Several years ago the Social Security Administration changed a policy related to disability claims. Prior to this change a disability claimant could have an active claim at the Appeals Council and could file a new claim while that decision is pending. Typically Appeals Council decisions can take up to 18 months to receive and there is a very small remand level at the Appeals Council after a claimant files a review of an unfavorable decision made by an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). While these claimants waited to hear if the Appeals Council would rule in their favor, which was not a likely scenario, they could file a new claim for disability without having to wait up to a year and a half to receive bad news with no other recourse.
Unfortunately this option rarely exists today with the exception of extraordinary circumstances. New information is available that shows just how many situations Social Security allows a claimant to have an Appeal Council claim and a new claim pending at the same time. The exception Social Security allows is when there is evidence of a “new or disabling condition.”
So far in 2016 this exception request was granted for 60 claims out of a total of 184 requests. Complete numbers for 2015 show that 232 requests were approved and 242 were denied. It has been a recent trend for Social Security to increasingly deny these requests because in both 2012 and 213 more than 50 percent of these requests were granted. Social Security knows that the people who are rejected by the Appeals Council have one of two options if they want to pursue disability benefits, either file a new claim or file a federal lawsuit against the Social Security Administration. Considering the fact that filing a federal claim takes some upfront out-of-pocket money to begin with and there are a limited number of representatives to assist with this, new claims are usually the way most people go. For more information about these numbers click here.
