President Joe Biden directed his chief of staff, Ron Klain, to issue a memorandum to the heads of all departments and agencies to hold of on any action on any new or pending rules until the administration has had a chance to review, this includes new and pending rules at the Social Security Administration.
Social Security had already published a new rule related to Musculoskeletal Disorders listing for the purpose of analyzing disability claims. This new rule is supposed to go into effect April 2, 2021, but this freeze puts that in jeopardy. Many disability advocates claim the new rule will make it more difficult to qualify for disability benefits. Below is a portion of the memorandum issued by Klain on Biden’s first day in office.
New Rules
With respect to rules that have been sent to the OFR but not published in the Federal Register, immediately withdraw them from the OFR for review and approval as described in paragraph 1, subject to the exceptions described in paragraph 1. This withdrawal must be conducted consistent with OFR procedures.
Rules that have already been published
With respect to rules that have been published in the Federal Register, or rules that have been issued in any manner, but have not taken effect, consider postponing the rules’ effective dates for 60 days from the date of this memorandum, consistent with applicable law and subject to the exceptions described in paragraph 1, for the purpose of reviewing any questions of fact, law, and policy the rules may raise. For rules postponed in this manner, during the 60-day period, where appropriate and consistent with applicable law, consider opening a 30-day comment period to allow interested parties to provide comments about issues of fact, law, and policy raised by those rules, and consider pending petitions for reconsideration involving such rules. As appropriate and consistent with applicable law, and where necessary to continue to review these questions of fact, law, and policy, consider further delaying, or publishing for notice and comment proposed rules further delaying, such rules beyond the 60-day period. Following the 60-day delay in effective date.
Below is a summary of the new rule published by Social Security in the Federal Register.
Why are we revising the listings for evaluating musculoskeletal disorders?
We developed these final rules as part of our ongoing review of the listings. We are revising the listings for evaluating musculoskeletal disorders to update the medical criteria and clarify how we evaluate musculoskeletal disorders.
When will we begin to use these final rules?
As we noted in the dates section of this preamble, these final rules will be effective on April 2, 2021. We delayed the effective date of the rules to give us time to update our systems, and to provide training and guidance to all of our adjudicators before we implement the final rules. The current rules will continue to apply until the effective date of these final rules. When the final rules become effective, we will apply them to new applications filed on or after the effective date of the rules, and to claims that are pending on or after the effective date.
