The American Association for Disability Policy Reform
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In April 2011, the Urban Justice Center filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that five judges in the Queens, New York hearing office were biased against applicants and mishandled cases, systematically denying benefits. The allegations were laid out in an 83-page class action complaint (details).
The five judges were Michael D. Cofresi, Seymour Fier, Marilyn P. Hoppenfeld, David Z. Nisnewitz and Hazel C. Strauss. The suit alleged that these judges (1) conducted hearings that were "a far cry" from the required standards, (2) used rationale that was "plucked from thin air," (3) trivialized plaintiff's impairments, raising the possibility that the judges were not seeking to be fair but rather trying to support conclusions they had already formed, (4) used analysis that was deficient and incoherent, (5) made decisions at odds with established precedent and that these were arbitrary, illogical, and not supported by substantial evidence, (6) delayed in ways that were particularly egregious, (7) subjected witnesses to combative questioning and (8) that their overall conduct demonstrated serious negligence and possible bias.
On October 18, 2013, the court approved a settlement (details) that provided that
In agreeing to the settlement, the Social Security Administration denied any wrongdoing or liability.
Comment: The Urban Justice Center is to be commended for its hard work in bringing this lawsuit. Although the Social Security Administration denied any wrongdoing, the settlement certainly suggests to us that the named judges were guilty of repeated abuse of their authorized powers as judges as charged in the lawsuit.
Nationwide, claimants and their representatives commonly accuse administrative law judges informally of abusing their power? How and why is this possible? The principal reason is that because definition of disability requires decision makers to try to evaluate claims of pain, fatigue and various other subjective factors and there is no reliable method for doing this (details), decision makers are forced to rely on personal bias and to guess. Thus, it is not surprising to find judges accused of bias against claimants. The Social Security Administration's consistently poor data collection (details) and judges' freedom to allow or deny as many applicants as they like only make matters worse. Until the fundamental problems are corrected, occurrences like this can be expected to continue.
Last updated on 3/28/14.