United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued November 17, 2020

Decided December 3, 2020

Before

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

No. 20-1687

KATHRYN JO HARRIS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

ANDREW M. SAUL,

Commissioner of Social Security,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 19-cv-870-DGW

Donald G. Wilkerson,

Magistrate Judge.

O R D E R

Kathryn Harris, a 50-year-old woman suffering from mental illnesses and 

anxiety, challenges the denial of her application for disability insurance benefits. She 

argues that the administrative law judge failed to develop the record, misevaluated the 

medical opinions, and wrongly discounted her statements about the limiting effects of 

her symptoms. But because substantial evidence supports the ALJ’s conclusion, we 

affirm the judgment. 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 20-1687 Page 2

Background

For more than a decade before applying for benefits, Harris worked off-and-on 

as a registered nurse at hospitals, nursing homes, and an in-home healthcare company. 

But beginning around 2013, Harris began to suffer from depression and anxiety. 

For three days that year, Harris was hospitalized for increasing depression. 

Dr. Elbert Lee, her psychiatrist, treated her, noting that while this was her first inpatient 

psychiatric hospitalization, Harris had a “history of mood disorder” that had been 

unresponsive to anti-depressive medications. This time, though, medications and 

therapy helped her symptoms, and she was discharged. (Hospital documents indicate 

that Harris planned to follow up with Dr. Lee, but the record lacks any treatment 

records until early 20151—an omission that, she believes, undercuts the ALJ’s decision.)

Between early 2015 and mid-2016, Harris saw Dr. Lee monthly for treatment of 

her mental illnesses with various medications. Dr. Lee usually recorded that Harris was 

pleasant and cooperative with normal thought processes, judgment, and concentration. 

In mid-2015, though, Harris was arrested for domestic violence, an episode that Dr. Lee 

attributed “possibly” to her Adderall, so he discontinued the drug. Harris then reported 

problems concentrating, but a new medication helped. In late 2015, Dr. Lee wrote in his 

notes that her concentration and attention were impaired and that she was disabled. 

Around this time, Harris applied for disability insurance benefits, asserting that 

she had been unable to work since 2013 because of both back problems and mental 

conditions, including depression and anxiety. 

In May 2016, Dr. Jerry Boyd, a licensed clinical psychologist acting as an agency 

consultant, examined Harris and diagnosed mental illnesses, but Harris indicated that 

her medication helped “tremendously” with them. His exam showed that Harris had 

“no significant impairment” in attention and concentration, and while she was 

distractible with a “minimal tolerance for stress now” and reported an inability to work, 

she could follow complex instructions if they could be repeated. 

That same month another consulting psychologist, Dr. Joseph Mehr, reviewed 

Harris’s record and characterized her professed concentration and social interaction 

1 Although the Administration requested Dr. Lee’s records since 2012, when 

Harris says her treatment with him began, a handwritten notation on the returned 

request form reads “Over 500 pages. Sent last 2 years. 2015–present.” 
No. 20-1687 Page 3

limitations as “beyond what would be expected” from the medical evidence. He relied 

on Dr. Boyd’s opinion as an examining source and concluded that Harris could sustain 

work involving simple tasks on a continued basis, particularly in settings of low social 

contact. Two months later, Dr. Ellen Rozenfeld, another consulting psychologist, 

reviewed Harris’s record and reached similar conclusions as Dr. Mehr. 

In early July 2016, Dr. Lee wrote a one-page, to “whomever it may concern” 

letter, reiterating that Harris was disabled and unable to work due to her mental 

illnesses and chronic pain. In his treatment notes from a visit the same day, Dr. Lee 

found Harris to have normal thought processes, judgment, and concentration. 

But later that month, Harris spent three days in the hospital after an acute onset 

of paranoid delusions, a condition Dr. Lee later confirmed to be caused by some of her 

medications (which he discontinued). At two follow-up appointments, he noted that 

her psychosis had “resolved” and she had normal thought processes and concentration. 

Harris continued to see Dr. Lee through early 2018, and at each appointment he 

noted that she was pleasant and cooperative with an “okay” mood and affect and 

normal concentration. In March 2018, Dr. Lee reported that Harris’s severe anxiety and 

depression would, since 2013, cause her to be absent four or more times from work per 

month and that her subjective complaints were credible.

At a hearing before the ALJ, Harris, represented by counsel, testified about how 

her stress and anxiety limited her ability to work.2 She described how she could 

become anxious for no reason. The hearing, for example, put her in a “total panic 

attack” for the past few months because she had to leave her house that she left only 

rarely. But seeing a psychiatrist and taking her medication regularly helped, she said.

The ALJ asked a vocational expert about available work for a person like Harris 

who was limited to light, rote work requiring “little independent judgment” in a “stable 

setting” with only limited interaction with others. That person, the VE testified, would 

be precluded from Harris’s prior work, but could work as a checker, mail sorter, or 

laundry folder—as long as she did not need any off-task break longer than 15 minutes 

beyond normal or more than two days’ absences per month. 

2 At the outset, counsel stated that he had no objection to the exhibits in the 

record. And earlier, counsel had written to the ALJ that he had “filed or made the ... 

Administration aware of all” the medical records he knew of. 
No. 20-1687 Page 4

Applying the standard five-step process, see 20 C.F.R. § 404.1520, the ALJ 

concluded that Harris was not disabled. Her depression, personality disorder, anxiety 

with agoraphobia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were severe 

impairments, but none, alone or in combination, were a presumptive disability. Harris, 

the ALJ determined, had the residual functional capacity to perform light, rote work 

requiring little independent judgment in a stable setting with only occasional 

interaction with coworkers and her supervisor. And with those limitations, the ALJ 

concluded, Harris could work in jobs available in the national economy. 

Concerning the severity of her symptoms, the ALJ concluded that Harris’s 

statements were “not entirely consistent” with the record. She testified that seeing a 

psychiatrist and medication helped her anxiety, for example. And although she said she 

took them as prescribed, at her 2013 hospitalization she had stopped taking the 

medication (she was “tired” of them), and her doctors were concerned about possible 

abuse of them after her later arrest. The ALJ also noted that symptoms causing that 

hospitalization improved with treatment and that her 2016 hospitalization was caused 

by her medication that since had been discontinued. 

As for opinion evidence, the ALJ gave “little weight” to Dr. Lee’s reports about 

Harris being disabled because he had otherwise “consistently found” Harris to be 

cooperative with normal mood, affect, and concentration. The ALJ gave “limited 

weight” to Dr. Boyd’s assessment because “[w]hile his clinical observations [we]re 

instructive, he did not provide objective mental limitations” to help him frame an RFC. 

And he gave “great weight” to the opinions of Drs. Mehr and Rozenfeld even though 

more (consistent) evidence was added to the record after their analysis. 

The Appeals Council denied review, and the district court upheld the ALJ’s 

decision. 

Analysis

We review the district court’s decision de novo in determining whether the ALJ’s 

decision was based on substantial evidence. Stephens v. Berryhill, 888 F.3d 323, 327 (7th 

Cir. 2018). Substantial evidence is “such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might 

accept as adequate to support a conclusion.” Biestek v. Berryhill, 139 S. Ct. 1148, 1154 

(2019) (quoting Consol. Edison Co. v. NLRB, 305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938)). 

On appeal, Harris argues that the ALJ failed to develop the record to include 

Dr. Lee’s pre-2015 treatment notes, which she says are important to show her history of 
No. 20-1687 Page 5

a mood disorder that was unresponsive to different medications. But it was reasonable 

for the ALJ to proceed on a record that Harris’s previous counsel was satisfied with. An 

ALJ has a duty to fully and fairly develop the record. See 20 C.F.R. § 416.912(b); Thomas 

v. Colvin, 745 F.3d 802, 807 (7th Cir. 2014). But a represented claimant, like Harris, “is 

presumed to have made h[er] best case before the ALJ.” Skinner v. Astrue, 478 F.3d 836, 

842 (7th Cir. 2007). Here, her counsel both wrote to the ALJ that the record was 

complete and stated that he had no objection to it at the hearing. And as Magistrate 

Judge Wilkerson explained, that record was adequate to permit an informed decision. 

Next, Harris challenges the ALJ’s evaluation of the opinion evidence, first 

arguing that he erred in rejecting Dr. Lee’s opinions that she had been disabled since 

2013. But the ALJ reasonably discounted Dr. Lee’s opinions. The ALJ needed to consider 

the relevant regulatory factors, see 20 C.F.R. § 404.1527(c), and then “minimally 

articulate” his reasons for affording the opinions less weight. Elder v. Astrue, 529 F.3d 

408, 415 (7th Cir. 2008) (quoting Berger v. Astrue, 516 F.3d 539, 545 (7th Cir. 2008)). Here, 

the ALJ was aware that Dr. Lee was Harris’s treating psychiatrist who examined her 

almost monthly for at least three years, but he reasonably focused on how Dr. Lee’s 

conclusions were unsupported by, and inconsistent with, his notes in the record. See 20 

C.F.R. § 404.1527(c)(1)–(4). Other than in two visits in November and December 2015, 

Dr. Lee repeatedly documented that Harris’s concentration was “normal” or not grossly 

impaired and he described her as pleasant and cooperative with normal thought 

processes, insight, and judgment. 

Harris also argues that the ALJ erred in ascribing less weight to Dr. Boyd’s 

opinion while assigning “great weight” to the agency doctors’ opinions that relied on 

his exam. But the ALJ’s determination was reasonable because, unlike Dr. Boyd, the

agency doctors translated their findings into specific RFC assessments. See Johansen v. 

Barnhart, 314 F.3d 283, 289 (7th Cir. 2002) (no error for ALJ to rely on only medical 

expert who made RFC determination). On questions concerning Harris’s ability to 

sustain concentration and deal with normal pressures at work, for example, Dr. Boyd 

stated only generally that Harris “is notably distractible” and has a “minimal tolerance” 

for stress. The agency doctors, though, took Dr. Boyd’s observations a step further, 

finding that Harris could work on “simple routine tasks ... particularly in settings of 

low social contact” and deal with changes in work setting “if introduced gradually.” 

Harris also contends that the ALJ impermissibly offered his own medical opinion 

when finding that the evidence post-dating the agency doctors’ opinions was consistent 

with the record. An ALJ may not “play[] doctor” and interpret “new and potentially 
No. 20-1687 Page 6

decisive medical evidence” without medical input. McHenry v. Berryhill, 911 F.3d 866, 

871 (7th Cir. 2018) (quoting Goins v. Colvin, 764 F.3d 677, 680 (7th Cir. 2014)). But here, 

the ALJ reasonably reviewed the evidence to determine that, aside from her two 

hospitalizations, Harris did not experience symptoms supporting greater limits than 

what the agency doctors found. It showed that her medicine caused the symptoms 

leading to her 2016 hospitalization (which Dr. Lee discontinued), and that she acted 

pleasantly at her later exams, exhibiting normal concentration and thought processes. 

Finally, Harris contends that the ALJ wrongly minimized her statements 

concerning the effects of her symptoms. He used an incorrect standard, she argues, 

asking whether her statements were “entirely consistent” with the record instead of 

whether they “can reasonably be accepted” as consistent with it. But even though the 

“entirely consistent” language is boilerplate, the ALJ’s recitation of it is harmless 

because he described (and applied) the correct standard of whether Harris’s statements 

about her symptoms were substantiated by the objective medical evidence and other 

evidence in the record. See 20 C.F.R. § 404.1529(c); see also Burmester v. Berryhill, 920 F.3d 

507, 510–11 (7th Cir. 2019). The ALJ highlighted relevant objective medical evidence, 

noting that aside from her two hospitalizations, Harris’s mental exams were generally 

normal. He considered her use of medication, reasoning that it appeared to be 

providing her relief. And although she testified that she took her medications as 

prescribed, her 2013 hospitalization (where she stated that she had quit taking them) 

and her arrest (where her doctors were concerned about possible abuse) suggested 

otherwise. The ALJ also addressed her daily activities, noting that although she testified 

that she “rarely” drove or left her home, she later stated that she regularly (3–4 times 

per week) drove to pick up her brother. This analysis was not “patently wrong.” 

Summers v. Berryhill, 864 F.3d 523, 528 (7th Cir. 2017) (quoting Eichstadt v. Astrue, 534 

F.3d 663, 667–68 (7th Cir. 2008)). 

For these reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment.