What New VA Presumptive Conditions Were Added in 2025?
CCK Law: Our Vital Role in Veterans Law
- In January 2025, VA added several new cancers to its presumptive list, including acute and chronic leukemias, multiple myelomas, and myelodysplastic syndromes. Before January 2025, the most recent additions to the list were from June 2024.
- These new presumptions apply only to “covered veterans”, which include veterans who served in specific capacities either during the Gulf War or during operations in the Middle East after September 11, 2001.
- If you have a pending disability claim for a condition that has recently been declared presumptive, your best course of action will likely be to continue pursuing your current claim, rather than refiling. This will help preserve your initial effective date.
What Are VA Presumptive Conditions?
Certain medical conditions are automatically presumed to be connected to military service because they tend to appear among veterans who served in specific regions or during defined timeframes.
For these presumptive conditions, veterans typically do not need to prove a direct connection to their service—they usually just need to demonstrate that they served in a qualifying location at the specified time.
This is much easier to prove than direct service connection, so long as the veteran has an official medical diagnosis and service records that indicate they were present at an eligible location and time. If they can prove this, VA will automatically presume their condition is service related, and assign them a VA rating and compensation, if applicable.
Watch CCK Law partner Emma Peterson and two VA-accredited claims advocates discuss presumptive VA claims and how they work:
What Are the New VA Presumptive Conditions Added in 2025?
In January 2025, several conditions were declared new VA presumptive conditions, having been added to VA’s list. These conditions are:
- Acute and chronic leukemias
- Multiple myelomas
- Myelodysplastic syndromes
- Myelofibrosis
- Urinary bladder cancer
- Ureter and related genitourinary cancers
In addition to the new VA presumptive conditions for 2025 listed above, there are a few other conditions that were added recently to VA’s list of presumptions.
The following conditions were added in the summer of 2024:
- Male breast cancer
- Urethral cancer
- Cancer of the Paraurethral Glands
Who Qualifies for the New VA Presumptive Conditions?
These new 2025 VA presumptive conditions are an update added onto the baseline PACT Act, which was originally passed in 2022.
The PACT Act is a bipartisan bill designed partly to compensate veterans who were exposed to toxic substances or chemicals over the course of their military service. VA periodically updates the list of presumptions covered by the PACT Act based on new scientific and medical research.
Because these 2025 presumptions were incorporated under the PACT Act, only veterans who the PACT Act covers will qualify for the new presumptions. These “covered veterans” include those deployed during the following timelines and operations:
- A veteran who, on or after August 2, 1990, performed active military, naval, air, or space service while assigned to a duty station in, including air space above:
- Bahrain
- Iraq
- Kuwait
- Oman
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- Somalia
- United Arab Emirates
- A veteran who, on or after September 11, 2001, performed active military, naval, air, or space service, while assigned to a duty station, including the airspace above:
- Afghanistan
- Djibouti
- Egypt
- Jordan
- Lebanon
- Syria
Will These New VA Presumption Conditions Affect My Pending Disability Claim?
If a veteran’s service-connected disability is not included among the new VA presumptive conditions added in 2025, then their pending claim will be unaffected.
However, if the veteran applied for VA disability for a condition that is now considered presumptive under the 2025 additions, then they should continue with their claim, rather than file a new one. Nicholas Briggs from CCK Law explains why:
“For anyone who already has a pending claim or appeal with VA, it’s important to continue pursuing that claim or appeal. This is because 1) VA is going to automatically apply the new presumptions to their running claims, meaning there’s no reason to withdraw and file a new claim, and 2) by continuing their current claim, veterans preserve their original effective date.”
What Other Conditions Are Already Presumptive Under the PACT Act?
In addition to the new VA presumptive conditions added in 2025, the PACT Act incorporated 23 conditions into VA’s presumptive list. These include several types of cancers and respiratory conditions that can arise from exposure to toxic chemicals or burn pits.
Some of these conditions include:
- Asthma diagnosed after service
- Head cancer (of any type)
- Gastrointestinal cancer (of any type)
- Kidney cancer
- Brain cancer
- Pancreatic cancer
- Chronic bronchitis
- COPD
- Emphysema
- Pulmonary fibrosis
- And more
What If My Disability Claim for a Presumptive Condition Is Denied?
While VA presumptions make it much easier for veterans to earn disability ratings and compensation, it is possible for VA to deny a claim involving a presumptive condition.
This could be for several reasons, ranging from the lack of an official diagnosis to insufficient evidence that the veteran served in an eligible time and place to qualify for presumption.
Alyse Phillips, Supervising Attorney at CCK Law, explains what to do if a presumptive condition claim is denied:
“If your claim is denied, what will happen is you’re going to actually file an appeal the same way you would for any other claim that was denied. When you file an appeal within a one-year window, that’s going to be what really preserves your claim stream and keeps your original effective date in place. If you go outside that window, you’re going to lose that initial effective date.”
How to File an Appeal for the Denial of a Presumptive VA Claim
To file an appeal for a denied VA claim, veterans will:
- Sign in to VA.gov using their main account.
- Navigate to the Decision Reviews section of VA’s portal.
- In this section, veterans must next decide which of the three AMA appeal lanes would work best for their case: the Higher-Level Review, Supplemental Claim, or Notice of Disagreement
- Fill out the form corresponding to the review lane they chose (forms linked above). Veterans can fill out the form either by themselves or with the help of a Veterans Service Organization (VSO) or VA-accredited attorney.
- Submit the form to VA using either the online tools prompts or through “QuickSubmit.” Note that veterans only have one year from the date of VA’s decision to submit their appeal request if they wish to keep their original effective date.
- After the appeal has been submitted, VA will review the veteran’s case and make another decision.
Watch CCK Law attorney Alyse Phillips and Accredited VA Claims Advocate Nicholas Briggs discuss what to do if VA denies your PACT Act disability benefits claim:
Need Help Appealing a Denied Presumptive Disability Claim? Contact CCK Law
If VA denied your disability claim based on a new VA presumptive condition, the VA-accredited attorneys at Chisholm Chisholm & Kilpatrick might be able to assist. Our team has decades of experience advocating for veterans before VA and has helped secure more than $1 billion in compensation for claims that were wrongfully denied.
Call CCK Law at (800) 544-9144 or contact us online for a free case evaluation.
