Henderson v. Shinseki
The Supreme Court ruled that a veteran who files an appeal even a few days late does not automatically lose the right to have a court hear the case, because the 120-day filing deadline for appealing to the Veterans Court is not a strict jurisdictional bar.
The decision reverses a lower court that had thrown out a veteran's appeal for missing the deadline by two weeks, and it means courts may still be able to excuse late filings in appropriate cases going forward.
How it got here: The Veterans Court dismissed Henderson's late appeal as jurisdictionally barred, the Federal Circuit affirmed en banc, and the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
David Henderson, a veteran who served during the Korean War, received a 100-percent disability rating for schizophrenia and later sought supplemental benefits for in-home care. After a VA regional office and the Board of Veterans' Appeals denied his claim, he tried to appeal to the Veterans Court but filed his notice of appeal 15 days after the 120-day deadline.
The question before the Court
If a veteran misses the 120-day deadline to appeal a denied benefits claim to the Veterans Court, does that automatically strip the court of power to hear the case?
Why it matters
Veterans who file appeals a little late — for reasons like illness or confusion navigating the system — will get a chance to argue that their delay should be excused, instead of having their case thrown out automatically. This preserves access to court review for a group Congress has long tried to protect, and clarifies how courts should treat similar deadlines in other benefits systems.
What changes now
The case goes back for further proceedings. Because the deadline is not jurisdictional, the lower courts can now consider whether Henderson's 15-day-late filing should be excused under equitable tolling — a question the Supreme Court did not decide here. The ruling also guides how other veterans' appeals with late filings will be treated going forward, since courts can now weigh excuses rather than dismissing such cases automatically.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Henderson's particular 15-day delay should actually be excused through equitable tolling, or lay out when such tolling is available. It left those questions for the lower courts to address on remand.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied its established test for deciding whether a procedural deadline is 'jurisdictional' — meaning a court has no power at all to hear a late case — versus a mere 'claim-processing rule' that can sometimes be excused. Under that test, a deadline counts as jurisdictional only if Congress clearly said so.
- The Court rejected the government's argument that its earlier ruling in Bowles v. Russell, which treated ordinary appeal deadlines between courts as jurisdictional, automatically extended to deadlines for appealing an agency decision to a specialized administrative court like the Veterans Court.
- The Court looked at the wording and structure of the statute setting the 120-day deadline and found no language tying it to the court's jurisdiction, unlike a nearby provision governing further appeals to the Federal Circuit that explicitly borrowed jurisdictional language from ordinary appellate rules.
- The Court then considered the distinctive, veteran-friendly design of the whole benefits system — informal, non-adversarial proceedings, a duty on the VA to help veterans gather evidence, and the ability to reopen claims later — and found that treating the deadline as an absolute jurisdictional bar would clash with that system.
- Applying the longstanding rule that veterans' benefits laws should be read in favor of the veterans they protect, the Court concluded there was no clear indication Congress intended the 120-day deadline to carry jurisdictional consequences.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Bowles v. Russell (551 U.S. 205)
The Court said Bowles's jurisdictional rule for court-to-court appeals does not automatically apply to appeals from an agency to a specialized tribunal.
Reaffirms Bowen v. City of New York (476 U.S. 467)
The Court relied on this case's holding that a similar Social Security appeal deadline was not jurisdictional.