A new Executive Order instructs the secretaries to “make reinstatement available” to affected members. Although the details of the policy are unknown at this point, it does not appear that any member would be automatically reinstated. It is likely that members will need to seek records corrections with their respective Boards for Correction of Military/Naval Records.
Typically, this process takes at minimum 12 months, though these cases could theoretically be put on a priority track with dedicated staff. We do not know yet but, in my experience, these things are far from immediate.
According to the EO, reinstated members are entitled to “to revert to their former rank and receive full back pay, benefits, bonus payments, or compensation.” That might sound nice but reinstatement can be extremely fraught. From a financial perspective, back pay for “wrongful dismissal” is subject to certain regulatory offsets such as civilian wages and VA compensation that can actually result IN A DEBT if the numbers break out in certain ways.
Some members may be now unable to meet certain physical or other enlistment standards. Others may not want to return at all. If all relief is contingent upon a member’s ability to actually be reinstated and serve—and they cannot —they could receive nothing.
Even if a member is reinstated, successfully serving can be very difficult. In cases where my clients have been reinstated (sometimes after years of vindicating their rights at the BCMR and in federal court), their career progression is far behind their contemporaries. They have a problematic gap in service, time-in-grade problems, training deficiencies, promotability issues, and commands seem to have a fundamental difficulty placing them in viable positions. They become square pegs in round holes, which is not ideal in the military.
We will see how this plays out but I anticipate a rocky implementation.