05/07/2026
Military members lose Red Hill case against the federal government
By Chloe Jones [email protected]
Today • Last updated 7:34 a.m.
Despite calling it an “overly harsh and unjust outcome,” a federal judge ruled against military service members affected by the Red Hill fuel crisis and dismissed their case against the government Tuesday — a decision attorneys for the plaintiffs say they are ready to take to the Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi found that case law known as the “Feres doctrine” prohibited service members from receiving any sort of compensation from the government after ingesting, bathing and cooking with water contaminated by jet fuel from the Red Hill fuel facility spills in May and November 2021. The spills contaminated drinking water for roughly 93,000 people served by the Navy’s Oahu water system — service members and civilians alike.
Civilian family members of affected service members were awarded around $660,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees in a separate case. In that case, the government was found liable for causing harm to 17 people — 11 of them children — though it was not proven that the 2021 jet fuel spills from the Navy’s underground Red Hill storage facility into the water system were the specific causes of the many reported adverse health effects, court records show.
The Feres doctrine was born out of a 1950 Supreme Court ruling that bars service members from suing for injuries arising out of their military service. Specifically, the court found the government could not be liable for the death of a service member in a fire caused by unsafe living conditions in military barracks because living in the barracks was “incident to service.”
According to Kobayashi’s analysis, the underlying activity that caused the service member’s injuries was residing in military housing and “indistinguishable from the facts of Feres itself.”
“The activities leading to their injuries, i.e., utilizing military housing and water utilities, are inextricably linked to their active-duty military service,” Kobayashi wrote in her ruling.
Kobayashi found that the actual activities in which the service members made contact with the contaminated water, like bathing and cooking, were not relevant because they would not have been in the housing to begin with if it weren’t for their active-military status.
The judge noted that a similar case at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where service members were exposed to drinking water contaminated with toxic chemicals from 1953 to 1987, did not hold up to the Feres doctrine, with federal courts “systemically” denying and dismissing cases under its grounds. In 2022, Congress passed the Camp Lejeune Justice Act as part of the larger VA benefits package known as the PACT Act, which allowed those exposed to the contaminated water for 30 days or more to file lawsuits and seek damages.
“The Court nevertheless recognizes that dismissal of claims by service members in this matter based on the Feres doctrine is an overly harsh and unjust outcome,” Kobayashi said in her ruling, noting that Supreme Court justices and Ninth Circuit justices have cast doubt on the validity of the doctrine in recent years. “Nevertheless, unless the Supreme Court reverses Feres, or unless the United States Congress acts in response to the Red Hill cases — as it did when it enacted the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022, thereby allowing veterans to sue the United States for injuries they suffered as a result of their service at Camp Lejeune — the Court is inextricably bound and compelled to follow Feres and its Ninth Circuit progeny.”
Kristina Baehr, attorney for the service members, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that while she disagreed with Kobayashi’s analysis, she appreciated the judge’s “deep wrestling” with the issue and noted the Feres doctrine was a challenging issue.
The activities the service members were engaged in when they came into contact with the contaminated water should have been weighed more heavily, Baehr said.
“What we know to be true is that Amanda Feindt was not on orders when she was naked in her shower or bathing her toddler,” Baehr said. Amanda Feindt is one of nearly 1,000 service members represented in Whaley v. United States. “We understand that the Feres doctrine has been interpreted differently in different jurisdictions, but here in the Ninth Circuit,the analysis must focus on what Amanda Feindt was doing at the time of her injuries.”
While disappointed with the outcome, Baehr said she expected the case would move through the appellate process regardless of Kobayashi’s decision and “was prepared to take it all the way to the Supreme Court.”
“If they won, we’d appeal it. If we won, they would appeal it,” she said. “This has always been an issue for the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court to decide.”
Baehr said she appreciates that Kobayashi recognized that the application of the Feres doctrine did not bring justice to the case and added that the case could be precedent-setting for service members across the country.
“We can’t be mission ready as a country if our people are sick, and our men and women in uniform won’t continue to sign up if they believe that they’re signing up to be poisoned at home with impunity,” she said. “It’s not about this case, it’s not about these plaintiffs. It’s about service members everywhere and the protection that I believe that the law offers to them and their families.”
Kobayashi directed the court clerk to enter a judgment in favor of the United States by May 20. Attorneys for the service members must file a notice of appeal within 60 days.
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Despite calling it an “overly harsh and unjust outcome,” a federal judge ruled against military service members affected by the Red Hill fuel crisis and dismissed their case against the government Tuesday — a decision attorneys for the plaintiffs say they are ready to take to the Supreme Court...
