Judge rules Veterans Guardian violates federal law — months after lobbying efforts in Kansas

A for-profit veteran benefits claim consultant told Kansas lawmakers the company’s operations were legal. A federal judge disagreed.

By: Grace Hills 

OVERLAND PARK — A federal judge in North Carolina found that Veterans Guardian, a for-profit consultant that charges veterans for help filing their disability claims, violates federal law.

The order came just a few months after the company lobbied Kansas legislators to pass a bill that would have greenlit for-profit consultants, despite concerns that the practice may be unlawful. The bill almost became law but support for it crumbled apart in the final hours of the legislative session.

Proponents argued Feb. 3 before the House Veterans and Military Committee that a few “bad actors” ruined the for-profit consultants’ reputations by charging exorbitant fees and using suspicious marketing tactics. Bill Taylor, co-founder of Veterans Guardian, said House Bill 2214 would have reined those companies in.

“We are 100% in compliance with federal law,” Taylor testified to lawmakers in February.

In May, U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles disagreed.

Federal law states “no individual may act as an agent or attorney in the preparation, presentation, or prosecution of any claim,” unless they are accredited — which Veterans Guardian and the other for-profit consultants are not. Veterans who want help reviewing a claim can get help from an attorney or claims agent in exchange for a fee, which could include a portion of the veteran’s benefits.

Opponents have called the for-profit consultants “claim sharks,” and argue that charging veterans thousands — even tens of thousands — for a service that is offered for free by accredited services is predatory.

Eagles’ order outlined how the Pinehurst, North Carolina-based Veterans Guardian charged the three plaintiffs between $1,880 and $21,360. The $21,360 fee was for an initial disability claim.

“The evidence is undisputed that (Veterans) Guardian is not accredited, that on behalf of veterans it prepares claims forms, that in those forms it presents disability claims for decision by the (Veterans Affairs), and that it charges fees for doing so,” Eagles wrote in her order. “These actions violate federal law.”

Veterans Guardian was founded in 2017. The federal law Eagles cited has existed since long before then. Veterans Guardian, and similar for-profit consultants, have operated through a legal loophole.

An NPR investigation found that in 2006, as the U.S. was at war with Iraq, Congress thought veterans needed more options to navigate the disability claims process. For-profit consultants repeat that rationale today — that veterans deserve a choice between their paid, streamlined services or free but more complex accredited ones.

That year, Congress stripped the criminal penalties for violating the law — but kept the law on the books. That meant companies like Veterans Guardian have been able to use that loophole to continue operating without consequences.

Multiple bills have been introduced to reinstate the criminal penalties, but none has passed. Veterans Guardian has spent millions lobbying on the federal level. A federal bill similar to the Kansas one — that would allow for-profit consultants to legally charge veterans — advanced in the U.S. House.

After Eagles’ order, more congressional attempts at criminalization were introduced in the U.S. House and Senate. U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, signed onto the legislation Monday, a spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, who chairs the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, didn’t provide a comment in time for this story.

Anthony Pierce, counsel to Veterans Guardian, said the company “strenuously disagrees” with the court’s ruling.

“The ruling is not final, and Veterans Guardian will vigorously pursue all available avenues of appeal to defend our work on behalf of disabled veterans,” Pierce said. 

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Judge rules Veterans Guardian violates federal law — months after lobbying efforts in Kansas 

Opinion - They calculated that New York nursing home families would move on. They were wrong.

by Vivian Zayas, opinion contributor

There is a calculation that powerful people sometimes make when the victims of their decisions are elderly. It goes like this: the families will grieve, the news cycle will move on, and if you wait long enough, time does the work that accountability never had to. For six years, the families of over 15,000 New Yorkers who died in nursing homes have been proving that calculation wrong.

In a letter issued this month, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) wrote to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche demanding an answer to a question that should not require a congressional letter: what is the status of the criminal referral against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo?

That a letter was necessary tells you everything about where we are.

Every person in a nursing home is someone's mother. Someone's father. Someone's grandmother. They are not abstractions. They are people with histories, with families, with someone who loved them. People who needed care they could not get at home, and who trusted that the system governing that care had standards worth the name. Andrew Cuomo knew this. On March 24, 2020, he declared: "My mother is not expendable. And your mother is not expendable. And our brothers and sisters are not expendable."

The next day, his administration issued a directive ordering nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients without testing. Thousands died. When families demanded to know how many, they were given a number that a 104-page congressional referral later documented was falsified. The actual death toll was undercounted by approximately 50 percent.

Cuomo testified to Congress in June 2024 that he was not involved in drafting the report. Evidence suggested otherwise. There were emails. Edited drafts. His own handwritten notes in the margins. The subcommittee referred him to the Department of Justice for making false statements to Congress in October 2024. The Biden Department of Justice received that referral. It did nothing.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer resubmitted the referral in April 2025. An investigation was reportedly opened. Then silence. Pam Bondi was removed from her post as attorney general in April. Her replacement has not publicly addressed the referral. Cuomo ran for mayor of New York City twice. He lost both times. His team argued prosecution was election interference. That argument no longer holds. There is no election left. There is only the question of whether the rule of law applies equally to a powerful former governor as it does to anyone else.

That question remains unanswered.

Voices for Seniors was founded six years ago by families who refused to accept that calculation. We have testified before Congress and written to two attorneys general. We have written op-eds, given interviews, made calls and knocked on doors in Washington that were sometimes opened and sometimes shut. We did all of this while grieving. Because we understood early on what the powerful were counting on: that eventually, we would stop.

If thousands of children had died under these circumstances, if a directive had sent infectious patients into facilities housing children, if the death count had been falsified, if a cover-up had been documented line by line before Congress, there would have been a commission. There would have been prosecutions. There would have been the kind of reckoning that follows tragedies where the victims are young and the public refuses to look away.

Our loved ones were old. And someone calculated that their families might eventually move on.

The congressional letter sent today by Tenney is not a legal filing. It will not compel the Department of Justice to act. But it is a public declaration that the people elected to represent New York's families have not forgotten either. And it matters, because silence from the powerful only works when no one is watching.

We are watching. We have been watching for six years. And we will keep asking is there one standard of accountability in this country, or are there two: one for the powerful, and one for everyone else?

The families we represent know which answer they have been living with. Six years of it. And they are still proving that calculation wrong.

Grief has a long memory. We haven't forgotten. And neither, we hope, will the Department of Justice.

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Opinion - They calculated that New York nursing home families would move on. They were wrong.