The Veterans Class Action

According to Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) statistics, the greatest delays in the veterans benefit system involve initial administrative appeals, which on average take six years for the VA to resolve. Federal district courts may aggregate cases even though they often function in an "appellate" capacity with respect to an agency's decisions, reviewing an agency's findings of fact and conclusions of law. [...]the CAVC will have to grapple with broader trends in class action law that have, at times, limited the use of class actions in federal court. The idea that the Supreme Court would not hear due process challenges as class actions would mark a turn from how the Supreme Court has resolved many similar cases-from social security cases (Bowen v. NY) and immigration cases (McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center) to veterans benefits cases (Johnson v. Robison). [...]the idea that due process challenges require too many individual determinations for class certification seems in tension with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Mathews v. Eldridge, which stressed the importance of weighing generic government procedures against the private interests of an entire claimant population.