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Social Security Judge Denies Claimant Disability Benefits.

US Magistrate Judge Also Recommends That Benefits Be Denied.

US Federal Court Says "No!" And Reverses Denial Of Disability Benefits

A recent study found that the federal courts (the first-line reviewers of denials of social security benefits) reversed 6.15 percent of SSA denials outright and ordered benefits awarded in those cases, and remanded 48 percent of the denials, and 60 percent of the remands eventuated in a grant of benefits. 

This means that more than 1 out of every 3 of all appeals to the district courts from denials of benefits by SSA Judges were eventually overruled and benefits granted. Paul R. Verkuil & Jeffrey S. Lubbers, "Alternative Approaches to Review of Social Security Disability Cases," 55 Admin. L.Rev. 731, 761-62 (2003). (In 2004, the 60 percent figure rose to 67 percent. Disability Decision Making: Data and Materials, supra, at 89.) 

This is high rate of reversals of SSA Judges is perplexing for SSA claimants. 

The rules for SSA disability claims are the exact same across the country. Thus, in theory a claimant with a disabling back condition in California should have the same outcome on her case as does a similar claimant in Florida.  But as can be seen for whatever reason that is not happening in large numbers of SSA claims across the country.  A SSA judge in one part of the country is apparently applying a different set of SSA rules to achieve a different outcome than does a SSA Judge in another part of the country even though the case facts are the exact same.

Thus for a claimant who is denied disability benefits by the SSA, your chances of having your denial reversed go up significantly if you proceed to take your appeal to the federal courts for review.

And is a recent claim that is exactly what the claimant successfully did.

In this disability claim, the client claimed she was disabled and unable to work due to fibromyalgia and anxiety.  The SSA judge found that she was not disabled and that she could do other work.  Using a vocational expert the SSA Judge ruled that the client could do "assembly work" or be a "machine operator".  The SSA Judge further claimed that his ruling was correct as those jobs were listed in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT).  The SSA rules require that the SSA judges refer to the DOT for finding jobs that a claimant can perform.

The client disagreed and filed a timely appeal in federal court.

At federal court we showed the court that the SSA judge and her vocational expert claimed that the jobs of "assembly work" and "machine operator" were unskilled, sedentary jobs and that allegedly these were listed in the DOT.  

However, we argued, reality was quite different from what the SSA judge was saying.

We showed the federal court that in reality neither of the jobs of "assembly work" or "machine operator" as unskilled sedentary work were listed in the DOT.   We showed that the DOT listed more than a dozen jobs as "machine operator" and none of the them were sedentary unskilled jobs.  As for "assembly work", no such job per se existed in the DOT.  In fact, we argued, the DOT lists more than 50 different assembler jobs with uncounted dozens of subcategories each varying wildly in their physical and skill requirements.

Thus we argued, the SSA judge was wrong and the denial of disability benefits should be reversed.

The US Federal Magistrate Judge...disagreed.  The Magistrate Judge reported that the SSA Judge provided "some" evidence that the jobs existed and that was sufficient to find the client not disabled.

We promptly objected and went up the line to the US Federal District Judge for further review.  

We argued that in SSA claims, the SSA judge's decision must be supported by "substantial" evidence, not just by "some" evidence.  We also researched and presented other different SSA cases where the SSA Judges had wrongly claimed that jobs existed in the DOT when they did not and the federal courts had reversed those decisions. We showed that using the same facts and rules this client should also have the same outcome.

The US Federal District Judge....agreed.

The Federal District Judge overruled the US Magistrate Judge and the SSA Judge and found in favor of the client.  

The Federal District Judge totally agreed with our findings that there is no job of sedentary, unskilled "assembly worker" per se listed in the DOT. And as for the job of "machine operator" the DOT gives more than 1477 different results and who knows to which one the SSA Judge was referring.  As for the US Attorney's counter argument that the SSA Judge's error was "harmless" and could be ignored, the Federal District Judge disagreed.  Since the SSA Judge did not even consider whether or not the jobs actually existed in the DOT, then that was not a harmless error.

The Federal District Judge found that the SSA rules are clear: the SSA Judge "must" correlate his job findings with the DOT.    The failure of the SSA Judge to do so was reversible error and the denial of disability benefits to the client was overruled with the case remanded back to the SSA for rehearing.