Shortchanging on GI Bill benefits is no way to thank veterans for their service

As individual Americans, most of us are used to saying “Thank you for your service” when we cross paths with service members in uniform or combat attire.

And as a nation, all of us can surely agree on this: Giving veterans their due for serving our country has to involve more than a polite greeting.

Which is why we hope the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case of Army veteran James Rudisill — and ultimately, rules in his favor. It’s not just for Rudisill, now an FBI agent. It’s also for the millions of other veterans who have found themselves shortchanged on benefits they surely earned putting their lives at risk for the rest of us.

Rudisill, who received the Bronze Star and other honors and was wounded more than once in Afghanistan, has been fighting the Department of Veterans Affairs for years to pay him the maximum GI Bill benefits he earned under two different GI bills.

Problem is, the VA calculated Rudisill’s benefits one way, which would give him just 36 months of benefits to attend divinity school at Yale University, as the Sun-Times’ Stephanie Zimmermann reported recently.

But Rudisill calculated his benefits under the two different GI Bills another way, allowing him to receive the maximum 48 months allowed by the law. Lower courts ruled in his favor twice, and one of those rulings characterized the VA’s calculations as “absurd.”

As former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel put it, “It’s the veteran who deserves the break here.”

Rudisill’s latest win was overturned last December on an appeal by the VA. His Chicago lawyer, Misha Tseytlin, said the VA’s calculations fly in the face of previous rulings, dating back to World War II, that create a “pro-veteran canon” in favor of former service members when there are ambiguities about benefits.

A Supreme Court ruling in Rudisill’s favor would help some 2 million other veterans who also earned benefits under both the Montgomery and the Post-9/11 GI bills —and now rightly expect to tap both bills to the fullest extent possible.

Rudisill has been fighting the VA for so long that he’s now too old to be accepted into the Army chaplain program, his original goal when he left the service.

“This isn’t about me,” as Rudisill, who lives in Virginia, told Zimmermann. “It hasn’t been for years and years now. It’s about my brother and sister veterans being misled and not getting everything they earned.”

That’s a fight worth pursuing — and winning.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com