A combination of groups that advocate for people with disabilities have publicly come out against Social Security’s recent proposed revisions to the rules of conduct and standards of responsibility for representatives assisting clients with disability claims. It’s not necessarily that the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) is sticking up for attorneys and client representatives, but the CCD understands that anything that makes it more difficult to help get people with disabilities benefits they deserve, is not something that should be supported. For more of a background on what is going on the following paragraph from a previous blog provides some clarification.
The Social Security Administration has proposed revisions to the rules of conduct and standards of responsibility for appointed representatives in Social Security disability matters, which seem to be aimed at making a representative’s job that much more difficult. These proposed new rules, which can be found in the Federal Register here, may be commented on until October 17, 2016. These rules are supposed to “clarify” a representative’s responsibilities, but many of these proposals seem to be an effort to make representatives jump through more hoops.
After reviewing these proposals, the CCD listed four major reasons it opposes these new rules.
- Creating an arbitrary deadline for the submission of evidence is inconsistent with Social Security’s duties to fully develop a record with complete evidence.
- Excluding evidence due to these arbitrary deadlines will result in more denials of cases and lead to more appeals to the Appeals Council when it is not needed.
- The new rule ignores the fact that sometimes new evidence is introduce at or after a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) and claimants and representatives should be given a chance to respond.
- Serious problems and inconsistencies exist with the implementation of the five business day rule. This is a rule that requires all evidence to be submitted to the ALJ within five days of a hearing.
It is important to note that these are only proposed rules, so we shall see what the ultimate outcome is.
