SSDI benefits and unemployment

In 2012, the Department of Workforce Development introduced numerous proposed changes to unemployment law, and one of those proposals, D12-05, sought to ban recipients of Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) from receiving unemployment benefits.

After back and forth between the members of the Advisory Council and the Department, a new version of the Department’s proposed ban on unemployment benefits when receiving SSDI benefits was drafted, supported by the council, and passed by the legislature.

In 2014, however, the Labor and Industry Review Commission found that the actual statutory language did not accomplish what the Department intended and held that the ban on receiving unemployment benefits only applied for the week in which a person’s monthly SSDI benefits were paid. Since then, the Department has appealed each and every Commission decision allowing claimants receiving SSDI benefits to continue receiving some unemployment benefits (about eleven such cases in total). An amicus brief being filed in some of these circuit court cases has the details about these events and issues.

This amicus brief also demonstrates the fundamental flaw in the Department’s push to keep SSDI recipients from receiving unemployment benefits, namely the Department’s presumption that SSDI recipients do not work and leave the labor market. As detailed in this amicus brief, not only do folks receiving SSDI benefits continue to work in numerous kinds of jobs, they are also encouraged to do so.

Undeterred, the Department explained at the 19 February 2015 Advisory Council meeting that a proposal for eliminating all unemployment eligibility for those receiving SSDI benefits was being developed. At the 19 March 2015 council meeting, the Department presented this new language in D15-01 to make the ban on unemployment eligibility apply to all weeks SSDI recipients receive unemployment benefits.

To establish why this new and total ban was needed, the Department informed council members that in January 2014, when the first ban on unemployment eligibility for SSDI recipients was instituted, 687 claimants were immediately disqualified because they notified the Department that month that they were receiving SSDI benefits. This 687 number bears repeating: the SSDI ban as implemented by the Department stopped unemployment benefits for nearly 700 claimants. And, only eleven or so claimants who appealed their cases to the Commission managed to retain some eligibility.

The Department’s recently released Financial Outlook Report at p.34 shows the financial impact this ban on unemployment benefits for SSDI recipients has had: nearly $1.5 million annually is not being paid to claimants based on the work they have performed the previous year.

Staffers in the Secretary’s office of DWD recently asked the Commission to identify possible legal problems in the Department’s unemployment proposals. The Commission did so, and reported to the Advisory Council the problems with the Department’s SSDI proposals arising from the Commission’s legal analysis. The Commission’s memo reveals three basic problems with the Department’s SSDI efforts:

• a total ban on unemployment eligibility discriminates against the disabled
• a ban on unemployment eligibility because of disability is inconsistent with other provisions of unemployment law
• a complete ban on unemployment eligibility is far too broad relative to the income and eligibility of many if not most individual claimants

In response, at the April 2015 council meeting the Department lambasted the Commission’s memorandum as driven by a political agenda rather than legal analysis. Scott Manley, WMC vice-president, chimed in to endorse the Department’s criticism of the Commission’s “political” opinions. These conclusions were especially remarkable when the Commission’s memorandum represents the first time that council members were presented with the Kluczynski decision at issue in these SSDI cases.

The Advisory Council, however, apparently accepted the Department’s conclusion about SSDI benefits. After the members caucused, they indicated that they approved of the newly proposed statutory language in D15-01 and that the Department could go ahead and present this proposal to the legislature.