Each year the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) compiles a report on Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) awards. EAJA shifts the costs of attorney fees for representing Social Security claimants in many cases appealed to the federal courts. The government has to bear the fees. The latest report for FY 2024 shows Social Security having the largest EAJA burden of any agency, 9,563 awards totaling more than $58 million. Just imagine what the costs would be without the Appeals Council.
By the way, you have to wonder how much longer ACUS will be around.
20 comments:
Wrong. The Appeals Council adds years of delay to the process and enhances a claimant’s misery. For what? Mostly a 2-page boilerplate denial letter. Claimants would be much better served going directly to court where they would get faster service.
I know ALJs still get full-time telework under Trump but do Appeals Council judges? Being in the field I can say it must be nice.
Sadly, it's just as easy to imagine the current Congress abolishing the 1980 EAJA .
Understaffing the agency forces more errors when adjudicators have less time to devote to each claim. That’s going to get a lot worse under the announced cuts. The human suffering side of those stats should not be overlooked. Each one of those 9,000 plus claimants had to wait a long time for appeals while unable to support themselves and their families through work, and with no benefits. Many lose whatever savings and assets they had and go through a lot of suffering before all the errors are resolved.
This is a sweet source of income for attorneys who lose at the hearing. How much of that hard-earned money is given to their client?
Are you seriously suggesting that attorneys who appeal and win in Fed court are somehow worse/greedier than attorneys that lose and don't appeal? Or are you claiming that these attorneys intentionally throw the hearing to win in Fed court? How do you think we win in Fed court without developing the record at the hearing?
And the client gets 75% of past due benefits...and last I checked 75% is better than 0% from an ALJ loss.
You won’t actually feel any better by making ALJs lives less comfortable, unless you’re a sociopath. Maybe you are? Anyway, ALJs already cone to the office for their in person hearings. Also, you should consider therapy.
$58 million is not even a drop in the bucket. The government would absolutely save money by zeroing out Appeal Council funding in exchange for a doubling of that EAJA fee total.
The real question is how it would effect Federal District court dockets. The AC has a 13% remand rate, so my guess would be a 20% increase in SSD complaints nationwide.
I wish they would publish a total of EAJA fees attributed to individual judges. My guess is a relatively small percentage of ALJ's count for a very large portion of EAJA fees.
Great idea! Let's transfer the tens of thousands of cases that are pending at the Appeals Council to federal court and see how long it takes for claimants to get a response.
If they are successful on appeal, the client gets a credit against 406b fees owed to the attorney. It typically lowers the amount owed in fees to the attorney from the client considerably.
all of it, if the remand later leads to an approval back at SSA and an award of fees.
The EAJA costs could easily be reduced. Instead of hyper focusing on numbers, the Agency should focus on a balance of numbers and making the correct decision on the first go round. We always have time to do it over (and spend a fortune) but we never have time to do it right the first time.
Really AC has always been slow and a waste of time, they send it back to the same alj who just tightens up the denial. Maybe the new AI ALJ will be better. And the new DOT with internet influencer and OF content publisher.
It is in the interest of the Executive Branch and Commissioner to have a final level of administrative review that is within their complete control and has a national perspective of program adjudication across multiple workloads , not just disability hearing decisions. The AC started as the statutory hearing and review arm of the COSS which was later delegated to quasi-independent ALJs. COSS hires and can discipline, remove or fire AC members without having to go through MSPB like ALJs. You lose the AC, you weaken the Executive and the COSS. There is no such thing as zeroing out the AC so long as the statutory and regulatory functions remain, including preparing the certified administrative records for the federal courts and reviewing final decisions after court remands. Do you really believe that the COSS would cut off this arm to have 13 different Federal Circuit Courts decide through precedent what SSA’s policy is and how it should be implemented (with no Chevron deference anymore)? AC members have performance metrics while Article III judges do not. Good luck predicting and controlling how Art III judges will rule on some of the decisions the AC is able to catch and correct on behalf of the agency and claimants.
I represented claimants in federal court work for years. The primary source of my fees was from EAJA. EAJA fees are paid by the government, not the claimant. The way the fee structure works, I seldom (I would guess 10% of the time) received a fee from the client for court work.
@ 12:06PM above - B I N G O.......DING, DING, DING......I would frequently say when I worked in field offices that isn't it strange how we have so much time to do things over and over, but never the time to do it right the first time. It is so true. There are so multiple times when a claimant or claimants have multiple issues that need to be resolved. Why not do ALL of it when they are in the office or on the phone? I'll tell you why...management wants the claimant in and out of the office and off the phone so another call can come in. It's ludicrous and comes back to bite the office and claimant in the A$$. Doing things right the first time does require and take time, but it stops the revolving door on a constant basis.
I think Charles was being facetious. The only thing the AC accomplishes is discourage people from filing in District Court. Without the AC, with more DC filings, the numbers would be vastly higher.
I'm sure they would if they understood it. However, there are about equal the number of EAJA Awards in VA cases. Aside from SSA and the VA, the number EAJA claims are miniscule. The only group Congress might give a damn about are Veterans, certainly not Social Security claimants.
We certainly see a core group of VERY bad judges whose decisions are of such poor quality, or so biased that they are well known to the Federal Court attorney community and the USDC magistrates and judges. SSA needs to clean house if they want to stop paying me EAJA and 406(b) fees. Please know that it is VERY, VERY common to get win a remand from the USDC only to be sent back by the AC to the same exact ALJ who simply scowls and reissues a word for work copy of the prior denial. And then, we go back to court again and I get a second EAJAs. The Appeals Council could cure that issue by actually doing their job rather than only focusing on Quality Review of ALJ approvals. Typically cases from this cadre of very bad ALJs get resolved after the second remand when we actually get a new ALJ, or the court itself remands for payment of benefits due to obduracy. In my practice, I certainly see a small set of ALJs who are just terrible. The agency is very aware and does nothing.
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