Camp Lejeune Marine victims still wait on justice years later as Trump DOJ tries to speed payments

More than three years after Congress opened the courthouse door for hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families poisoned by contaminated drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, fewer than one percent of claimants have received any compensation. 

The Justice Department says it is picking up the pace under the Trump administration. Victims and their attorneys say it is not nearly enough.

One million service members, their families, and civilian workers were exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejeune

The federal government has acknowledged that roughly one million service members, their families, and civilian workers were exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejeune, the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast, located outside Jacksonville, N.C., between 1953 and 1987. The contamination was caused by chemicals leaching into on-post water supplies from dry-cleaning solvents and other industrial waste.

The mostly unnoticeable contamination wasn't disclosed until 1985. Any threats to service members’ health were not made public until Camp Lejeune was declared a Superfund site four years later, which sparked federal studies to determine the harms. Health problems linked to the exposure include birth defects, numerous cancers, Parkinson's disease, and lung disease.

Congress passed the Camp Lejeune Justice Act as part of the 2022 PACT Act, giving victims a two-year window to file administrative claims with the Navy. By the time the deadline passed in August 2024, the Navy faced 408,860 administrative claims. More than 3,500 of those victims went on to file lawsuits.

Since 2023, the Justice Department has approved more than $854 million in settlement offers for more than 2,500 claimants who agreed to take a payment outside of court, known as the elective option, which is administered by the agency. Those payments range from $100,000 to $550,000 depending on the claimant's illness and time spent at the base.

Fewer than 1% compensated

Currently, more than $622 million has been paid for these settlements, the Justice Department told Just the News. 

That represents compensation for well under one percent of the more than 400,000 people who filed claims.

Attorney Andrew Van Arsdale, who says he represents about 9,500 Lejeune families, said he never expected the Department of Justice to fight the claims as aggressively as it has. "I never expected the Department of Justice […] to fight tooth and nail, as hard as they are, every step of the way," he told Spectrum News last month.

The Trump administration has pointed to recent action as proof it is taking the issue seriously. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a March 10 statement that the department had "reprioritized approving settlements for Camp Lejeune victims and families, many of whom sadly had to wait years for justice" at the direction of the president and attorney general, and pledged to continue approving settlements on a weekly basis.

Woodward also signed a memorandum directing that all 3,724 lawsuits filed in federal court be made eligible for consideration under the elective option, Spectrum News reported. 

Who caused these problems?

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs' lawyers overseeing the case was unimpressed. An attorney leading a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers
J. Edward Bell III told Stars and Stripes that the DOJ's statement was short-sighted. "We appreciate any acceleration of help," Bell said, "but there are two things that bother me: No. 1 is the government is who caused these problems […] They hid the fact that this water was poisonous, and then they intentionally decided not to tell people for decades, and now they're bragging that they're going to accelerate payments that are woefully inadequate."

Bell went further, calling on the president himself to intervene. "President Trump should come in here and say, 'I recognize what this government did, and I as president am going to take care of this and do it properly, do it quickly,'" Bell said. "And you know what would happen? It would get done. But unless the Department of Justice has some guidance, it will never happen."

Another attorney, Ronald Miller, struck a similar tone. "We appreciate the effort, but we do not think we have meaningful progress," Miller said, adding that "claimants continue to die" while lawyers argue over process.

Van Arsdale pointed to a structural problem at the root of the delay: the original legislation didn't set aside dedicated funding to pay victims, meaning all Lejeune compensation comes out of a general pot of money the DOJ is reluctant to spend. 

"If Congress, or President Trump through his influence over Congress, could set aside a fund to compensate the victims of Camp Lejeune […] that would streamline the process because the DOJ just keeps saying 'look we're just protecting taxpayer's money,'" he told Spectrum News.

The DOJ estimated that damages being sought by claimants total more than $335 trillion, a figure that some plaintiffs lawyers suggest is "ridiculous," The number would imply each of the 400,000 claimants is seeking an average payout of $837.5 million. 

Bellwether cases

Miller put the situation plainly. "These veterans and their families were poisoned on American soil while serving their country," he said. "They should not have to spend their final years fighting the same government that made them sick."

About two dozen of the more than 3,700 lawsuits are headed for trial later this year in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. These so-called bellwether cases, representing each illness associated with the contamination, will help determine what payments the government should make to the remaining claimants.