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The Trump administration has shut down a unit of the Department of Veterans Affairs created under President Joe Biden to address disparities in how the federal government provides disability compensation to military service members.
The closure of the Veterans Benefits Administration's Office of Equity Assurance effectively hobbles internal efforts at the VA to investigate and eliminate long-standing racial inequities the department itself has acknowledged.
The office was eliminated as part of the Trump administration's purge of programs broadly aimed at addressing diversity, equity or inclusion, according to emails obtained by ProPublica. But several VA sources said that the office was not exclusively focused on race, and that it takes on cases for a range of veterans to ensure no one is denied proper benefits -- including for reasons of age, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation and geographic location.
Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat, criticized the Trump administration's action as "excessive" and "reckless."
"The closure of the OEA will undoubtedly have disastrous effects on the care we offer veterans," Takano, former chair and now ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, said in a statement to ProPublica. "This office was making it easier for minority veterans to access care and benefits. Its closure will directly impact the care and benefits received by minority veterans."
Richard Brookshire, co-founder of the Black Veterans Project, a nonprofit focused on rectifying discrimination faced by Black veterans, echoed Takano's concerns.
"It's a first step toward gutting the second-largest agency in our federal government," he said. "The consequences will be dire, wide-reaching and deadly."
VA spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz declined to say whether the agency would continue to study racial disparities. But he emphasized in a statement that newly installed VA Secretary Douglas Collins "treats all veterans and beneficiaries fairly and equally, so the Office of Equity Assurance is no longer needed."
He added: "The money saved by closing the office will be redirected to improve health care, benefits and services for Veterans, all of whom we treat fairly and equally. VA will always fulfill its duty to provide veterans, families, caregivers and survivors the health care and benefits they have earned. That is a promise."
The VA grew significantly under the Biden administration, with tens of thousands of employees added to beef up capacity in conjunction with the passage of the PACT Act. The 2022 law expanded health care and benefits for an estimated 3.5 million veterans exposed to toxic substances from burn pits and other chemicals.
The Biden administration also created the OEA and several other initiatives to help analyze and rectify discrimination in the delivery of health care, benefits and other services. Those moves were seen as a direct response to long-standing complaints by minority veterans.
The closure of the OEA is just one of several disruptive staff cuts at the VA in recent weeks. Around 2,400 VA employees have lost their positions since the Trump administration began slashing the federal workforce, with significantly more firings to come.
The department currently employs around 470,000 workers. Kasperowicz said that the administration plans would shed nearly 15% of its workforce, dropping the total to roughly 398,000.
Workers assigned to the OEA were informed on Feb. 14 via email that their positions were terminated immediately and that the office was being "liquidated." The notices were sent to nearly all of the office's employees, effectively dissolving the unit, sources familiar with the firings told ProPublica.
The administration reversed at least some of the terminations later that month, according to correspondence obtained by ProPublica. Workers who were attached to the OEA have now been placed on administrative leave pending a possible reassignment within the VA or another federal department, according to sources familiar with the department who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
"But even if they are reassigned, it won't be to the OEA," said one official familiar with the moves. "It's definitely gone."
Black veterans and their advocates have long complained of a divide in how claims are handled. An ongoing suit filed by the National Veterans Council for Legal Redress against the government gave the suspicions new life.
The group's case was bolstered by data unearthed through Freedom of Information Act requests from the Black Veterans Project, which found that the VA was far more likely to reject applications for service-related disabilities by Black veterans than their white counterparts.
Attorneys for the federal government asked the judge overseeing the suit to dismiss the claims, stating that only the VA secretary has jurisdiction to decide disputes over award benefits and that the court lacks the jurisdiction to hear them.
A 2023 U.S. Government Accountability Office report also concluded that there were disparities. It found that the department approved compensation applications for service-related disabilities like hearing loss, impaired limb movement and post-traumatic stress by Black veterans at lower rates than veterans of other races.
The report found that between 2010 and 2020 the approval rate for benefit applications made by White male veterans was 3% to 22% higher than Black male veterans for the selected medical conditions.
The OEA's demise is just one part of an ongoing rollback of the racial equity programs the Trump administration has called "radical and wasteful."
Since Trump entered office, a webpage detailing the VA's work to address equity and diversity appears to have been scrubbed from its website. In January, the administration fired the heads of internal advisory groups formed to address the concerns and needs of minority and female veterans.
One of those groups, the Center for Minority Veterans, worked in conjunction with the OEA to address racial disparities in disability compensation. Between 2013 and 2018, the advisory group raised its concerns over the Black veterans' lower rate of claims approval to VA leadership five times, according to the National Veterans Council for Legal Redress suit.
Mariela Roca, a former Republican congressional hopeful, took over as director of the advisory group last week. It's unclear what specific strategies the group will pursue to advance the needs and concerns of minority veterans under new leadership. Roca did not respond to a request for comment.
The original version of this article appeared on ProPublica.org.
