Judge blasts bureaucrats, reinstates benefits for wounded combat veteran | McClatchy Washington Bureau

A former Navy corpsman badly wounded in Iraq will have his federal benefits restored, following a judge’s ruling that repeatedly blasts bureaucrats for their rigidity.

In a remarkably sharp-edged opinion, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the Office of Personnel Management to restore benefits to 21-year Navy veteran Glenn Minney. Minney was left nearly blind following a mortar attack at the Haditha Dam in April 2005.

When Minney retired from the Navy and federal service and started working for the Blinded Veterans Association, federal officials cut his government benefits because of his private salary. Minney said he wasn’t adequately informed that his disability payments were at risk; the letter sent to him, for instance, was not in Braille.

Leon called the move a “profound injustice committed by the federal bureaucracy against a blinded veteran.”

In his 18-page decision, Leon granted Minney’s request for a preliminary injunction and directed the OPM to reinstate Minney’s disability payments under the Federal Employee Retirement System.

“Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a situation more extraordinary, or an individual more deserving, of such relief,” Leon wrote.

Minney enlisted in the Navy in 1985, serving both in active duty and in the reserves. He also worked as a firefighter and civilian paramedic in Ohio. He was wounded at the Haditha Dam while attached to the Marines as a field corpsman. The attack came late in the afternoon of April 18.

“Without warning,” Minney subsequently told a House committee, “I was lifted from the ground and a bright flash of light flashed before my eyes.”

The mortar shell destroyed one-quarter of the brain tissue in his parietal and occipital lobes, Leon noted. Minney was left completely blind in his right eye and mostly blind in his left eye.

After leaving the Navy, Minney worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs but was unable to continue. Rather than take a low-paying VA job as a greeter, he retired.

Under federal law, disability payments are stopped if outside earnings reach 80 percent of the individual’s last government salary. Minney, though, said he wasn’t informed of the law when he retired and started working for the Blinded Veterans Association.

In June 2015, the OPM terminated Minney’s benefits.

Leon concluded the government’s general publication of the 80 percent rule was “simply inadequate for a blind veteran who would have had no cause to examine the statute before losing his sight.”

Leon further denounced as inadequate the OPM’s “rubber stamp” process.

“One can only imagine what the reaction would be of the president whose profile adorns the Purple Heart Medal if a court were to side with OPM and allow such ‘process’ to trump the property interests of a severely wounded war veteran!” Leon wrote.

The president whose image is on the Purple Heart is George Washington.