bars them from reenlisting.” 

When “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued specific policy guidance for all military personnel serving in the Armed Forces and included verbiage concerning “administrative separation.”

DoD policy guidance enacted after the repeal stated that “service members will no longer be subject to administrative separation based solely on legal homosexual acts, a statement by a service member that he or she is a homosexual or bisexual (or words to that effect), or marriage or attempted marriage to a person known to be of the same biological sex.'”

Specifically, DoD policies for discharged veterans “also required that any former service member who was discharged solely for legal ‘homosexual' acts be allowed to re-enter the Armed Forces.”

The court’s opinion explained how according to plaintiffs the Stanley Memo, written at the time by Dr. Clifford L. Stanley, “establish[ed] that the baseline was to grant veterans' requests for discharge upgrades following the repeal of DADT.” 

In essence, the Stanley Memo protected the veterans by directing Service Discharge Review Boards to “grant requests to change the narrative reason for a discharge,” re-characterize them as honorable, and change their reentry code to an “immediately-eligible-to-reenter” status.

The United States Office of Public Affairs for the Department of Justice states that under the proposed settlement, all veterans will have the opportunity to “request changes to aspects of their discharge paperwork relating to sexual orientation under more streamlined procedures than currently available.”

A public notice authorized by the U.S. district court due to the new settlement instructs discharged veterans on how to “request a new DD-214 that does not reference sexual orientation.”