ALJ Error – Disability

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Kelly J. Chavez v. Nancy A. Berryhill

Case No.: 17-2978

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and KANNE and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: ALJ Error – Disability

When a person applies for disability benefits, the Social Security Administration evaluates that person’s capacity to work and, at the fifth and final step of the analysis, assesses whether significant numbers of jobs exist that someone with those abilities and limitations could perform. This determination is consequential: answering no means the claimant is disabled and entitled to supplemental income, whereas a yes answer results in a denial of benefits. At this final step, the agency bears the burden of showing that suitable jobs exist in significant numbers. The vocational expert enlisted by the agency to estimate the number of jobs suitable for Kelly Chavez offered two vastly different projections—testifying that for one particular job there were either 800 or 108,000 existing positions. The vocational expert preferred the larger estimate, and the administrative law judge who presided over Chavez’s hearing agreed with that choice. In the end, the ALJ denied Chavez’s claim for benefits, and the district court affirmed.

We vacate the ALJ’s decision at step five. The decision was not supported by substantial evidence because the ALJ failed to ensure that the vocational expert’s job estimates were reliable. To the contrary, the vocational expert offered no affirmative explanation for why his estimates (or the method that produced them) were reliable and instead reached that conclusion through a process of elimination—by determining that the estimates yielded by an alternative method seemed too low. By affording such broad deference to the vocational expert’s chosen estimates, the ALJ relieved the agency of its evidentiary burden at the final step of the disability analysis and impermissibly shifted the burden to Chavez.

Vacated and Remanded

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.