Can I win my disability case at the Social Security Appeals Council?

By Tomasz Stasiuk, July 12th, 2010 | 4 Appeals Council | 5 Comments

You have been denied disability benefits by an Administrative Law Judge at your Social Security hearing. You filed an appeal with the Social Security Appeals Council. If they approve the appeal, you can get your disability benefits? Right?

Probably not.

The Social Security Appeals Council generally looks at three things:

• Was there an error of law? Did the Judge apply the wrong standard, or misapply a standard?
• Were the Judge’s actions, findings and conclusions supported by substantial evidence?
• Is there as broad policy or procedural issue which may affect the general and public interest?

Of these three, the Appeals Council (AC) mostly deals with legal error.

Why am I discussing this? Because, even if there is legal error, that does not necessarily mean you are disabled. It only means there were mistakes at the hearing level; and that is not enough to win disability benefits.

So what do you get if you win at the Appeals Council?

The majority of the time, the Appeals Council will not approve a case outright. Instead, if there were significant mistakes at the hearing level, the Appeals Council will send the case back to the hearing level with instructions on what needs to be done to correct the mistakes.

You don’t win, you get sent back for another hearing. Here is the other shoe dropping: the second hearing is typically with the same judge that heard the case at the first hearing.

While you can request a new Judge, or ask the Judge to recuse him/herself if you feel that you were treated unfairly, you generally get the same judge when a case is remanded from the Appeals Council. The exceptions to this are as follows:

• If you had an out-of-state Judge at the first hearing who is not available for the second hearing. Or,
• If you have already appealed a decision from the same judge to the Appeals Council twice and had the same case remanded.

For more information about appealing to a hearing denial to the Social Security Appeals Council, click here.

Tomasz Stasiuk is the founding attorney of the Stasiuk Firm - a law firm devoted to exclusively handling Social Security disability cases in Colorado. Contingent fees available.