The most recent Camp Lejeune settlement update: the Department of Justice has paid more than $421 million through its Elective Option program since January 2025, the first bellwether trials in federal court have slipped into 2026, and every one of those trials will be decided by a judge rather than a jury after the Supreme Court declined to disturb that ruling in May 2025. The administrative filing window closed on August 10, 2024, so the pool of claimants is now fixed at the people already in the system.
Where Elective Option Payments Stand
The Elective Option is the fast lane. DOJ and the Navy use it to resolve qualifying claims with fixed payments tied to a claimant’s diagnosis and time on base, and accepting an offer waives the right to sue. Early in the program, only a handful of offers had gone out. The pace changed sharply in late 2024 and into 2025, and the cumulative payout crossed $421 million by early 2025.
Payments depend on which of two tiers a condition falls into. Tier 1 covers diagnoses where the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found “sufficient” evidence of a causal link to the water: kidney cancer, liver cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemias, and bladder cancer. Tier 2 covers conditions supported at the “equipoise and above” level: multiple myeloma, Parkinson’s disease, kidney disease or end-stage renal disease, and systemic sclerosis or scleroderma. Liver cancer is Tier 1. Parkinson’s disease is Tier 2. Those two are the ones most often mislabeled in circulating summaries, and the tier drives the dollar figure.
The base amounts:
- Tier 1, more than 5 years on base: $450,000
- Tier 1, 1 to 5 years: $300,000
- Tier 1, 30 to 364 days: $150,000
- Tier 2, more than 5 years: $400,000
- Tier 2, 1 to 5 years: $250,000
- Tier 2, 30 to 364 days: $100,000
If the qualifying condition caused the claimant’s death, an additional $100,000 is added. The full range for an individual Elective Option payment runs from $100,000 to $550,000.
Many claimants have turned the offers down, betting on a larger award through litigation. Others, especially those who are elderly or seriously ill, have taken the certainty. There is no third path once you accept: the waiver is the point of the program.
Bellwether Trials Pushed to 2026
All Camp Lejeune lawsuits sit in the Eastern District of North Carolina, which has exclusive jurisdiction. The court is running a bellwether process, meaning a small representative group of cases will be tried first and the results will drive settlement talks for everything behind them.
Cases are organized into discovery tracks by diagnosis. Track 1 covers bladder cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and Parkinson’s disease, with one hundred plaintiffs selected for the discovery pool. Track 2 covers prostate cancer, kidney disease, lung cancer, liver cancer, and breast cancer. Expert discovery ran through October 2025, and pre-trial motions followed.
No bellwether trial has taken place yet. The original expectation was that Track 1 trials would start in late 2024. Scientific complexity and the volume of discovery pushed that back, and the first trials are now expected sometime in 2026. The exact schedule is still moving.
The backlog behind those cases is enormous. More than 400,000 administrative claims were filed with the Navy before the deadline, and more than 3,700 individual lawsuits are now pending in federal court. Most of those suits were filed after the Navy failed to decide the administrative claim within six months, which the law treats as grounds to sue.
Bench Trials, Not Jury Trials
All four federal judges handling Camp Lejeune cases ruled that the Act does not grant a right to a jury trial. Every case that reaches trial will be tried to a judge. The reasoning turned on sovereign immunity: the government must consent explicitly to be sued, and the law’s only reference to jury trials preserves whatever rights already existed rather than creating new ones. The judges found no pre-existing jury trial right against the federal government that applied here.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case in May 2025. The bench trial ruling stands. Judges tend to be more measured than juries in awarding damages, and trial strategies have been reworked around that reality.
Congress has responded. The Ensuring Justice for Camp Lejeune Victims Act of 2025 would make technical corrections to provide clearly for jury trials. As of mid-2025, it was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary and has not advanced. Whether it passes is an open question.
Who Can Still File
The two-year administrative filing window under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act ran out on August 10, 2024. If you did not file an administrative claim with the Navy by that date, the path to compensation under this law is effectively closed. If you did file by that date, you can still bring a lawsuit in federal court once the Navy denies the claim or once six months pass without a decision.
The underlying eligibility rules have not changed. A claimant must have lived or worked at Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days, not necessarily consecutive, between August 1, 1953 and December 31, 1987. Service members, family members, and civilian employees all qualify on the same terms.
What a Payment Actually Nets You
Whatever the source of the payment, three things affect what reaches the claimant.
VA disability benefits are safe. Filing a Camp Lejeune claim or accepting a settlement does not put those benefits at risk. The government can, however, reduce a court award or a non-Elective-Option settlement by the amount of VA disability compensation already paid for the same condition, to prevent double recovery. DOJ has indicated that VA will not assert a lien or offset against Elective Option payments specifically. Offsets apply to awards reached outside the Elective Option. Medicare and Medicaid hold a similar right of recovery for related medical expenses they covered.
Federal tax law generally excludes compensation received for physical injuries or physical sickness from taxable income, which should cover most Camp Lejeune awards. Any portion allocated to something other than physical harm could be treated differently, and a tax professional is worth consulting before signing.
Attorney fees are capped by federal law. The maximum contingency fee is 20% on an administrative resolution and 25% on a claim resolved in federal court, applied to the net after offsets. Charging above the cap exposes the attorney to a fine of up to $2,000 or up to one year in prison.
What to Watch Next
The first bellwether verdicts will set the tone for everything else. Large plaintiff wins would push the government toward broader settlements, possibly including expanded Elective Option categories. Modest or mixed results would strengthen the case for accepting current offers. If you have a claim in the pipeline, the practical move is staying in contact with your attorney about the bellwether schedule and any changes to the Elective Option.