The Overlooked Civil Rights of Combat Veterans: A Personal Reflection on Forgotten Protections

Growing up near Los Angeles and later serving as a combat veteran, I've witnessed firsthand the stark contrast between the passionate advocacy for various civil rights causes and the conspicuous silence surrounding the civil rights violations faced by those who served our nation. While progressive protesters rally for the rights of non-citizens with admirable fervor, a troubling irony emerges: the very people who defended those freedoms abroad find their own civil rights systematically ignored at home.

The scope of this oversight is both comprehensive and shocking. Federal civil rights agencies have created a bureaucratic maze that excludes military families from protection. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO), and Department of Education all exclude military families from their jurisdiction. When veterans do seek recourse through the Labor Department, they face disproportionate denial of discrimination claims, despite being the agency's largest group of protected complainants. This institutional abandonment represents a fundamental breach of the social contract between our nation and those who served.

Perhaps most egregiously, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has ignored Section 4712 of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, which specifically created protections for military families during service and up to five years after discharge. These protections were enacted simultaneously with those covering sexual orientation and gender identity, yet in their 2019 briefing report "In the Name of Hate," the Commission completely omitted military families from consideration. This selective enforcement reveals a troubling pattern: certain groups receive vigorous advocacy while veterans' rights are treated as afterthoughts.

The personal cost of this negligence extends far beyond bureaucratic oversights. Veterans pursuing higher education face anti-military harassment, bias, and discrimination with little recourse. Those who speak out about these injustices often find themselves pushed out of academic and professional positions, their whistleblowing treated not as civic duty but as career suicide. The very institutions that should celebrate intellectual diversity and protect vulnerable populations instead create hostile environments for those who served.

This institutional blindness is particularly galling given the comprehensive nature of civil rights law. Federal protections typically extend across four basic areas: employment, education, housing, and hate crimes. Yet veterans find themselves excluded from meaningful protection in each domain. The Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment and Assistance Act (VEVRAA) fragments the veteran population by creating arbitrary sub-classes, denying protection to many veterans through no fault of their own. Individual soldiers don't decide whether to deploy to war or whether their service will create disabling conditions, making their exclusion from workplace non-discrimination protections both arbitrary and unjust.

The contrast with advocacy for non-citizen rights couldn't be starker. Immigration rights protests draw hundreds, receive extensive media coverage, and mobilize significant political capital. Legal challenges to immigration policies are mounted with impressive resources and determination. Yet when veterans face discrimination in housing, education, or employment, their cases often proceed without fanfare, inadequate funding, or meaningful institutional support.

This disparity isn't merely about resource allocation—it reflects a deeper moral inconsistency. How can a society that prides itself on protecting the vulnerable systematically ignore those who volunteered to protect that very society? How can we champion the rights of those who have never contributed to our national defense while abandoning those who sacrificed years of their lives in service?

The irony cuts particularly deep for those of us who grew up in diverse communities like Los Angeles, where social justice rhetoric is omnipresent. We learned to value equality, fairness, and protection for the marginalized. Yet our military service seems to have placed us outside the circle of progressive concern, creating a bitter contradiction between taught values and lived experience.

Moving forward requires acknowledging that civil rights aren't a zero-sum game. Advocating for veterans' rights doesn't diminish other causes—it strengthens the entire framework of constitutional protection. The proposed Military Civil Rights Act represents a crucial step toward addressing these gaps, but it will require the same passionate advocacy that other civil rights causes routinely receive.

Until then, combat veterans will continue to face a painful irony: having fought for freedoms abroad that we cannot fully access at home, watching as our civil rights remain overshadowed by causes that generate more political sympathy. Our service should be the beginning of our full participation in American civil society, not the end of our claim to equal protection under law.

The time has come to extend the same passionate advocacy to those who served as we do to those who haven't. Justice delayed is justice denied—and veterans have waited far too long.