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You are here: Home / DC Authors / Congress Takes Responsibility For Camp Lejeune Poisoning Victims

Congress Takes Responsibility For Camp Lejeune Poisoning Victims

March 14, 2022 by Andrew Straw 5 Comments

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1 million people, veterans and their family members, were poisoned at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, while 3.5 million veterans were exposed to the burn pits of America’s Southwest Asia wars.

I was born at Camp LeJeune in 1969 and had 19 months of exposure to the toxins at the base in utero and as an infant as my father trained for his Vietnam duties.  My dad served in Vietnam from 1970-1971 and was exposed to Agent Orange, also known as “orange crush.”

Agent Orange became a part of American culture, with R.E.M. writing a song about the damage and the Vietnam War.  It is hard to think about Vietnam now without thinking of Agent Orange and the effects both on the American veterans and Vietnamese children even decades after the war ended.

Congress passed laws to provide relief to people injured by the government, but federal courts have been applying irrational excuses not to allow those injured the relief.  For instance, in 2012, Congress passed a law that those who “resided” at Camp LeJeune could have health coverage for the effects of their poisoning.  I was denied because my parents had an off-base residence while my father served at Camp LeJeune.  My 19 months of exposure and being born on top of that EPA Superfund Site toxic waste dump of a base was not enough for the judges.

So, because of these federal judges (paid by the same government that poisoned me), I had no health coverage for my disabilities, listed in the Act regulations.  38 C.F.R. § 17.400(b)(xiv).  As if that was not enough, my mother died of another listed condition: breast cancer.  38 C.F.R. § 17.400(b)(iii).  The U.S. Supreme Court has said that such remedial laws are to be construed broadly.  Tcherepnin v. Knight, 389 U.S. 332, 336 (1967).  The Board of Veterans Appeals and the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied me the health coverage for the poisoning where I was born and my 7 years of litigating the issue resulted in a big, fat NO. Straw v. Wilkie, 843 F. App’x 263 (Fed. Cir. 1/15/2021); Straw v. Wilkie, 32 Vet. App. 374, 375 (2020).

The victims of Agent Orange have tried to sue the chemical companies for relief, but just like with Camp LeJeune poisoning victims during the same time period, federal courts have found ways to block the victims.

Federal lawsuits combined in a Multi-District-Litigation (MDL-2218) were dismissed so that no civilian Camp LeJeune victim could be compensated and the U.S. Supreme Court allowed this dismissal even when it had a precedent from 2015 allowing the time limit of the Federal Tort Claims Act to be expanded.  After all, the U.S. Marine Corps lied about the poisons, refused to notify those poisoned, and downplayed the effect of being poisoned.  The failure to notify in itself likely made my mother’s cancer a fatal diagnosis because it was caught too late.  It also would have helped me to know I was poisoned and that this poisoning caused my mental illness, bipolar disorder.

Earlier diagnosis makes these illnesses easier to treat.  Instead, the government was rewarded for its duplicity by dismissing the lawsuits of the victims, who had no control over his information.  The federal courts were wholly unsympathetic, blaming the victims for not knowing information withheld by the government.  Even a disability exception in the North Carolina law was denied to me even though I clearly am eligible for it.  Andrew U. D. Straw v. USA, et. al., 16-17573 (11th Cir. 5/22/2019)(cert. denied 6/1/2020); In Re Camp Lejeune, NC Water Contamination Lit., 263 F.Supp.3d 1318 (N.D. Ga. 12/5/2016).

It became clear that the North Carolina statute of limitations (time limit) was being used against the victims in federal court.  But the federal courts would not allow me to sue North Carolina for the ADA disability discrimination violation inherent in that state law.  Straw v. North Carolina, 20-1295 (4th Cir. 2020); Straw v. State of North Carolina, 7:18-cv-0074-M, 2020 WL 1042141 (E.D.N.C. Mar. 3, 2020).  The district court expressed sympathy but would not allow me to sue the State of North Carolina.  Every avenue has been rejected by federal judges.

Congress watched from the sidelines.  The clamor for justice only grew as these courts, unelected by anyone, denied relief.  In 2020, a bill was introduced to compensate the victims.  A similar bill was introduced in 2021 called the Camp LeJeune Justice Act.  H.R. 2192.  The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, made a speech in 2021 explaining the injustice foisted on the children of veterans and their spouses, not to mention the veterans themselves.  I worked hard asking House members to support this law and many I contacted did so.  H.R. 2192 has over 150 sponsors in the House, about 1/3 of them Republicans.

A much larger bill was pending in 2021 called the PACT Act, which was originally to address burn pit poisoning in Southwest Asia over the past 20+ years, including veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq.  This bill, H.R. 3967, was voted out of the Veterans Affairs Committee and while it was pending before the Rules Committee in February 2022, Camp LeJeune Justice Act was added as Section 706 in Title VII.  The full text of the Act with amendments can be found on the H.R. 3967 page.

Republicans opposed placing the Camp LeJeune Justice Act into the larger law, with Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) pretending to represent the views of veterans when the Rules Committee Chair, Rep. McGovern, responded that every major veteran group supports Camp LeJeune Justice Act as well as the larger PACT Act of which it became a part.  The argument Bost made was that Camp LeJeune Justice was “air-dropped” into the larger bill, but about 50 Republicans were already supporting H.R. 2192.

Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Takano spoke in favor of the PACT Act on the floor of the House.  President Biden mentioned burn pits in his first State of the Union address and the White House issued a strong statement of support of the House bill, H.R. 3967.  Biden believes burn pit poisons caused his son’s brain cancer and death.  Speaker Pelosi rose and spoke in favor of H.R. 3967 while mentioning Camp LeJeune poisoning.  Thankfully, it passed by a vote of 256-174, with over 30 Republicans voting yes while not a single Democrat voted no.

Republicans complained about the cost at about $300 billion over 10 years, but this is a tiny fraction of the overall defense budget and Rep. Steny Hoyer said that veterans costs are part of the cost of war and realistically do belong as part of the Defense Budget, which routinely is expanded and passed by Congress with more money than the president even asks.  This year, for instance, the Defense Budget was passed with $25 billion beyond the request, resulting in a one-year total of $768 billion.

256 votes out of 430 cast is 59.53%.  Rounding up, this is 60% of the House.  If 60 U.S. senators support this bill and pass it, it will pass in the same form.  President Biden has given his assurance that he supports this bill and he will sign it.

What does this mean?  It means that families like mine with such tragedies, blasted into pieces with lives lost and ruined, will be paid for what the United States Marine Corps did to us.  The only thing that concerns me is that a federal judge needs to be involved after all of the resistance up to now from the federal judicial branch and its unsympathetic judges.  The 9 people affected in my family will hire an attorney or attorneys.  The lawyer who wrote the Camp LeJeune Justice Act is Ed Bell.  He is my choice.

After the wrongful death of my mom, the poisoning of me and my brother and my daughter, not to mention the poisoning of my father, a Vietnam War veteran, I expect my family to be completely and totally compensated for what was done to us by the United States government without our consent.  I plan to make my part of the world here in the Philippines even more of a paradise for myself and my neighbors.

1 million people, veterans and their family members, were poisoned at Camp LeJeune, while 3.5 million veterans were exposed to the burn pits in Southwest Asia.  These matters belong together.

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Filed Under: DC Authors Tagged With: Cambodia, Vietnam

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About Andrew Straw

Andrew Straw, a Democracy Chronicles columnist since 2018, is a person with disabilities who practiced disability law and engages in disability law reform advocacy. Straw was a Virginia lawyer and has served as corporate counsel for billionaire Alan M. Voorhees, who designed the Interstate Highway System and the Metro in Washington DC. Straw then worked for the Chief Justice of Indiana and was the assistant dean in charge of the International Programs at Indiana University-Maurer School of Law. Straw remains a member of the bar in good standing since 1999 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

He grew up in Indiana, where his brother, a retired USAF captain and twice a critical care trauma nurse veteran of Afghanistan, ran as a Democratic candidate for sheriff of Hamilton County in 2018. Jason Straw was head of Indiana NORML and still seeks reforms of the state’s marijuana laws like most other states have. Jason is known as “Captain Cannabis.”

Andrew Straw was born at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, where his father was training as a U.S. Marine for his Vietnam War duty. Straw was thus poisoned on the first days of his life but was denied compensation and health care. MDL-2218; Straw v. Wilkie, 843 F. App’x 263 (Fed. Cir. 1/15/2021); Straw v. United States, 4 F.4th 1358 (Fed. Cir. 2021). Straw started a group for people born or poisoned there called Children of Camp LeJeune in 2015. Congress voted to compensate people like Straw and his dead mother from the poisoning (S. 3373, Title VIII, Sec. 804). This new law passed the U.S. House by 342-88 and the U.S. Senate by 86-11. "Camp LeJeune Justice Act of 2022" was signed by President Biden on August 10, 2022.

Straw is a 9/11 victim, having been exposed to the toxic dust South of Canal Street in New York City in October 2001, with respiratory and throat illness.

Straw has visited 16 countries and has lived in the United States, Italy, New Zealand, Turkey, and the Philippines. Straw provided services to the Italian Foreign Ministry as a contractor and passed the written U.S. Foreign Service Officer Test in 1998. A National Merit Scholar, Andrew Straw’s CV can be found here. Straw has lived in the Philippines for over 5 years, starting June 2018, studying disability access in that country, but may one day return to the United States when the human rights violations against him stop.

He is an asylum seeker due to the discrimination and human rights violations of state and federal courts in the USA. Andrew Straw lives just 1374 km from where his father was stationed in Vietnam. See also. Straw is engaging in pro se civil rights and constitutional law reform from a distance.

Straw claims the certiorari system limiting access to the U.S. Supreme Court is unconstitutional under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment. If his lawsuit is successful, this will open the gates to 7,000+ appeals to the Supreme Court each year that are arbitrarily denied now without a merits decision in each. Such a reform would be the biggest pro-access change in federal court policy since the American Founding. Straw v. United States, 23-16039 (9th Cir.). He is pursuing these massive changes without any help, pro se and in forma pauperis, after being denied certiorari himself 13x from 2014 to 2022.

Notably, Straw's law license property rights have been denied at all levels, from state trial court to U.S. Supreme Court.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. samuel allen maynard says

    March 15, 2022 at 10:12 pm

    sorry for you and your family’s loss. i to an a camp lejeune victim. was there in 1986 for 1141 school. it wrecked my life to. keep up the fight and we will take them down.

    Reply
    • Andrew U. D. Straw says

      March 16, 2022 at 1:07 am

      Contact your U.S. senator. We’ll get there.

      In solidarity,

      Andrew

      Reply
    • mike swanson says

      March 16, 2022 at 2:13 am

      camp lejune has 90 toxins FIFTY in ground water…..baisc entitlement—https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/38/1131
      I know more than anyone now

      Reply
  2. mike swanson says

    March 16, 2022 at 2:17 am

    80 more toxic bases like camp Lejuene have been a surer fund act on npl for over 30 years— It took the United States 27 years, when found out about Toxic drinking water at Camp Lejeune at the end of 2013. I think at first it said if you were there between 1953-1985, then it went to1953- 1987. The 4 toxins in the drinking water are tce tce, pce, benzene and vinyl chloride. I researched and found tce and vinyl chloride causes degeneration of the cerebellum, ataxia and Cerebellar ataxia. One source was from the Oregon State Library and the other was from (ATSDR) agency toxic substance disease registry which congress created in 1980. They are charged under the “SUPERFUND ACT” the act lists toxic waste lands, but they have to score high enough to make the NPL National Priority List, ATSDR does PHA’s, public health assesments on all those on that list. In 2019 the list has over 1,330 sites and 157 of them are Federal Facilities, that include military bases.
    Let me name some; Adak Naval air station , Eielson and Elmendorf AFB, Fort Richardson, Fort Wainwright, in Alaska.
    Williams AFB, Yuma USMC air station in Arizona.
    California we have; Alameda A/S, Barstow USMC, Camp Pendleton (San Diego), Castle AFB, Concord/Naval, Edwards AFB, El Toro A/S, Fort Ord, George AFB, Hunters point, March and Mather, McLellan AFB, Moffet naval, Norton AFB, Sacramento army depot, sharp army depot, Travis AFB.
    In Colorado we have; Air force plant/waterton, Rocky mtn arsenal, —-Connecticut we have; New London submarine base, ————Delaware we have ; Dover AFB———In DC we have; Washington naval yard——————Florida we have; Cecil Field NAS, Homestead AFB, Jacksonville naval, Pensacola naval a/s, Tyndall AFB, whiting field naval, ————-Georgia we have; USMC logistics/Albany, and Robins AFB————GUAM and Anderson AFB—————Hawiia has 2———-Idaho and mountain home AFB——–Illinois and Savana army,–Kansas and Fort Riley—Maine and Brunswick naval air, Loring AFB—————-Maryland and Andrews AFB, Curtis bay coast guard, Fort Dietrick, Fort George meade, Patuxent river naval, ————–Massacesettes and Fort Devens, Hanscom field AFB, Otis air national guard, south Weymouth naval, ———-New Hampshire and Pease AFB————New Jersey and McGuire AFB, naval air in Lakehurst, Piccatinny army, —————New York and Griffis AFB, Platts burg AFB, Seneca army depot——–North Carolina and Camp Lejeune (on since 1989 to present), Cherry Point USMC————Ohio and Wright-Patterson AFB————-Oklahoma and Tinker AFB—————–Oregon and Umatilla army depot—————-Pennsylvania and LetterKenny army depot, Naval areas in mechanicsburg and warminister township, Tobyhanna army depot, willow grove naval———————-Rhode Island and Newport navy education area—————South Carolina and Paris Island————–South Dakota and Ellsworth AFB—————-UTAH and Hill AFB, Toole army depot——————Virgina and Fort Eustis army, Langley AFB, Virginia beach, Quantico, York town, Williamsburg, Dahlgren, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Chesapeake——————————–Washington and American Lake Gardens/McChord AFB, Bangor Naval Submarine Base, Fairchild Air Force Base, Fort Lewis, Jackson Park Housing Complex (USNAVY), Naval Air Station, Whidbey Island, Puget Sound Naval———————–West Virginia Ordnance (USARMY)——————Wyoming and F.E. Warren Air Force Base—————

    Reply
  3. Andrew U. D. Straw says

    March 16, 2022 at 11:34 am

    I get the importance of not forgetting the other bases, and my father was stationed at 4 bases that later were made EPA Superfund sites.

    However, you cannot do everything at once. Even the Democrats would stop supporting compensation if the price tag were $10 trillion. That’s probably the enormity of the whole situation. And we can’t fairly deny that American actions left people poisoned, disabled, and dead wherever America set up a base. That includes the toxic waste piles in Okinawa and Subic Bay in the Philippines.

    The attitudes of American military leadership have been that the environment does not matter and will not be considered AT ALL.

    So, getting justice for Camp LeJeune is like D-Day or the invasion of Sicily. It is the foot in the door so more can be done.

    Asking for compensation for every person who has ever served on an EPA Superfund site (or their children and spouses) is like doing D-Day by dropping paratroopers all over Italy, France, Germany, and Poland so we can “take care of everything at once.”

    We need some victories, not rhetoric that will not result in legislation.

    Reply

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