United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued August 8, 2018

Decided August 16, 2018

Before

 WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

 FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

 MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge

No. 18-1021

STEPHANIE D. WEST, 

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

NANCY A. BERRYHILL,

Acting Commissioner of Social Security,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Indiana, 

Fort Wayne Division.

No. 1:16-CV-424

William C. Lee,

Judge.

O R D E R

Stephanie West applied for supplemental security income, 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1382c(a)(3), and child’s insurance benefits (for herself, through her father), 42 U.S.C. 

§ 423(d), alleging disability based on numerous mental and physical impairments. 

An administrative law judge (“ALJ”) found that, despite her impairments, she could 

perform a limited range of light work. West argues that the ALJ failed to consider her 

impairments in combination. Because substantial evidence supports the ALJ’s decision, 

we affirm the judgment.

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 18-1021 Page 2

West applied for disability benefits in October 2013, when she was 21 years old, 

based on bipolar disorder and a learning disability. She also suffers from chronic back 

and abdominal pain, migraines, asthma, obesity, anxiety, and attention deficit 

hyperactivity disorder, among other conditions.

During her hearing before the ALJ, West identified her chief complaints as 

chronic back pain and headaches. Her back pain dated back to adolescence, when a 

child whom she was babysitting jumped on her and ruptured four disks in her spine. 

The pain worsened around 2008, when she delivered her first child; it decreased around 

2014, after she lost almost 100 pounds. As for West’s migraine headaches, they 

sometimes have required visits to the emergency room.

At times, West has received pain relief from opioids and epidural-steroid 

injections in her back. In February 2013, her doctor temporarily rescinded her 

prescription for pain medication because blood tests suggested that she had not been 

taking the drug. In July, West told her doctor that she stopped her medications because 

she “found out a couple months ago that she was pregnant” and had also lost her 

insurance coverage. Without her medications West felt “tremendously better .... better 

than she ever ha[d].” She soon resumed taking opioids, though, and her pregnancy 

apparently did not result in a birth.

West’s mental impairments also limit her functioning. She takes medications for 

anxiety and bipolar disorder. In 2010 she underwent several days of inpatient treatment 

after she experienced suicidal ideation. She was also a poor student, having attended 

special-education classes until she dropped out of school in eighth grade. She has failed 

the GED exam three times and the driver’s license exam seven times.

A consultative psychologist, Wayne Von Bargen, examined West in connection 

with her application for benefits. After administering an intelligence test, Bargen 

assessed her an IQ of 78, placing her in the borderline range of intelligence and in the 

seventh percentile for her age. He opined that people with West’s level of intellectual 

abilities can perform “unskilled or semiskilled occupations, involving concrete, 

relatively repetitive tasks.” He added that although West would “usually” require 

supervision, “independent job functioning is possible.”

A physician and two psychologists also opined about West’s abilities based on 

their review of her medical records. The physician concluded that she had no exertional, 

postural, manipulative, visual, or communicative limitations. The two psychologists 
No. 18-1021 Page 3

concluded that West was mildly limited in her ability to maintain social functioning and 

maintain concentration, persistence, and pace. But they noted no severe impairments or 

episodes of decompensation, and they assessed no restrictions in West’s activities of 

daily living.

At the hearing in June 2015, West, who weighed 165 pounds and stood 5’8” tall, 

was 7 months pregnant. She had been out of work since January 2015, when she had 

quit her full-time job as a waitress because her employer would not accommodate 

pregnancy-related restrictions that her doctor had imposed, i.e., she was not supposed 

to lift heavy tables. Before that she had worked part-time at a pizza restaurant but quit 

after three or four months because her back pain left her unable to lift heavy pizza 

dough out of a machine. She also worked “almost full-time” for less than two months in 

the drive-through window of a fast-food restaurant; she quit because she had moved 

and because “it was just too hot there to work.” West said that the difficulties she 

experienced performing these jobs were “mostly physical.”

Asked by the ALJ to estimate her abilities, West said that she could walk at least 

half a mile, stand for an hour, and lift ten pounds, albeit with pain. But she offered more 

modest estimates when questioned by her attorney: She estimated that there were days 

when she could walk no more than a block and stand for no more than five minutes. 

She added that during periods of stress it was “almost impossible” for her to 

concentrate.

A vocational expert testified about the number of jobs that someone with West’s 

limitations could perform. The ALJ asked the VE to consider a claimant with West’s age, 

education, and work history who (subject to limitations for certain extreme postures and 

work environments) had the physical capacity to perform light work and who had the 

mental capacity to perform “simple, repetitive tasks on a sustained basis,” but could not 

perform “fast paced work or work requiring a regimented pace of production.” The VE 

testified that such a person could work as a cashier, retail marker, dining-room 

attendant, or routing clerk. The VE added that the cashier or routing-clerk positions 

would still be available if the claimant needed to alternate between sitting and standing 

every half hour. And if the claimant retained the functional capacity to perform only 

sedentary work, she could still work as an addresser, telephone-order clerk, or tube 

operator.

The ALJ denied West’s application for disability benefits. First, the ALJ 

determined that West appeared eligible for benefits for any period of disability through 
No. 18-1021 Page 4

February 2015, when she married. Then, applying the requisite five-step analysis, the 

ALJ determined that (Step 1) none of West’s prior work amounted to substantial gainful 

activity; (Step 2) West’s chronic back and abdominal pain, migraines, asthma, obesity 

(before her recent weight loss), bipolar disorder, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity 

disorder, and borderline intellectual functioning were severe impairments; (Step 3) 

none of those impairments equaled a listing; (Step 4) she retained the residual 

functional capacity to perform light work, subject to certain postural and environmental 

limitations, if it did not require complex instructions or a fast pace; and (Step 5) she 

could perform the jobs that the VE identified.

The Appeals Council denied West’s request for review, and the district court 

upheld the ALJ’s decision.

We struggle to discern from West’s appellate submissions any coherent challenge 

to the ALJ’s decision. As best we can make out, she seems mostly to fault the ALJ for 

failing to consider her impairments in combination. In particular, West says, the ALJ 

ignored certain evidence of her mental impairments. But this argument draws on little 

more than a selective reading of two psychological reports, one of which dates from 

when she was in fifth grade. West, citing that dated report, contends that the ALJ 

should have specifically discussed her unwillingness to ask for help and her problems 

with “visual-motor coordination,” “spatial visualization,” and “correctly reading 

printed words.”

Even if we put aside the obvious problem that West’s abilities when she was a 

fifth grader may not be representative of her abilities as an adult, West does not say 

(in her brief, or when asked, through her counsel at oral argument) what functional 

limitations the ALJ should have imposed to take further account of her mental 

impairments. And the ALJ seems to have erred on the side of caution in formulating 

West’s residual functional capacity—Dr. Bargen opined that West was capable of 

semiskilled work and the two reviewing psychologists opined that she had no serious 

mental impairments, yet the ALJ limited her to unskilled work that did not require 

complex instructions or a fast pace. West, in response, highlights Dr. Bargen’s 

observation that she would “usually” require supervision, while ignoring his 

conclusion that “independent job functioning is possible” nonetheless. In the absence of 

any medical opinion contradicting those of the four medical professionals who all 

concluded that West can work, we cannot say that the ALJ erred in relying on those 

opinions to deny West’s application for benefits.
No. 18-1021 Page 5

We have considered West’s remaining arguments and none merit discussion.

AFFIRMED