Current Military Lawsuit Updates: AFFF, Camp Lejeune, Burn Pits

Current military lawsuits in mid-2026 span environmental contamination, defective equipment, constitutional challenges to Pentagon policy, employment protections, and long-running veterans’ benefits fights. Some are deep into payout, some are stalled awaiting bellwether trials, and a few just changed direction on appeal. Below is where the most consequential cases stand, what they cover, and who they affect.

AFFF and PFAS Water Contamination

The largest active military-related environmental case is In Re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation, a multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina before Judge Richard M. Gergel. As of May 2026, roughly 15,232 cases are pending.¹ The suits target manufacturers of AFFF, a firefighting foam long used on military bases that contains PFAS chemicals linked to cancer and other serious health conditions.

The water-supplier side of the litigation has already produced enormous settlements. 3M agreed to pay $10.3 billion over 13 years to public water suppliers. DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva agreed to a combined $1.185 billion fund, and a separate $750 million settlement with Tyco Fire Products is pending court approval.¹ Those figures resolve claims about contaminated drinking water systems. They do not resolve individual injury claims.

On the personal-injury side, nothing has settled. The court is overseeing 28 bellwether cases covering kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, and ulcerative colitis. A bellwether trial originally set for October 2025 remains off-calendar, and attorneys involved anticipate a possible global personal-injury resolution in 2026 or 2027.¹ Primary claimants include military firefighters, service members who trained with AFFF, and those who worked or lived near contaminated bases. Qualifying conditions include kidney, testicular, and prostate cancers, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, and liver damage.

3M Combat Arms Earplugs

The $6.01 billion settlement resolving claims that 3M sold defective Combat Arms Version 2 earplugs to service members between 1999 and 2015 is now well into its payout phase. As of January 2026, more than $3.1 billion had gone to claimants, with over 271,000 veterans participating.²³ The federal MDL has been fully wound down, and all cases dismissed.

Payments under the Early Payment Program and the first wave of cases are essentially complete. Point-based awards under the Deferred Payment Program began after October 2025, and payments from the Extraordinary Injury Fund are largely finished. The full structure extends through 2029 for remaining deferred and extraordinary-injury payments. Compensation runs off a point system that weighs the severity of hearing loss, whether both ears are affected, documented tinnitus, age, and connection to earplug use. BrownGreer PLC, the settlement administrator, runs a secure portal for official communications and has warned claimants about scammers impersonating administrators.

Camp Lejeune Water Contamination

Under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022, veterans and family members can sue the federal government for injuries linked to decades of water contamination at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Roughly 408,860 administrative claims were filed with the Department of the Navy before the August 10, 2024, filing deadline.⁴⁵ The Navy is no longer accepting new claims but continues to review those already submitted.

As of February 2026, the Department of Justice had approved more than $691 million in settlement offers, with $469 million already paid. The DOJ’s Elective Option, announced in September 2023, covers nine qualifying diseases and pays qualifying claimants within 60 days of acceptance. Roughly 2,353 administrative EO offers had been approved, and 1,605 accepted.⁵ EO payments are not reduced by offsets for VA disability benefits, Medicare, or TRICARE, which distinguishes them from awards obtained in court.⁶

In the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, 3,718 lawsuits have been filed and assigned to four judges. Three Track 1 bellwether cases have settled for $10,000, $24,000, and $405, raising questions about what future litigation outcomes may look like next to the Elective Option. No firm trial dates have been set, and plaintiffs are pressing to expedite proceedings given the advanced age and declining health of many victims.⁵

A major unresolved question is whether future VA, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits should be subtracted from any court award. The government argues the CLJA requires offsets for both past and future benefits. Plaintiffs contend the statute limits offsets to benefits already paid and that subtracting speculative future benefits would undercompensate victims. Expert discovery on the issue is ongoing, and the answer will significantly move the value of individual claims.⁶

Transgender Military Service Ban

One of the highest-profile military cases of 2026 is Talbott v. USA, a challenge to President Trump’s January 27, 2025, executive order barring transgender individuals from serving. GLAD Law and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights filed the suit the day after the order on behalf of active-duty service members and would-be enlistees.⁷

Judge Ana Reyes issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the ban in March 2025. In May 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect while litigation continued, overriding the lower court’s injunction.⁷

On June 1, 2026, a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked the administration, in a 2-to-1 ruling, from removing 28 named transgender service members while the case proceeds. Judge Robert L. Wilkins, writing for the majority, said the administration had provided little evidence that transgender troops harm military operations and described the policy as “driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.”⁸ The order protects only the named plaintiffs and does not stop the administration from barring new transgender recruits. Lead plaintiff Nicolas Talbott is a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve. Plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification on April 15, 2026, seeking protections for all transgender service members, with a hearing set for June 30, 2026.⁹

Pentagon Press Restrictions

In New York Times v. Department of Defense, a federal court struck down Pentagon rules that required journalists to sign agreements limiting their solicitation of information, pledging not to report unapproved information, and giving the department authority to revoke credentials of reporters deemed a “security or safety risk.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell introduced the rules in October 2025.¹⁰

The New York Times sued in December 2025. On March 20, 2026, Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that the restrictions violated the First Amendment as viewpoint discrimination and censorship and violated the Fifth Amendment as unconstitutionally vague. When the Pentagon responded by confining reinstated journalists to a Pentagon annex without unescorted access, Judge Friedman struck that policy down too, writing that the department “cannot simply reinstate an unlawful policy under the guise of taking ‘new’ action.”¹⁰

The Defense Department filed a notice of appeal on April 10, 2026.¹¹ On April 27, 2026, a D.C. appellate court stayed Judge Friedman’s ruling, allowing the Pentagon to temporarily require official escorts for all reporters visiting the building while the appeal proceeds.¹²

Burn Pit Exposure and the PACT Act

For burn pit injuries, the legal action has largely moved out of civil courts and into the VA benefits system. Courts have dismissed most tort claims against the government and contractors such as KBR, treating burn pit operations as protected military judgment. An earlier settlement saw KBR pay $85 million in 2019 to resolve claims from more than 2,000 veterans, but new damages litigation has been effectively foreclosed.

The primary vehicle for relief is now the PACT Act of 2022, which added more than 20 presumptive conditions tied to burn pits and other toxic exposures and removed the requirement that veterans individually prove service caused their illness. Between August 2022 and August 2025, the VA approved more than 1.9 million PACT Act-related claims and paid out more than $11 billion in benefits.¹³

A significant class-action win came on March 6, 2026, in Smoke et al. v. Driscoll, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Under the settlement, the Army agreed to designate open-air burn pits in combat zones as “instrumentalities of war,” which makes disability retirement pay for affected conditions tax-exempt. The Army committed to reviewing the records of all veterans medically retired for burn-pit-related PACT Act conditions and issuing revised determinations within six months.¹⁴ The Department of Defense estimates roughly 3.5 million service members were exposed to burn pits.

COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Back Pay

Three class actions are pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on behalf of service members who were involuntarily discharged, forced into early retirement, or otherwise penalized for refusing the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, in effect from August 2021 to January 2023.

Bassen v. United States covers approximately 8,500 active-duty (non-Coast Guard) service members who were involuntarily discharged or constructively separated. As of May 2026, the court paused the case after President Trump signed an executive order providing back pay and benefits to affected service members. The case remains active in the event the executive order process falls short.¹⁵
Botello v. United States, formerly referenced as Konie, involves an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 National Guard and reserve members who were dropped from orders, denied pay, or barred from participating in duties. A hearing on a government motion to pause proceedings was scheduled for July 2026.
Harkins v. United States covers Coast Guard members. Plaintiffs filed for class certification in July 2026, seeking to include service members who voluntarily separated and those denied religious exemptions.

None of the three has reached a ruling on the merits. How the executive order process interacts with the pending litigation is a key open question heading into late 2026.

Retroactive Combat-Related Special Compensation

In June 2025, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Soto v. United States that the Department of Defense had improperly limited retroactive Combat-Related Special Compensation payments to a six-year lookback period.¹⁶ That should have ended the fight. It didn’t.

After the ruling, the DOD issued guidance in August 2025 and again in January 2026 that plaintiffs say still restricted retroactive benefits by tying the effective date to when a veteran applied rather than when they became eligible. The National Veterans Legal Services Program and Sidley Austin then filed Ploe v. United States in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, originally captioned Doe v. United States in November 2025 and amended in March 2026. The proposed class includes veterans wrongfully denied retroactive CRSC benefits under the post-Soto guidance.¹⁶ On May 14, 2026, the DOD issued new guidance retracting the prior limitations and committing to review affected veterans’ records and issue corrected decisions.¹⁷ The case remains active, and a motion for class certification was filed on March 13, 2026.

Privatized Military Housing

A suit against Balfour Beatty Communities, one of the largest privatized military housing providers, is advancing in federal court. In In Re: Key West NAS Litigation, 272 military families allege that Balfour Beatty profited from a monopoly position while providing housing plagued by collapsing ceilings, mold, structural defects, plumbing and electrical failures, lead paint, and asbestos at Naval Air Station Key West. An amended master complaint was filed on May 27, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Balfour Beatty denies the allegations.¹⁸

The civil case follows a separate 2021 criminal matter in which Balfour Beatty Communities pleaded guilty to defrauding the U.S. military by falsifying maintenance records and agreed to pay $65 million in fines and restitution. Court-imposed independent compliance monitoring from that case concluded on June 6, 2026.¹⁸ Housing-related claims broadly face a hurdle called the “federal enclave doctrine,” which lets housing providers argue that state consumer protection and environmental laws do not apply on military installations.¹⁹

Other Veterans Class Actions

Several additional class actions affecting service members and veterans are active:

Nehmer v. Department of Veterans Affairs is a long-running class action for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Under a 1991 consent decree, the VA must identify and pay retroactive benefits whenever science links a new disease to Agent Orange exposure. The class was expanded in 2020 to include Blue Water Navy veterans.¹⁷
Torres v. Del Toro challenges a 2016–2018 Navy policy that restricted the Physical Evaluation Board from considering all of a service member’s disabilities. In September 2022, a court ordered new medical retirement hearings for approximately 3,700 affected veterans.¹⁷
Kevin Brobst et al., filed in June 2025, challenges the Veterans Health Administration’s refusal to process claims for emergency medical expense reimbursement that veterans submitted during a one-year window created by a 2023 VA regulation.²⁰

USERRA Employment Cases

The Department of Justice continues to enforce the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, which protects service members’ civilian jobs when they are called to duty. In September 2025, a federal court in Guam ruled for the DOJ against the Government of Guam and the Guam Retirement Fund, holding that treating military leave as a “break in service” for pension purposes violates the law. The court ordered that service members on military leave are entitled to make and receive pension contributions on the same terms as employees who were not called away.²¹

In a separate USERRA action, the DOJ sued Oklahoma City Public Schools after the district allegedly failed to reinstate an Air Force Reserve Senior Airman to his teaching position following a deployment. A consent decree entered in February 2025 required the district to provide monetary relief, update its policies, and train staff on reemployment rights.²²

1
MDL Update. MDL 2873 – Aqueous Film-Forming Foams
2
Fox Business. 3M Begins $6 Billion Settlement Payment to Veterans
3
BrownGreer. Combat Arms Earplugs
4
U.S. Navy. Camp Lejeune Justice Act
5
Camp Lejeune Lien Resolution. Camp Lejeune Settlement Status Update
6
U.S. Department of Justice. Camp Lejeune Justice Act Claims
7
GLAD Law. Talbott v. USA
8
The New York Times. Transgender Troops Appeals Court Ruling
9
GLAD Law. A Federal Appellate Court Just Blocked Trump’s Military Ban
10
First Amendment Encyclopedia. New York Times v. Department of Defense
11
The New York Times. Pentagon Press Restrictions Appeal
12
The Washington Post. Pentagon NYT Appeals Court Stay
13
Veterans Service Commission of Summit County. The PACT Act’s Impact Three Years Later
14
NVLSP. NVLSP and Sidley Settle Class Action Lawsuit With U.S. Army Designating Burn Pits as Instrumentalities of War
15
Military Back Pay. Bassen v. United States
16
NVLSP. Soto v. U.S. Retroactive CRSC FAQs
17
NVLSP. NVLSP Class Actions
18
Multifamily Dive. Balfour Beatty Military Housing Lawsuit Advances in Federal Court
19
Project on Government Oversight. How Housing Conditions Are Failing Military Families
20
NVLSP. NVLSP Files Class Action Challenging VHA’s Refusal to Decide Veterans’ Claims
21
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Announces Ruling to Protect Military Servicemembers’ Civilian Employment
22
U.S. Department of Justice. Servicemembers Cases