70-Year Ban Shaken — Troops Fight Back

A gavel resting on a legal document titled 'LAWSUIT' with a pen and an open book in the background

After 70 years of telling raped and abused troops they had no right to sue, Congress is finally weighing a bill that could crack the shield protecting the federal government from its own service members.

Story Snapshot

A new bipartisan Senate bill would let active-duty troops and veterans sexually assaulted in uniform sue the United States for damages.
The bill attacks the long‑standing Feres Doctrine, which has blocked most lawsuits by service members for injuries “incident to service.”^[7]
Supporters say this is about basic equality under the law; opponents warn of higher costs and disruption to military command.^[6]
The fight exposes a deeper anger on left and right that the defense establishment protects itself better than it protects rank‑and‑file Americans.

What the new bill would change for abused service members

Senators from both parties are pushing a bill that would, for the first time, give many sexually abused active-duty troops and veterans a clear path to sue the federal government in civilian court for money damages.^[11] Today, most of these survivors are blocked by the Feres Doctrine, a judge‑made rule from 1950 that says service members cannot sue for injuries that happen “incident to service.”^[17] The new proposal would carve out sexual assault and harassment, treating them as wrongs that no government can hide behind military status to excuse.

Supporters argue that this change is not radical; it simply gives troops the same basic right every civilian worker already has.^[5] In almost any other job in America, an employee can bring a lawsuit against their employer for harassment or assault at work, often under federal civil rights laws.^[5] Because of Feres and other carve‑outs, service members have been excluded from laws like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that protect civilians from discrimination and abuse at work, leaving them with internal systems that many see as broken.^[5]

How Feres and past carve‑outs created today’s legal standoff

The Feres Doctrine grew out of a Supreme Court case where the court stretched the Federal Tort Claims Act, a law meant to let people sue the government for negligence.^[17] Over time, judges used Feres to block almost any lawsuit by troops, even when the harm had little to do with combat or real military decisions.^[5] Advocates say this has turned Feres into a shield for the bureaucracy, not a tool to protect national security. The result: survivors of rape, medical malpractice, and other abuses often had no civil recourse at all.^[1]

Recent cracks in that shield helped set the stage for the new bill. In 2019, Congress passed the SFC Richard Stayskal Military Medical Accountability Act, which opened a narrow path for troops to seek compensation for medical malpractice at military hospitals.^[7] In 2022, Congress also passed the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, allowing many Marines and families harmed by toxic water at that base to sue the government.^[6] Legal scholars say these targeted carve‑outs prove Congress can make exceptions to Feres when the injustice becomes too obvious to ignore.^[6]

Why sexual assault is testing the limits of “incident to service”

Sexual assault in the ranks has become a crisis that neither party can credibly deny. One legal note describes it as a “pervasive and lingering problem” that the Department of Defense has failed to fix despite years of programs and training.^[7] Survivors often report fear of reprisal if they speak up, including damage to their careers or social isolation inside their unit.^[14] At the same time, research shows vanishingly few reported assaults lead to conviction under the military justice system, leaving many victims feeling the institution protects itself first.^[20]

Courts are starting to question whether rape can ever honestly be called “incident to service.” In Spletstoser v. Hyten, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit allowed a colonel’s civil case against a general to move forward, ruling that sexual assault could not conceivably serve any military purpose and was not incident to her service.^[6] The decision only directly applies in western states, but it gave advocates a legal roadmap and showed that at least some judges are no longer willing to let Feres block every assault claim.^[2]

Deep-state distrust: what both conservatives and liberals see in this fight

For many conservatives, the central grievance is simple: Washington elites write rules that protect themselves while preaching “support the troops.” They see Feres as another example of a government that will spend billions on new weapons but claim it cannot afford accountability when its own people are hurt by negligence or abuse.^[6] When the Pentagon argues that lawsuits would be too costly, critics on the right hear an entrenched bureaucracy guarding its budget and power, not defending freedom.^[6]

“Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in introducing the Military Sexual Trauma Accountability Act, bipartisan legislation to help servicemembers and veterans seek accountability when federal government… pic.twitter.com/55VC5UzWxk

— NativeTexan (@NativeTexan_17) June 24, 2026

Many liberals look at the same facts and see a different but related failure. They see women, men, and LGBT troops trapped in a closed system where their abusers may outrank them, where reporting can kill a career, and where civil rights laws that apply everywhere else suddenly stop at the base gate.^[3] For them, this bill is part of a wider push to make powerful institutions answer to ordinary people, not the other way around. Both sides, in their own language, are reacting to a sense that the “deep state” takes care of its own first.^[3]

What the bill does not solve — and why details matter

Even supporters admit the bill is only a step. The exact text and bill number have not been widely released, so many legal details remain unclear.^[11] Analysts note that it may not cover other intentional wrongs, such as non‑sexual assaults or theft by superiors, which Feres still tends to shield.^[19] Others warn there is no hard proof yet that letting survivors sue will, by itself, reduce the number of assaults, though it might finally give victims some measure of justice.^[7]

Opponents focus on different gaps. They argue that opening the door to lawsuits could invite judges and juries to second‑guess military decisions, undermine command, and drive up costs for taxpayers.^[6] Yet they have offered little data showing that civil liability in this narrow area would really damage discipline.^[6] That lack of transparency feeds a deeper worry shared by many Americans across the spectrum: the people in charge of the most powerful military on earth are asking again for blind trust, even after decades of failure on an issue as basic as protecting their own.