Alcoholics May Be Denied Some VA Aid, Court Rules

The Supreme Court, disregarding arguments that alcoholism is a disease requiring special treatment rather than a voluntary condition, ruled Wednesday that the government may routinely exclude alcoholics from some of its benefit programs.

On a 4-3 vote, the justices upheld a Veterans Administration rule classifying alcoholism as “willful misconduct” disqualifying veterans from education benefits and disability payments.

In a narrowly worded opinion, the justices tried to sidestep the debate over whether alcoholism is a disease with physical and possibly genetic origins. “It is not our role to resolve this medical issue on which authorities remain sharply divided,” Justice Byron R. White wrote for the court.

Instead, White concluded that the VA’s policy does not conflict with a federal law prohibiting discrimination against handicapped people, including alcoholics.

About 10 million Americans are alcoholics and the American Medical Assn. told the court that for nearly 30 years, “there has been a consensus in the medical profession . . . that such pathological use of alcohol is a disease.”

But other organizations, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving, urged the court not to absolve drunks of responsibility for their actions.

Lawyers representing veterans said the court’s ruling, although narrowly focused, could lead other federal agencies to deny special treatment to alcoholics.

In the case at issue, the court refused to require the VA to provide special education benefits to former alcoholics. And as White pointed out in a footnote, the decision also shelters the VA from the potentially staggering cost of awarding disability benefits to alcoholic veterans.

But it has no impact on the huge VA hospital system, which was described in court records as the largest treatment facility for people suffering from alcoholism.

This case arose when two recovered alcoholics challenged the VA’s flat rule that, for purposes of determining eligibility for education benefits and disability payments, alcoholism constituted “willful misconduct.”

Eugene Traynor, 46, a supervisor in a New York City photo lab, and James P. McKelvey, 42, an alcoholism counselor from Rockville, Md., said they began drinking before age 13. Both served in the Army and received honorable discharges in the 1960s.

Applied for Benefits

They were later hospitalized for their alcoholism. After conquering their drinking problems, they enrolled in post-secondary education programs and applied for VA education benefits in the late 1970s.

But the VA refused on grounds that its rules limit eligibility for such benefits to 10 years after members of the military leave the service.

The rule allows the agency to waive the limit if a “physical or mental disability” prevents veterans from pursuing an education in the first 10 years after returning to civilian life. But the VA maintains that alcoholism does not count as a disability because it stems from “willful misconduct.”

In their lawsuits, Traynor and McKelvey did not argue that they were absolutely entitled to the benefits. Rather, they contended that under the 1978 Rehabilitation Act, which prohibited government discrimination against the handicapped, they deserved an individual evaluation of their conditions. Both men won in a federal district court and lost in an appeals court.

For the Supreme Court, the case posed a conflict between the 1978 Rehabilitation Act and a 1977 law ratifying the VA’s policy of classifying alcoholism as “willful misconduct.”

Laws Held ‘Not Inconsistent’

White concluded that the two laws are “not inconsistent.” Moreover, if Congress had meant for the 1978 law to strike down the 1977 VA policy, he said, “Congress most certainly would have said so.”

He noted that veterans who can show that their alcoholism stems from “an underlying psychiatric disorder” are viewed as suffering from an illness. But for other alcoholics, he said, the “willful misconduct” rule applies.

White also questioned medical literature suggesting that alcoholism is in no way a matter of individual choice. “Even among the many who consider alcoholism a ‘disease’ to which its victims are genetically predisposed, the consumption of alcohol is not regarded as wholly involuntary,” he said.

His opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O’Connor.

Dissenting, Justice Harry A. Blackmun said federal laws protecting handicapped people and last year’s high court decision regarding people with contagious diseases set a clear rule: Each person’s condition must be evaluated individually.

The notion that all primary alcoholism can be blamed on the individual “is the very kind of broad social generalization that . . . the Rehabilitation Act is intended to eliminate,” he said. He was joined by Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy did not participate in the case (Traynor vs. Turnage, 86-622).