When To Reopen Social Security Field Offices? Union Says Never

     From Bloomberg Law:

Telework at the Social Security Administration is boosting call center answer rates and otherwise improving customer service, the leader of a union that represents about 25,000 field office and call center workers says.

The agency should allow employees to continue teleworking to the maximum extent possible even after the Covid-19 pandemic abates, said Ralph de Juliis, president of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees. The union is asking the agency to consider a plan that would allow the SSA to close most of its 1,300 field offices in the U.S. and save hundreds of millions of dollars on facility costs, he said. Though the agency has clashed with its unions in the past over telework, de Juliis said he’s hopeful agency officials are seeing the benefits now that most employees are working from home. 

“If they want to go that way, they have the union’s support,” he said. ...

This Just In: There Are Nutty People Working At The White House

     From the Washington Post:

... Senior White House economic officials also are exploring a proposal floated by two conservative scholars that would allow Americans to choose to receive checks of up to $5,000 in exchange for a delay of their Social Security benefits, according to three people familiar with the internal matter. That plan was written by Andrew Biggs of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute and Joshua Rauh of the right-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford University. ...

Another Question Or Two

     Some claimants whose cases have already been scheduled for a hearing by Social Security are declining the offer of a telephone hearing. That leaves a hole in the schedule of an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). Are hearing offices trying to fit the cases of other claimants who haven't already been scheduled into those holes? I think the answer is generally no so my next question is, why not? 

     Let me spell out what may be obvious to many readers. I'm pointing out a possible flaw of centralized scheduling -- inflexibility.

A Pet Peeve: "It's Been A Minute"

     Here's a pet peeve of mine: Clients who answer "It's been a minute" when asked when some event occurred. What the hell does that mean? Where did this usage come from? I think I've only heard this in the last year or two. Is this usage national? 

     Unfortunately, lawyers usually need to know when things happened! We get annoyed when given answers like this. My instinct as a lawyer is that if my client seems evasive when answering a question, I've just hit upon a key problem.  Of course, "It's been a minute" isn't necessarily evasive but it sounds that way even when it isn't.

Man Sentenced For Threating SSA Employee

     From KHGI in Nebraska:

37- year-old John J. Scoggins of Omaha, Nebraska, was sentenced on Wednesday for making a threat to a Social Security Administration Official.

Scoggins was sentenced to five months of prison with an additional one month home detention, followed by a one-year term of supervised release.

According to United States Attorney Joe Kelly, on February 8, 2019, Scoggins contacted the Social Security Administration by telephone to confirm his address and other information related to his benefits.

During the conversation, Scoggins became belligerent with the Social Security Administration employee and threatened to physically harm her, according to officials.

Claimants Denied Disability Benefits Don't Go Back To Work; They Just Keep Trying To Get On Disabiltiy Benefits

     From the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication:

This article examines the experiences of Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) applicants aged 51 or older who were initially denied benefits because the disability examiner determined that they could perform either their past work or other work. ... We find that few older DI applicants who were denied benefits on this basis resumed work at a substantial level following denial. More commonly, applicants denied at this stage continued to pursue benefits, often successfully. Nearly two-thirds of initial work capacity-related denials were ultimately allowed DI benefits after appealing the initial decision or reapplying, and our estimates suggest that many of the rest claimed Old-Age and Survivors Insurance benefits before they reached full retirement age.

     Is it just me or does this suggest that it would be fairer to allow more of the disability claims filed by older people? Denying so many of the disability claims filed by older people creates misery and doesn't end up saving much money anyway. It makes work for me and other attorneys but that's certainly not a valid policy objective.
     Also, do you see evidence in this study to support increasing the age categories in the grid regulations? Should 55 or 57 be the new 50? Where is the proof that making this change would be a reasonable thing to do?

Video CEs

     Social Security has now issued new instructions to allow for video consultative examinations of disability claimants but only by psychiatrists and psychologists. 

     I'm not seeing any physical consultative examinations locally. Are any going on elsewhere? Is there a plan for this other than to hold cases indefinitely?

Lawsuit Over Wet Signature Requirement

     From a press release:

Timothy Cole is being treated for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. His treatment leaves him immunocompromised and unable to work, and places him at additional risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. He needs to apply for disability benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the safest way to do so would be to fill out the application online at his home in Jacksonville, Florida. Because he is immunocompromised, leaving his home or interacting with paper mail is dangerous for Mr. Cole. But since he plans to hire an attorney to help with the complex application process, he cannot submit his application online because applicants using authorized representatives, like attorneys, must sign a paper copy of their application. This is true even though SSA has an online application and electronic signatures are accessible, secure, and federally approved.

Mr. Cole and three other plaintiffs, along with the National Federation of the Blind, are suing the Social Security Administration in federal court. They seek a court order requiring SSA to allow e-signatures on applications rather than requiring a "wet-ink" signature when the applicant is using an attorney or other authorized representative. SSA does not require wet-ink signatures for applications for some benefits when an authorized representative is not being used by the applicant. The suit contends that the requirement has always been discriminatory, but during the COVID-19 pandemic it also endangers the health and even the lives of applicants, as even SSA has recognized in quarantining its own mail for two days and shutting down its field offices. ...