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Aug 7, 2009

Some History On "Accommodations"

This is from the U.S. Solicitor General's brief to the Supreme Court in Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corp:
The Social Security Act requires consideration of a claimant’s ability to do “his previous work.” 42 U.S.C. 423(d)(2)(A). It does not require consideration of his ability to perform his prior job with a possible ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act]-mandated accommodation that the employer, in fact, never provided. See 11 SSA Guidance at 15-401 [which reproduced the "Skoler" memorandum issued by Social Security on this subject in 1993] . Similarly, the Act requires consideration whether a claimant is able to do other work that “exists” in the national economy. 42 U.S.C. 423(d)(2)(A). It does not require consideration whether he could do jobs as they might be modified by reasonable accommodations that the ADA might require but that employers have not actually made.
Once the Solicitor General tells the Supreme Court that the government interprets an Act of Congress in a certain way, the government's hands are tied. The government cannot later change its mind about what the statute means. How come OIDAP is issuing a document that talks about "accommodations" that would allow Social Security disability claimants to work? Do they think that they can reopen this long settled issue?

3 comments:

  1. There's some possibility that the sections of the report Mr. Hall finds objectionable might represent a non-lawyerly lack of sufficient care with language. Consider the last sentence in this section of the report:

    "How can we address accommodations and job restructuring? In short, what (if any) information should SSA include in its database describing work regarding general accommodations that may be available within and among occupations or industries for specific occupations? For example, what are the “core” activities of occupations? Are workers offered options regarding how they perform the core tasks, such as a sit/stand option?"

    The report thus speaks of "general accommodations" in terms of available options for performing a job—one example of which is "a sit/stand option." If the so-called "accommodations" at issue are only those general options that, like sit/stand options, are already commonly in play for SSA adjudication, then it's hard to see any conflict between the report and SSA policy.

    Although it is very easy to see if the report's authors want to avoid provoking a general frothing at the mouth, they should have avoided a term that has a special meaning that's been litigated all the way to the SCOTUS.

    JOA

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  2. I'm not anaylst.As a matter of fact,i'm a claimant.Unless there is a "no fire or terminate employee"clause or provision inserted,ssa should not condition benefits on accommodations.

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