{"id":15991,"date":"2026-05-05T23:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T23:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/?p=15991"},"modified":"2026-05-05T23:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T23:39:13","slug":"supreme-court-delivers-earth-shaking-7-2-decision-i-cant-believe-it-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/?p=15991","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Delivers Earth-Shaking 7-2 Decision\u2026 I Can\u2019t Believe It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"296\">The\u00a0<span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">U.S. Supreme Court<\/span><\/span>\u00a0ruled in\u00a0<span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Bufkin v. Collins<\/span><\/span> that federal appeals courts don\u2019t have to recheck how the VA applies the \u201cbenefit-of-the-doubt\u201d rule. In a 7\u20132 decision, the Court said judges should defer to the VA\u2019s expertise unless there\u2019s a clear error.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"298\" data-end=\"564\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\">This means veterans appealing disability claims now face a tougher standard\u2014showing balanced evidence isn\u2019t enough; they must prove a serious mistake. The ruling could reduce successful appeals but highlights the importance of strong medical evidence from the start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>The\u00a0U.S. Supreme Court\u00a0ruled in\u00a0Bufkin v. Collins that federal appeals courts don\u2019t have to recheck how the VA applies the \u201cbenefit-of-the-doubt\u201d rule. In a 7\u20132 decision, <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/?p=15991\" title=\"Supreme Court Delivers Earth-Shaking 7-2 Decision\u2026 I Can\u2019t Believe It\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15992,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15993,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15991\/revisions\/15993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}