From the Social Security Administration:
... On August 31, 2020, we provided guidance to hearings offices that administrative law judges may resume issuing dismissals for late-filing of a hearing or failure to appear at a hearing.
To ensure hearing offices are appropriately issuing these types of dismissals (late filing or failure to appear at a hearing), hearing offices will now develop the record for good cause by issuing a Request to Show Cause for Late Filing or Failure to Appear notice.
This added step provides one more opportunity, beyond our COVID-19 emergency procedures, for claimants to provide good cause for failure to meet filing deadlines or to appear at their telephone hearings. In addition to this added step for late-filing/failure-to-appear dismissals, we have temporarily expanded our traditional in-line quality reviews of hearing dispositions to focus on ensuring that dismissals are policy-compliant. ...
Hmm, our local OHO might be weird, but they've done this for years.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes anyone think that the folks who do the QR review somehow will know the dismissal procedure better than the judges?
ReplyDelete4:10 Part of the long simmering Gruber/Neagle master plan to eliminate the ALJ corps. Last year group supervisors (mostly young lawyers in their late 20s who were hired out of law school and were decision writers for two years first) got control over ALJ instructions. One more step to pretend that the ALJs know nothing and must be replaced by staff attorneys.
ReplyDelete@4:10
ReplyDeleteProbably the mountain of statistics showing that the judges barely understand them well enough to get it right 2/3 of the time.
@7:01 PM
ReplyDeleteAny chance you could explain what you mean when you say group supervisors "got control over ALJ instructions?"
That's an awfully vague statement, which seems totally inconsistent with anything I've witnessed.
@6:38 That does not mean the QR folks will know the rules regarding dismissal any better.
ReplyDelete@5:38 PM
ReplyDeletePerhaps not. But it might explain why the agency decided that the judges need some extra hand-holding on the issue.
Anyone dismissing a claim for failure to appear at a hearing that is currently held in a manner that is voluntary does so at their peril. It has taken me longer to type this comment than it likely would for the AC to remand a dismissal if the claimant appeared and said their phone died, didn't ring, wouldn't work, was stolen, lost, dropped down a well, etc. No thanks.
ReplyDelete@7:30 Well, the QR folks should not be the ones to do it.
ReplyDelete