On Monday, in Johnson v. United States Congress, the Supreme Court will revisit a 52-year-old ruling on judicial review of veterans’ benefits decisions as it considers whether a federal district court may hear a constitutional challenge to a law limiting disability benefits for certain incarcerated veterans.
The case involves Floyd Johnson, who served in the U.S. Army from 1983 to 1985. In 2013, after being convicted of several state felonies in Florida, Johnson received a 40-year prison sentence. While incarcerated, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder linked to his military service and applied for disability benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs. He was approved for benefits at a 70 percent rate, which increased to 80 percent after an administrative appeal. However, the VA later cut Johnson’s rating to 10 percent, citing a benefits cap that applies to veterans who are incarcerated for more than 60 days.
In response to the VA’s decision, Johnson, representing himself, filed a federal lawsuit against Congress in Florida, contending that the law capping disability benefits for incarcerated veterans violates the Constitution’s bill of attainder clause, as well as the Fifth Amendment. After reviewing his claims, a magistrate judge recommended that the district court dismiss his challenge, stating that Johnson “failed to provide any persuasive allegation, argument, or citation” in support of his case. The district court did so in 2022.
Johnson appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and requested that the court appoint him counsel. With his new legal team, Johnson continued his fight against the benefits cap but acknowledged – after the appeals court instructed the parties to address the topic – that Congress was not the proper defendant. Johnson asked for leave to substitute the VA and its secretary as defendants.
In an August 2025 ruling, the 11th Circuit held that Johnson’s lawsuit against Congress was indeed barred by sovereign immunity. And it declined to allow Johnson to substitute new defendants, explaining that such a change would be “futile” because, under a separate law, the Veterans’ Judicial Review Act, the case could not proceed in any form in district court. “Congress’s intent to exclude district-court jurisdiction is ‘fairly discernible’ from the” text of that statute, the federal appeals court concluded.
As the 11th Circuit noted, the VJRA outlines a clear path through the legal system for a challenge to a benefits decision. First, a veteran may ask a board within the VA to review it. If that appeal fails, the veteran may turn to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and then to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The VJRA – and its “exclusive scheme of judicial review,” as the 11th Circuit put it – was enacted in 1988, after the Supreme Court addressed veterans’ access to judicial review in 1974’s Johnson v. Robison. That case centered on an earlier policy stating that “the decisions of the Administrator on any question of law or fact under any law administered by the Veterans’ Administration providing benefits for veterans … shall be final and conclusive and no … court of the United States shall have power or jurisdiction to review any such decision.” The Supreme Court held, by a vote of 8-1, that this language did not apply to constitutional challenges to laws addressing veterans’ benefits, rejecting the VA’s effort to see the case dismissed.
Johnson had urged the 11th Circuit to draw the same distinction in his case, highlighting similarities between the earlier policy and the VJRA. Like the previous law, Johnson noted, the VJRA states that decisions by the VA secretary “under a law that affects the provision of benefits … shall be final and conclusive and may not be reviewed … by any court” unless the decisions fall within the jurisdiction granted to the Veterans Court and Federal Circuit. The 11th Circuit, Johnson continued, should then apply Robison and hold that the VJRA’s language on appeals of benefits decisions did not apply to his constitutional claims and that, therefore, his case could proceed in federal district court.
The 11th Circuit rejected this argument, holding that “Robison involved a materially different statutory scheme” and that the text of the VJRA makes clear that “Congress vested the Federal Circuit with ‘exclusive jurisdiction’ to decide constitutional questions” related to the VA’s benefits decisions. However, it acknowledged that some of its “sister circuits” had come to a different conclusion in similar cases, ruling “that district courts retain jurisdiction over facial constitutional challenges.”
Last December, Johnson asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, highlighting this disagreement between the federal courts of appeals over the status of Robison after the VJRA’s enactment. In April, the court granted review.
In his brief on the merits, Johnson emphasizes the similarities between the VJRA and the law addressed in Robison, noting that Congress chose to use “materially similar” language to cabin off the VA’s benefits decisions from district court review. “By preserving the same key language” in the VJRA, according to Johnson, “Congress also preserved Robison’s settled interpretation of that language,” which means that district courts retain jurisdiction over constitutional challenges like his.
Johnson further argues that federal district courts must be the proper venue for his case because, in his view, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals does not have the authority to review constitutional claims. “[T]he BVA cannot decide constitutional challenges to acts of Congress. To the contrary, VA regulations specify that ‘the Board is bound by applicable statutes,’” he asserts.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer counters that the court’s holding in Robison cannot be copy and pasted onto the current dispute because the VJRA significantly changed the legal landscape. “[W]hen Robison was decided, filing suit in district court was the only means by which veterans could obtain judicial review of [] constitutional claims,” Sauer wrote. “Because the VJRA now authorizes the Veterans Court and the Federal Circuit to resolve constitutional challenges to VA-benefits statutes, the potential gap that concerned the Robison Court no longer exists.”
Sauer also rejects Johnson’s claim that constitutional challenges cannot be routed through the judicial review process outlined in the VJRA because of limitations on the Board of Veterans’ Appeals’ authority. “The premise that the Board is disabled from considering such challenges is incorrect,” according to Sauer, “and it is undisputed that such issues can be decided by the VA Secretary and at higher levels of the VJRA review scheme.”
Johnson v. United States Congress will be the second argument on Monday, following the argument in Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. The court’s ruling is expected by early July at the very latest.
