(a) Policy. It is the policy of the Board for the full text of appellate decisions to be disclosed to appellants. In those situations where disclosing certain information directly to the appellant would not be in conformance with 38 U.S.C. 5701, that information will be removed from the decision and the remaining text will be furnished to the appellant. A full-text appellate decision will be disclosed to the designated representative, however, unless the relationship between the appellant and representative is such (for example, a parent or spouse) that disclosure to the representative would be as harmful as if made to the appellant.

(b) Legacy appeals. For legacy appeals as defined in §19.2 of this chapter, the policy described in paragraph (a) of this section is also applicable to Statements of the Case and supplemental Statements of the Case.

(Authority: 38 U.S.C. 7105(d)(2))

(c) Public availability of Board decisions—

(1) Decisions issued on or after January 1, 1992. Decisions rendered by the Board of Veterans' Appeals on or after January 1, 1992, are electronically available for public inspection and copying on the Board's website. All personal identifiers are redacted from the decisions prior to publication. Specific decisions may be identified by a word and/or topic search, or by the Board docket number. Board decisions will continue to be provided in a widely-used format as future advances in technology occur.

(2) Decisions issued prior to January 1, 1992. Decisions rendered by the Board of Veterans' Appeals prior to January 1, 1992, have been indexed to facilitate access to the contents of the decisions (BVA Index I-01-1). The index, which was published quarterly in microfiche form with an annual cumulation, is available for review at Department of Veterans Affairs regional offices and at the Board of Veterans' Appeals in Washington, DC. Information on obtaining a microfiche copy of the index is also available from the Board. The index can be used to locate citations to decisions with issues similar to those of concern to an appellant. Each indexed decision has a locator number assigned to it. The manner in which the locator number is written depends upon the age of the decision. Decisions archived prior to late 1989 have a number such as 82-07-0001. Decisions archived at a later date have a number such as BVA-90-12345. This number must be used when requesting a copy of that decision. These requests must be directed to the Board of Veterans' Appeals, P.O. Box 27063, Washington, DC 20038.

(Authority: 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(2), 38 U.S.C. 501(a))

[57 FR 4109, Feb. 3, 1992, as amended at 71 FR 18009, Apr. 10, 2006; 81 FR 32650, May 24, 2016; 84 FR 191, Jan. 18, 2019]