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This month marks the 60th anniversary of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program. SSDI has been a salvation for millions of people with long-term and severe disabilities and illnesses. The program, signed into law by President Eisenhower on August 1, 1956, amended the Social Security Act (SSA) to provide economic security to disabled workers and disabled children of retired or deceased workers, just as the SSA provides retirees with protection from impoverishment in old age.

At disability hearings, the Social Security judge will evaluate whether your physical and mental impairments prevent you from performing the work you have done in the past 15 years. On June 7, 2016; the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Stacy v. Colvin upheld the rule that Social Security cannot use the least demanding aspect of your past work to classify the difficulty level of the job.

In the last year, SSA, with direction and funding by Congress, has initiated a more aggressive campaign to review and potentially terminate disability status, benefits and Medicare to tens of thousands of people. At a meeting with Administrative Law Judges locally, it was estimated that as many as 35 to 40 percent of the cases being appealed in 2016 to area SSA hearing offices will be disability cessation appeals, rather than the typical “initial entitlement” cases.

A federal appeals court recently issued a decision containing good news for Social Security disability claimants residing in California, Nevada, Hawaii, and the other states within the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Court determined that when Social Security disability judges decide that a claimant’s testimony at the hearing level is not entirely credible, they must provide “specific, clear, and convincing” reasons for rejecting the testimony, and cite to medical evidence in the record that contradicts the claimant’s testimony.

Average Wait Time Until a Hearing is Held (as of April 2016)

The average waiting time for a Social Security Disability hearing has increased significantly this year. The chart below shows the average wait time – in months – between the date a hearing is requested and the date a hearing is held for the hearing offices in Northern California, Reno and Honolulu.

In the last weeks, the federal government began to send out notices to 387,000 individuals, including people approved for Social Security disability benefits, who are facing burdensome student loan debt while also experiencing severe, permanent disabilities.

The Social Security Administration announced its plan to hire 250 new Administrative Law Judges per year to help reduce the backlog of Social Security disability hearings.  Currently, over one million claimants nationwide are in the pipeline waiting for their Social Security disability hearings to be held.

Press Release

Terry LaPorte, of LaPorte Law Firm, has been selected to the 2016 list as a member of the Nation’s Top One Percent by the National Association of Distinguished Counsel. NADC is an organization dedicated to promoting the highest standards of legal excellence.