Two Army veterans, filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against the Massachusetts treasury. The veterans got help from the Harvard Law School and the suit claimed that the veterans had been unrightfully denied their “welcome home” bonuses to them and other veterans with other-than-honourable discharges.

The Massachusetts legislature formed the “Welcome Home Bonus” back in 2005 for the post-9/11 service members. Under the program, service members who had been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan — and had previously lived in Massachusetts for a minimum of six months before enlisting — were eligible to apply for a one-time $1,000 bonus, that is tax free.

The program has been run by the state treasury ever since it was initiated and is for the veterans with honourable discharges. The two veterans who are named in the lawsuit, claimed to have enlisted multiple times, and are arguing that the honourable discharge they received before their later, other-than-honourable discharge should make them eligible.

According to Dana Montalto, who is a senior fellow at Harvard Law School’s Veterans Legal Clinic working on the case, the two veterans had been deployed and were also honourably discharged and later re-enlisted. From the plain reading of the statute, they ought to be eligible

Chandra Allard, who is the spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, responded on Thursday saying that the office is not in a position to comment on pending legal matters.

Army veteran and Massachusetts native Jeffrey Machado (one of the plaintiff), was deployed to Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom in 2012-13, later received an honourable discharge and immediately re-enlisted. The complaint filed in Massachusetts Superior Court states his military service ended in an other-than-honourable discharge in 2014 that was “given out after the wounds of war and the stress of service became too great.”

The Veterans Legal Clinic estimates there are 4,000 veterans in Massachusetts who met the criteria for the bonus but, like Machado, ended their service with an other-than-honourable discharge. Though the case centres on several thousand veterans in Massachusetts, Montalto contended it was characteristic of a broader trend of veterans with “bad paper” being denied benefits. Discharges that are other-than-honourable, including a “general” discharge, are known as “bad paper” and can prevent veterans from receiving federal assistance, such as health care, disability payments, education and housing.

Machado and the other veteran named in the lawsuit, Herik Espinosa, appealed the treasurer’s denial of their bonuses in March to the Massachusetts Veterans’ Bonus Appeal Board. In both instances, the appeals board affirmed the treasury’s decisions.

The treasury will now have time to respond to the veterans’ complaint, and the case could lead to oral arguments before a Superior Court judge.