Bufkin v. Collins

Majority — Thomas

Joined by: Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Barrett

The majority held that the plain text of §7261(b)(1) — which says the Veterans Court must "take due account" of the VA's benefit-of-the-doubt rule "[i]n making the determinations under subsection (a)" — ties the review of benefit-of-the-doubt issues directly to the existing standards in subsection (a), not to some new, separate standard. The Court reasoned that deciding whether evidence is in "approximate balance" is at most a mixed question of law and fact, and that the right standard for such mixed questions depends on whether the work is primarily legal or primarily factual. Because the approximate-balance inquiry requires the VA to weigh individual pieces of evidence, assess credibility, and compare the overall strength of competing evidence — all deeply fact-bound tasks — the Court concluded it is predominantly factual and therefore reviewed only for clear error. The majority distinguished this from the probable-cause standard in criminal law, which courts review without deference, on two grounds: probable cause is a constitutional standard (carrying a presumption of fresh review), and it requires courts to develop a body of law about what a hypothetical reasonable officer would do — a legal-development function absent from the VA's case-by-case evidence-weighing. The Court also rejected the argument that its reading makes §7261(b)(1) meaningless, explaining that the provision at minimum makes explicit a duty that was previously implicit, and may additionally require the Veterans Court to raise benefit-of-the-doubt issues even when a veteran does not.

Dissent reasoning

The dissent argued that the majority's reading drains §7261(b)(1) of any real meaning, effectively treating Congress's 2002 amendment as a do-nothing "exclamation point" that changed nothing about how the Veterans Court reviews benefit-of-the-doubt decisions. Justice Jackson wrote that Congress enacted subsection (b)(1) specifically because veterans' groups complained that the Veterans Court was giving too much deference to the VA — so reading the provision to preserve that same deference contradicts Congress's evident purpose. The dissent also contended that the "approximate balance" determination is not a simple factual finding but a mixed question with a significant legal component: courts must develop standards over time for what "balanced" evidence looks like, just as they have done for probable cause and sufficiency of the evidence — both of which appellate courts review without deference despite being fact-intensive. The dissent further argued that the Veterans Court, as a specialized Article I tribunal with deep expertise in veterans' cases, is actually better positioned than the VA to make the approximate-balance call, and that nondeferential review would better protect veterans — many of whom are unrepresented — from having borderline claims wrongly denied. Finally, the dissent invoked the "veterans canon," the long-standing rule that ambiguous statutes governing veterans' benefits should be read in veterans' favor, as an additional reason to require more searching review.