Justia Public Benefits Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff-appellant Christopher J. Warner served as a municipal and then superior court judge from July 1996 until his retirement in October 2010. In November 2010, he applied for a disability retirement benefit under the Judges' Retirement System II Law (JRS II). Defendant-respondent California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) granted his application, and he was awarded a monthly retirement allowance, paying him an amount equal to 65 percent of his retirement-level salary. In May 2011, Judge Warner applied to CalPERS to receive a distribution of his monetary credits in the JRS II system, which totaled $572,407. CalPERS staff denied the request. Judge Warner appealed that decision to the CalPERS Board of Administration. After a hearing, the administrative law judge (ALJ) issued a proposed decision recommending the staff decision be affirmed. The Board adopted the ALJ's recommendation. In January 2013, Judge Warner filed a petition for writ of mandate in San Bernardino County Superior Court challenging the Board's decision. The Judicial Council assigned the case to Los Angeles County Superior Court, which later an order denying the petition. This appeal presented a matter of first impression for the Court of Appeal: a question of statutory interpretation regarding the JRS II. Judge Warner contended that under JRS II, he was entitled to receive both a disability retirement allowance and payment of the monetary credits he accrued during his service. CalPERS ruled JRS II entitles Judge Warner only to the disability retirement allowance. The trial court denied Judge Warner's petition for writ of mandate, which sought to reverse the agency's ruling. Finding no reversible error in the Superior Court's judgment, the Court of Appeal affirmed. View "Warner v. CalPERS" on Justia Law

This case arose from the Secretary’s decision in 2005 to change the boundaries of the geographic areas used to compute regional wage indices. A group of hospitals challenged the Secretary's decision to include wage data from Southcoast campuses outside the Boston-Quincy area in calculating the index for that area for fiscal years 2006 and 2007. The court concluded that the Secretary's treatment of Southcoast hewed to the existing administrative treatment of such multi-campus hospital groups; there were substantial informational and operational obstacles to implementing a different computational method quickly in 2006 or retroactively; appellants admit that the temporary effect of Southcoast’s multi-campus data on the wage index was a “one-off” occurrence arising from “unusual circumstances” that apparently did not affect any other multi-campus hospital group’s treatment; and nothing in the Medicare Act, 42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq., or established principles of administrative review mandate that the Secretary individually tailor one hospital’s reporting treatment to fit appellants' preferred computational outcome. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Anna Jacques Hospital v. Burwell" on Justia Law

The Defense Contract Management Agency within the Department of Defense (DOD) employed Vassallo as a computer engineer in 2012. That summer, it announced a vacancy for the position of Lead Interdisciplinary Engineer, stating that only certain individuals could apply: “[c]urrent [DCMA]” employees or “[c]urrent [DOD] [e]mployee[s] with the Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics . . . [w]orkforce who are outside of the Military Components.” Vassallo, a veteran, applied, but DCMA rejected his application. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) determined that DOD was not required to afford him veterans employment preferences under the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998 (VEOA), 112 Stat. 3182. OPM defines the word “agency” in 5 U.S.C. 3304(f)(1) to mean “Executive agency” as defined in 5 U.S.C. 105 and concluded that DCMA was not required to give Vassallo an opportunity to compete under 5 U.S.C. 3304(f)(1) because the DOD— the agency making the announcement—did not accept applications from outside its own workforce. Vassallo sought corrective action from the Merit Systems Protection Board, which concluded that OPM’s regulation permissibly fills a gap in the governing statute. The Federal Circuit affirmed, rejecting arguments that the OPM regulation contradicts the plain terms of the statute and unreasonably undermines the purpose of the VEOA. View "Vassallo v. Dept. of Defense" on Justia Law

During the Vietnam War, herbicides were applied near the Korean DMZ in 1968-1969. The 2003 Veterans Benefits Act authorized benefits for children with spina bifida born to certain veterans, 38 U.S.C. 1821. In 2004, the VA amended its Manual to provide benefits for “individuals born with spina bifida who are the children of veterans who served with specific units … between September 1, 1967 and August 31, 1971” conceding that certain veterans who served in April 1968 to July 1969 were exposed to herbicides. The final rule, effective February, 2011, was applicable “to all applications for benefits that are received by VA on or after February 24, 2011 and to all applications … pending before VA,” the Veterans Court, or the Federal Circuit on February 24, 2011. McKinney filed a claim in 2010 for service connection based on exposure to Agent Orange during his DMZ service, which began in August 1969. The VA denied his claim. The period of presumed exposure expired one month before McKinney’s service. The VA finalized the 2011 regulation, which extended the presumed exposure period, and granted McKinney’s claim under that regulation, but denied him an effective date earlier than February 2011, so that he received benefits for the post-2011 portion of his claim. The Federal Circuit upheld the VA’s decision to assign the 2011 regulation a prospective effective date. View "McKinney v. McDonald" on Justia Law

K.S. is biracial and has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder, mood disorder, adjustment disorder, and Tourette's syndrome. K.S. was a freshman and sophomore at Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School 2010-12. K.S. is gifted academically, with a full scale IQ of 123. She excels in math and science; successfully took several advanced placement classes, and was involved in show choir, the school musical, and volleyball. K.S. received special education and services under an individualized education program (IEP) as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. 1400. The district provided K.S. with one-on-one paraprofessional support throughout the school day. K.S. could return to a special classroom at any time and could use that classroom to take tests in a quiet environment. During winter break, K.S. was raped K.S. returned to class and to participation in the school's show choir in January 2012, but experienced unsettling social interactions with peers and other emotional disappointments during the semester; her IEP was amended to add paraprofessional support for K.S.'s extracurricular activities. K.S. did not make the cut for show choir. Her parents eventually removed K.S. to a private school and filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The Eighth Circuit rejected their claims, finding that the district had provided a Free Appropriate Public Education. View "Sneitzer v. Iowa Dept. of Educ." on Justia Law

Respondent, the chief investigator for the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, was investigating Affiliated Counseling Center, LLC (Affiliated) when she applied for and received a search warrant for Affiliated’s premises. The police executed the warrant and seized numerous documents from Affiliated’s office, including patient files. Thereafter, Appellant, the sole owner of Affiliated, sued Respondent, alleging that Respondent committed conversion and trespass to chattels by losing and/or destroying some of Affiliated’s patient files. Respondent moved to dismiss, asserting that she was entitled to prosecutorial immunity. The district court denied the motion. The court of appeals reversed, concluding that Respondent was entitled to prosecutorial immunity because her challenged conduct was taken pursuant to her statutory authority to investigate Medicaid fraud. The Supreme Court reversed, holding (1) prosecutorial immunity does not extend to an investigator when the investigator’s conduct is not intimately involved with the initiation and maintenance of criminal charges; and (2) therefore, the court of appeals erred when it concluded that Respondent was entitled to prosecutorial immunity. View "Stresemann v. Jesson" on Justia Law

Plaintiff (Claimant) appealed the denial of her application for supplemental security income. The court concluded that the ALJ did not recognize the apparent conflict between claimant's residual functioning capacity (RFC) and the demands of Level Two reasoning and, therefore, the court could not determined whether substantial evidence supports the ALJ's five-step finding. The court vacated as to this issue and remanded for the ALJ to determine whether there is a reasonable explanation to justify relying on the vocational expert's testimony. Because the ALJ has not yet determined whether claimant established fibromyalgia as a medically determinable impairment under the 2010 diagnostic criteria and it may moot claimant's other arguments regarding her fibromyalgia diagnosis, the court need not reach claimant's other arguments at this time. The court held that the ALJ’s RFC determination adequately incorporated the opinions of Dr. McKenna and Dr. Boyd. The court discerned no error in the ALJ's consideration of claimant's testimony. Finally, to the extent the ALJ may have failed to consider lay witness evidence, the error was harmless because it was “inconsequential to the ultimate nondisability determination.” Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded. View "Rounds v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec." on Justia Law

Plaintiff (Claimant) appealed the denial of her social security disability benefits and supplemental security income. The court held that when an ALJ determines that a claimant for Social Security benefits is not malingering and has provided objective medical evidence of an underlying impairment which might reasonably produce the pain or other symptoms she alleges, the ALJ may reject the claimant’s testimony about the severity of those symptoms only by providing specific, clear, and convincing reasons for doing so; an ALJ does not provide specific, clear, and convincing reasons for rejecting a claimant’s testimony by simply reciting the medical evidence in support of his or her residual functional capacity determination; and, in this case, the ALJ committed legal error where the ALJ found generally that the claimant’s testimony was not credible, but failed to identify which testimony she found not credible and why. The court concluded that the error was not harmless because it precluded the court from conducting a meaningful review. Accordingly, the court vacated the district court's judgment and instructed the district court to remand to the ALJ for further proceedings. View "Brown-Hunter v. Colvin" on Justia Law

The State’s public pension systems were defined-benefit plans, which guaranteed participants a calculable amount of benefits payable upon retirement based on the participant’s salary and time spent in the pension system. In 2011, with the enactment of L. 2011, c. 78 (Chapter 78), the Legislature added language explicitly declaring that each member of the State’s pension systems "shall have a contractual right to the annual required contribution amount" and the failure of the State to make the required contribution "shall be deemed to be an impairment of the contractual right." A separate statutory provision, enacted earlier, required the State to increase its annually required contribution (ARC) beginning with fiscal year 2012 (FY12) over the course of seven years at increments of 1/7 of the ARC per year, until the contribution covered the full ARC. The State made the required contributions in FY12 and FY13, and the Appropriations Act signed into law for FY14 included the required contributions of 3/7 of the ARC. In February 2014, the Governor released the FY15 proposed budget, which also included funding to satisfy the State’s required payment (i.e., 4/7 of the ARC). On May 20, 2014, the Governor issued Executive Order 156, which reduced the State payments into the pension systems for FY14, explaining that the reduction was due to a severe and unanticipated revenue shortfall. Instead of paying the required 3/7 of the ARC contribution, which totaled $1.582 billion, the State made a total contribution of $696 million for FY14. The next day, citing new information that placed the State’s projected revenue at less than previous projections, the State Treasurer announced that the proposed budget for FY15 was being revised to reduce the amount that would be contributed to pension systems. The revised FY15 budget thus advanced would include a total contribution of $681 million, reflecting $1.57 billion less than what was required. Plaintiffs brought this action because the prior Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 and current FY 2015 Appropriations Acts did not provide sufficient funding to meet the amounts called for under Chapter 78’s payment schedule. Plaintiffs argued that Chapter 78 created an enforceable contract that was entitled to constitutional protection against impairment. The trial court issued a detailed and comprehensive opinion that granted summary judgment to plaintiffs on their impairment-of-contract claims and denied defendants’ motion to dismiss. The court accepted the argument that Chapter 78 created a contract and that the State’s failure to appropriate the full value of ARC in the FY15 Appropriations Act substantially impaired plaintiffs’ rights under the contract. In so finding, the court rejected arguments that Chapter 78 was unenforceable as violative of the Debt Limitation Clause, the Appropriations Clause, and the gubernatorial line-item veto power. The court did not order a specific appropriation, but rather determined to give the other branches an opportunity to act in accordance with the court’s decree. The Supreme Court reversed, finding that Chapter 78 did not create a legally enforceable contract that was entitled to constitutional protection. The Debt Limitation Clause of the State Constitution interdicted the creation, in this manner, of a legally binding enforceable contract compelling multi-year financial payments in the sizable amounts called for by the statute. View "Burgos v. New Jersey" on Justia Law

Stepp, a former correctional officer, training secretary and coordinator, and parole probation officer, applied for a period of disability and disability insurance benefits under the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. 401. Stepp was 47 years old, 5’6” tall, and weighed 237 pounds. She primarily claimed degenerative disc disease and depression. An ALJ denied Stepp’s claim, acknowledging that Stepp suffered from chronic pain, but finding that surgery, medication, and therapy had resulted in improvement such that she retained the capacity to engage in sedentary work. Stepp submitted to the Appeals Council additional evidence in the form of medical records created just before the ALJ’s denial of her claim. This evidence, the treatment notes of pain management specialist Dr. MacKay, tends to suggest that Stepp’s condition did not improve over the course of the adjudicative period to the extent that the ALJ estimated. The Appeals Council declined to engage in plenary review and did not address Dr. MacKay’s notes. The district court affirmed. The Seventh Circuit remanded, finding that the ALJ properly analyzed a range of conflicting testimony and medical opinions and reached a conclusion adequately supported by the record, but that the Council erred in not accepting Dr. MacKay’s treatment notes as new and material evidence. View "Stepp v. Carolyn Colvin" on Justia Law