Opinion ID: 217821
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Black Lung Benefits Act and Amendments

Text: In 1969, responding to a single mine explosion that killed seventy-eight miners in Farmington, West Virginia, and unrelated mine accidents in the following year that took the lives of an additional 170 miners, Congress enacted the first Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act (FCMHSA), Pub.L. No. 91-173, 83 Stat. 742 (1969) (codified as amended at 30 U.S.C. §§ 801-900). The FCMHSA aimed to protect the health and safety of coal miners, and to combat the steady toll of life, limb, and lung, which terrorizes so many unfortunate families. H. Rep. No. 91-563 at 2 (1969), reprinted in 1969 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2503, 2503. In addition to a series of reforms in the previous federal mine safety program, the FCMHSA created the Nation's first federal entitlement program for miners. The legislators believed the program to be a satisfactory means of compensating miners who were incapacitated by respirable diseases, as well as the surviving widows and children of miners who had died from the dread black lung. S.Rep. No. 92-743 at 3 (1972), reprinted in 1972 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2305, 2307 (describing the 1969 FCMHSA). The FCMHSA vested responsibility for administering the program in the Social Security Administration (SSA); benefits were paid from SSA's general funds. Less than three years after the Act's passage, claims for benefits were more than three times the anticipated levels. Even so, the rate of denials by the SSA for benefits under that first act was more than fifty percent nationwide. Id. In response, Congress modified and expanded substantially the program in the Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972 (the Act), Pub.L. No. 92-303, 86 Stat. 150 (codified as amended at 30 U.S.C. §§ 901-45). In this remedial law, Congress attempted to ensure that the cases which should be compensated[ ] will be compensated. In the absence of definitive medical conclusions there is a clear need to resolve doubts in favor of the disabled miner or his survivors. S.Rep. No. 92-743 at 11, 1972 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2305, 2315. In the 1972 Act, Congress gave specific direction to both the SSA, which maintained its jurisdiction over pre-1974 [3] claims, and to the Department of Labor, which handled new claims filed in 1974 and, later, the administrative responsibilities for the expansion of the federal entitlement program. These steps were taken in part because of the perception that the earlier program had failed to compensate in appropriate cases. The 1972 Act broadened coverage by requiring the agencies to consider certain types of evidence in making benefits determinations, including lay testimony; it also prohibited the agencies from relying on negative x-rays as the exclusive evidence to deny a claim. See 30 U.S.C. § 923(b). It further expanded the definition of total disability due to pneumoconiosis [4] to reach more miners and broadened the presumptions favoring the miner. See id. § 902(f). The 1977 amendments to the 1972 Act further liberalized the standards for establishing eligibility by expanding the definition of miners, extending additional presumptions in favor of claimants and creating the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. See Black Lung Benefits Reform Act of 1977, Pub.L. No. 95-239, 92 Stat. 95 (1978) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 26 U.S.C., 29 U.S.C. and 30 U.S.C.). In addition, the Act required the Department of Labor to reexamine pending and already denied claims at the request of the claimant under standards at least as generous as those in effect in 1973. Id. §§ 2(c), 15. Even as the substantive grounds and the presumptions for entitlement expanded, the Act continued to place the burden on the miner to prove the existence of pneumoconiosis, and the legislative history made apparent that a mere showing of a respiratory or pulmonary impairment will not be sufficient to establish a claim for benefits. S.Rep. No. 92-743 at 13, 1972 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 2317. After this series of increasingly generous amendments to the original entitlement program, and largely in response to mounting deficits in the Trust Fund, the Act was amended in 1981 to create more restrictive eligibility requirements. [5] Specifically, three out of the five presumptions in favor of claimants were eliminated; rules binding the agency to accept certain positive x-ray diagnoses of pneumoconiosis were eliminated. See Black Lung Benefits Amendments of 1981, Pub.L. No. 97-119, Title II, 95 Stat. 1635, 1643 (1981) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 30 U.S.C.); Newman v. Dir., OWCP, 745 F.2d 1162, 1164 n. 2 (8th Cir.1984). In addition to the Act's substantive provisions, it also provided for distinct administrative structures and procedural rights for claimants. Beginning with the original 1969 Act, the program incorporated by reference many of the adjudication procedures under the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C. §§ 901-50 (the Longshore Act), also administered by the Department of Labor. Those procedures include the right to a trial under the Administrative Procedures Act and to both administrative and judicial appeals. See 33 U.S.C. §§ 919(d), 921; 5 U.S.C. § 554. In addition, and particularly relevant to the case before us, since 1927, the Longshore Act has included a provision permitting modification of a final decision on benefits entitlement. See 33 U.S.C. § 922. By the time the procedures of the Longshore Act had been incorporated into the black lung program, the modification provision allowed any party, or the district director on his own initiative, at any time prior to one year after the date of the last payment of compensation, whether or not a compensation order has been issued, or at any time prior to one year after the rejection of a claim, to seek review of a compensation case in accordance with the procedure prescribed (for original claims), for the purpose of modifying the order. Id. [6] The grounds for modification are a change in conditions or ... a mistake in a determination of fact. Id. The legislative history for the 1969 FCMHSA offers nothing specifically to explain the choice to incorporate the Longshore Act's procedures, much less the modification authority. See H.R.Rep. No. 91-761 (1969) (Conf.Rep.), reprinted in 1969 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2578, 2606 (stating, without elaboration, that the applicable provisions of the [Longshore] act of March 4, 1927, as amended, shall be applicable to claims filed on or after January 1, 1973). The foregoing account demonstrates that there have been significant changes to the substance of the Act, many of which expanded the Act's scope of coverage. A constant, however, has been the Act's integration of the Longshore Act's procedures to the long-term black lung benefits claims, including the modification authority.