Hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities could have their Social Security benefits reinstated following a ruling that says the Social Security Administration can no longer drop people from benefits simply for having minor outstanding warrants.
The settlement of the class-action lawsuit Martinez vs Astrue, ends the policy of the SSA dropping people’s disability and Medicare benefits under the label of being a “fleeing felon.” The policy was intended to apply to people who were actively in flight from prosecution, but in recent years became a doctrine to drop people who had misdemeanor warrants and either didn’t know about them or simply had no means of settling them.
“It’s a really huge deal,” says Danielle Taylor, case coordination program supervisor for Cascadia who works within Multnomah County Adult Community Justice. Taylor helps clients resolve legal issues so they can secure Social Security benefts and help stabilize their lives with health and housing services. About 90 percent of Taylor’s clients don’t have the capacity to work as the result of mental or physical disabilities or illness. Many have never worked before, she says, and some were reduced to homelessness as a result of losing their Medicare, SSI and other benefits. The warrant issue had become a chronic barrier to getting services, according to Taylor.
“Their Social Security is their sole income,” Taylor says.
The change in policy only applies to people with minor warrants for non-person-on-person violations, such as shoplifting. Taylor says in many cases they were 10- to 15-year-old records in other states that can be cleared if the person has the means to travel to the state. If not, the warrants languish on the records and block access to housing, health care and basic needs for people with disabilities, Taylor says. Her clients are among many low-income and disabled people who are unable or can’t afford to navigate the legal system on their own.
“They’re homeless, in shelters, they have no funding, they don’t drive,” Taylor says. “We’re providing bus tickets to appointments.”
According to the National Senior Citizens Law Center, which brought the class-action suit against the SSA, more than 200,000 people nationwide have had their SSA benefits suspended or denied since 2000. The retroactive reinstatement of benefits could total more than $500 million, according to the Center.
Here’s how it worked, the center says. The SSA matched warrant databases against people receiving benefits. When a match was made, SSA provided information on the individual’s whereabouts to law enforcement in the jurisdiction that issued the warrant. SSA then waited 60 days to allow law enforcement to secure an arrest.
Only after law enforcement declined to pursue the individual — the warrants under the lawsuit are non-extraditable — did SSA take action to suspend benefits. Therefore most of those who lost benefits were wanted for minor offenses, often from decades earlier, and many did not even know criminal charges had been filed against them, according to the center. The condition coined the term “unknowing flight.”
From Staff Reports