NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson Defends GI Bill for Veterans

Raleigh -- Press Release March 20, 2025 North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson's Office: Today, Attorney General Jeff Jackson and 51 other Republican and Democratic Attorneys General asked an appeals court to protect veterans’ rights to receive the full possible educational benefits available to them after they serve in the armed forces.

“After I served in Afghanistan, I went to law school on the GI bill and became a prosecutor,” said Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “The GI bill changes lives for veterans and their families – it changed mine. And every veteran should be able to receive the full maximum value of benefits they earned in service.”

Congress has created different programs to help provide education and training for veterans. The Montgomery GI bill covers education for service members who have served at least two years of active duty. The Post-9/11 GI bill covers education and training expenses for service members who have served on active duty after September 10, 2001. In Rudisill v. McDonough, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if a veteran qualifies for educational benefits under both bills, then they are entitled to both benefits for up to a total of four years.

But in their friend-of-the-court brief in Yoon v. Collins, the bipartisan coalition of Attorneys General argue that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs violated the Supreme Court’s ruling and denied the full value of these two GI bill benefits to two veterans and urge the court to reinstate these benefits for all veterans.

North Carolina is home to more than 600,000 veterans who come home after serving their nation and work to get the education and training necessary to rejoin civilian life, provide for their families, and contribute to our state’s success. In 2022 alone, more than 17,000 North Carolina veterans were going to school with GI bill benefits.

Attorney General Jeff Jackson is joined in filing this brief by the Attorneys General of all 49 other states, the District of Columbia, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

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