Amicus Briefs
Carr v. Saul; Davis v. Saul
CASE SUMMARY
The case concerned whether claimants seeking disability benefits under the Social Security Act had to “exhaust” constitutional challenges to their benefits determinations before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) at the Social Security Administration in order to obtain judicial review on that issue on later appeal in federal court.
Specifically, the Petitioners did not challenge the constitutionality of their ALJs’ appointments during their respective ALJ hearings, but they each raised a constitutional challenge on appeal in district court. The Eighth and Tenth U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals closed the courthouse doors on the Petitioners’ Appointments Clause challenges, ruling that “issue exhaustion” precluded a challenge that was not first raised before the ALJ.
In January 2021, NCLA and the Cato Institute filed a joint amicus brief arguing that imposing issue exhaustion requirements is inappropriate when the issue does not depend on an agency’s discretion, expertise, or fact-finding.
In a win for NCLA, on April 22, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that the lower courts erred in imposing an issue-exhaustion requirement on Social Security disability claimants. In Carr v. Saul, claimants challenged a judge-made version of the administrative exhaustion rule requiring that litigants at an administrative hearing raise any legal arguments in support of their claim at each step of the administrative process or forfeit those arguments on appeal.
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IN THE MEDIA
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