Eileen Bradley, the head of OHA, was an attorney and changed the policy that ODAR has about reassigning remands to the same ALJ who denied you the first time. That changed the then and current system to avoid the appearance of bias or defensiveness exhibited by ALJs who resent getting remands. Remands were given to new ALJs, which gave claimants more of a fresh start and also allowed individual ALJs to see how their peers decided cases.
Anonymous #4: The reassign-on-remand policy kicks in only for a second remand, and only if the first two decisions were by the same Administrative Law Judge. That's been the policy since Bradley's day. Some hearing offices won't count a court remand as part of the two-remand tally. So sometimes there are three decisions in a row by the same Administrative Law Judge.
Not many of those folks still working at SSA. Kissko and Herrara are the only two, I believe.
ReplyDeleteDavid Rust
ReplyDeleteRight you are. He wasn't in the photo, which is what I was looking at, not the listing of names.
ReplyDeleteEileen Bradley, the head of OHA, was an attorney and changed the policy that ODAR has about reassigning remands to the same ALJ who denied you the first time. That changed the then and current system to avoid the appearance of bias or defensiveness exhibited by ALJs who resent getting remands. Remands were given to new ALJs, which gave claimants more of a fresh start and also allowed individual ALJs to see how their peers decided cases.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous #4: The reassign-on-remand policy kicks in only for a second remand, and only if the first two decisions were by the same Administrative Law Judge. That's been the policy since Bradley's day. Some hearing offices won't count a court remand as part of the two-remand tally. So sometimes there are three decisions in a row by the same Administrative Law Judge.
ReplyDeleteJOA