Help For Thousands

From New American Media:

Rosa Martinez didn’t know what to do when the Social Security Administration told her two years ago that the agency was stopping her disability assistance because she had an outstanding 1980 arrest warrant for illegal possession of prescription drugs in Miami. A resident of Redwood City, Calif., she has never visited Miami. ...

She pleaded with a series of bureaucrats that she could not be the same Rosa Martinez named in the old warrant, a Rosa eight inches taller. But those please fell on deaf ears.

“Maybe God put me in this situation so I could help others,” she said at a New America Media press briefing, where she and legal aid attorneys described how she became the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit, Martinez v. Astrue, against the Social Security Administration. Michael Astrue is the Social Security commissioner.

The class action lawsuit led to federal court settlement that will return up to $500 million to about a quarter million people, who had their Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) supports wrongfully cut off by the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Outreach is critical, though, because many people who lost their benefits over the last 10 years must reapply to Social Security. In some cases eligible people have only about six months to apply or they risk permanently losing those benefits. ...

The Social Security Administration (SSA) will soon be notifying people, mainly by mail, that they can reapply for assistance.