From a press release:
United Spinal Association recently filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for the alleged unlawful "wet ink" signature requirements imposed on persons with disabilities in connection with applications for certain disability benefits of the Social Security Administration (SSA).
The complaint, which requests judicial review and declaratory and injunctive relief, states that the wet ink signature requirements, "unlawfully, irrationally and unnecessarily interfere with persons with disabilities' ability to pursue their rights to federal disability benefits—making an already cumbersome application process for persons with disabilities even more difficult."
"The SSA has chosen to selectively comply with or ignore the laws related to electronic signatures and documents and the right to representation. It has created and reinforced unnecessary barriers for those who legitimately need and seek assistance from third parties in obtaining disability benefits," said James Weisman, United Spinal's president and CEO. ...
10 comments:
Wet signatures are a pain but the fact is most claimants ABSOLUTELY DO NOT pay attention to the attestation and don't take it seriously. There are also many times attestations scripts are never even read to claimants.
Once the agency decided to allow phone claims and internet claims, the wet signature requirement became vestigial.
I agree with above that CRs skip attestation and (to me, more seriously) going over many of the reporting requirements and work limitations.
We, like many offices, have the ability to send all our initial docs to our clients electronically and have them e-sign and e-mail them back to us. Especially during a pandemic where the clients can't come to us personally and the USPS will delay and even lose the packets we send via snail mail, this electronic method would be ideal. However, we've been told multiple times that SSA will not accept docs with e-signatures, so we proceed with the mail. It's maddening and makes no sense when the rest of the world relies on e-signatures with no issues.
The bottom line on this issue is that the SSA is violating two federal statutes by refusing to accept electronic signatures. But, when a large bureaucratic agency feels it's above the law, what do you do? I thought about filing a lawsuit like this about a year ago but lacked the time or resources. Glad someone finally did it. The law is clear, SSA should just settle this one, agree to comply with the law, and move on.
Good. It's about time SSA moved into the 21st century. Maybe next they'll get rid of some of the thousands of useless fax machines they have.
Lots of people file online for others and electronically sign the 827s saying they are the claimant. Usually family members with best interests of claimant at heart but still. Have also dad attorneys file with clmt later denying they had this atty. Complying and moving on is not always as easy as it sounds
So, 9:30, are you admitting that the agency was willfully violating the law all this time but felt they had good reasons to do so?
12:40 this is 9:30. I have little idea of why they do anything... I was just pointing out that there are problems with electronic filing at times. In one of the two attorney companies cases I had the field office said that one of them filed first so would be the attorney that would be paid I guess. However the other attorney was the one that did actual work on the case.....got claimant to cooperate..got the forms completed. .. etc... So I wondered if SSA had problems with this. In the other two attorney company cases I had neither helped... That is to say there was no need for their help
The first time something goes wrong with this (say you're a rep in the scenario 6:31 describes and now get to complete and wait for fee petitions to go through), this blog will be the first place to criticize SSA and whine about how they need to do so much more to protect reps and claimants by greater authentication protocols. Can't wait!
Seems to me, from the attitude by some agency commenters here, that the agency feels it can ignore the law, as long as it believes it has a good reason. So, I suppose then, anyone is free to ignore agency policy if they believe they have a good reason? Nah, this agency always applies different standards to themselves than to everyone else, don't they. If they didn't have double standards, they'd have none at all.
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