Hundreds of military veterans and family members harmed by toxic water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune will gather on the U.S. Capitol lawn this week to protest severe federal delays in resolving their compensation claims. The two-day demonstration in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday and Thursday, is intended to pressure lawmakers to pass reform legislation that would bypass a massive government bottleneck currently stalling more than 400,000 cases.
Jerry Ensminger and Mike Partain are lead advocates. For three decades, they fought for Lejeune victims. Their work forced the Camp Lejeune Justice Act. That historic bill passed in 2022. Now, Mike said, this upcoming demonstration will make history.
“We did have one rally back in 2014 with the Supreme Court, but we weren't permitted. It was just a loose gathering. This is more organized,” he said, “We've got a mission, because four years down the road, the Department of Justice and the career attorneys that have been fighting us for the past 20 years, there's only a handful of claims and settled. Less than 1% of the total claims have been settled in four years.” Jerry added, “And the settlements they have made are pennies on the dollar of what these cases would truly be worth in a court of law. I mean, it's obscene.”
The government created the Elective Option settlement framework. It offers fast-tracked payouts ranging from $100,000 to $550,000. It avoids federal court entirely. More than 2,500 people chose this route. Mike said financial desperation often drives their choices. “The longer you wait, the more desperation sets in,” he said, “And it's like throwing food out to hungry fish. They all swarm and hit it and try to devour it because they're starving. And that analogy is not lost upon our community because the longer you wait, the more desperate these people are going to become.”
Their stories: Widow of Camp Lejeune Marine: Battle with U.S. government over compensation for toxic water exposure is "cruel"
The original 2022 law allowed toxic water lawsuits. Carcinogens poisoned the base water supply for decades. More than one million people drank and bathed in it. The exposure caused lethal cancers, neurological diseases, and other illnesses, yet the legal remedy has ground to a halt. Aggressive litigation by federal attorneys blocks trials. Not one case has reached a trial verdict. Jerry said the government is fighting its own science. “They filed motions against everything that ATSDR has done on the Camp Lejeune water contamination issue. All their work, all the studies, the water modeling, everything. ATSDR was created by Congress to investigate Superfund sites and human exposures,” he said. “This is basically like the old movie Kramer versus Kramer. This is the government versus the government. And it has slowed down the court proceedings to a crawl.” Mike added, “The government's filing a downward motion against itself to have all its experts thrown out so they have no relevance in the cases. And it's absurd.”
The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry provides the core scientific evidence for victims. Demonstrators want a new bipartisan legislative fix. They support the Ensuring Justice for Camp Lejeune Victims Act. The bill, introduced in both the House and the Senate, expands court jurisdictions to speed up trials. Mike said it would also allow regular citizens, rather than a single federal judge, to decide case outcomes. He said, “It restores jury trials to our process to where the juries can look at the evidence, hear what's going on, and then make determinations on what these claims are valued.” The legislation also caps attorney fees.
Their stories: USMC wife sickened after living at Tarawa Terrace aboard Camp Lejeune in Vietnam War era fighting for compensation
Without the new bill, cases will stall for years. Mike points to past warnings from federal judges. “One of the problems we're facing, and Judge Dever pointed this out in April of 2023, he referenced the 9/11 cases and said that the attorneys were arguing back and forth. The judge was trying to get them to work on a global settlement, a settlement matrix. And in the end, he said they argued for three years and came back and were right back at the beginning,” he explained, “And we're four years down the road, there is no settlement matrix. There have been settlement masters appointed by the court for over a year and a half, and there's nothing to show for it.”
North Carolina Representatives Greg Murphy and Deborah Ross sponsor the bill. Both will speak on the Capitol lawn. Mike challenged other lawmakers to stand with them. He said, “I invite any member of Congress that cares about our veterans and their families, to put the money where their mouth is, come out, support us, and come out and say something to these vets, because there's going to be a lot of our Camp Lejeune veterans and families out there. I mean, it's put up or shut up."
Their stories: Marine Corps veteran battling bladder cancer frustrated by snail's pace of Camp Lejeune Justice Act court cases
The rally will also feature testimonies from impacted military families alongside speeches from veteran advocates. For many attendees, the rally is a race against time, as Jerry said many veterans grow sicker while waiting for their day in court, and, “Many of them have already died and never saw anything.”
Mike said it’s past time for the government to prove that ‘The Marine Corps takes care of its own.’ The continued saying that you hear over and over again from members of the government and everything is, ‘Thank you for your service.’ And when I hear that and you look at Camp Lejeune, is that the thanks we got? You poisoned us. It's time to take care of your Marines. I mean, that's one of those slogans that Jerry refers to all the time. We take care of our own. And it's time that this country takes care of its own.”
The peaceful demonstration will run from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on both Wednesday and Thursday in front of the U.S. Capitol. Public Radio East will be there throughout the second day of the rally.
