Administrative Law Judges have banned together to sue the Social Security Administration because ALJs are expected to decide as many as 700 disability claims a year, which has resulted in rushed decisions and possibly even improper decisions that may have cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
“The Social Security Administration seems to care only about quotas,” said Judge Randall Frye in a recent article in the Baltimore Sun. Frye is the president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges. “Case quotas prevent judges from devoting necessary time to the most complex cases resulting in waste and abuse,” he said.
The lawsuit was filed in April in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
The ALJs are asking that the court prevent Social Security officials from imposing quotas on how many cases ALJs should administer each year because that violates the Social Security Act and Administrative Procedure Act.
The judges say that disability claims have more than doubled since 1990 and have grown by 30 percent since 2007. The increased workload has put more pressure on ALJs to approve claims because approvals take less time than denials do.
Judges who have not met the quota set forth by Social Security have been subjected to reprimands, according to the suit.
There is no doubt that the Disability Insurance Trust Fund is in rough shape. By its own estimates, the Trust Fund is expected to be exhausted by 2016, which could trigger a more than 20 percent decrease in payments to as many as 11 million recipients.
The Social Security Administration has not yet responded or answered the lawsuit, but will be defended by the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Chicago. No hearings have yet been scheduled.
To learn more about the lawsuit and to checkout the entire Baltimore Sun article click here.
