Court Opinion

ID: 9476184
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:49:22.013999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:10.126069
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
My brethren have misread the social security ruling on which they rely, as well as the regulation on which they refuse to rely. The result is to make an easy case hard, and to interfere unjustifiably with the administration of social security disability benefits. The administrative law judge found that the applicant is capable of engaging in substantial gainful activity. That finding, which is supported by substantial evidence, is dispositive of the claim for benefits.
The applicant, Lauer, had previously worked 8 hours a week as a loan processor. (Previously to that he had worked as a machine operator, but all agree that he can no longer do such heavy work.) The parties are in agreement that this is not “substantial gainful activity” within the meaning of the applicable regulations. “The ability to work only a few hours a day or to work only on an intermittent basis is not the ability to engage in ‘substantial gainful *642activity.’ ” Cornett v. Califano, 590 F.2d 91, 94 (4th Cir.1978). See also Tucker v. Schweiker, 650 F.2d 62 (5th Cir.1981). So if the question were whether, despite what Lauer considers his increased disability, he could go back to working 8 hours a week as a loan processor, an affirmative answer would not justify the denial of the application. No one suggests it would. There is evidence, however, which the administrative law judge credited, that Lauer is physically capable of working 32 hours a week as a loan processor. His counsel concedes that this would be substantial gainful activity, even though not quite full time. This concession is compelled by the case law. An applicant is not disabled if he can engage in substantial gainful activity even if that activity is not full time. See Beasley v. Califano, 608 F.2d 1162, 1166 (8th Cir. 1979). That should be the end of the case.
Lauer appears to be arguing, though this is not entirely clear, and my brethren appear to be ruling, though this is not clear either, that an applicant's past work is irrelevant — inadmissible — unless it was substantial gainful activity. My brethren are misled by a social security ruling which states (“clearly and unequivocally” as they put it):
Capacity to do past work may be indicative of the capacity to engage in [substantial gainful activity] when that work experience constituted [substantial gainful activity] and has current relevance considering duration and recency.
SSR 82-62, 1982 Social Security Rulings 158, 159. This does not say, and cannot possibly mean, that an applicant’s past work is relevant to the determination of disability only if it was substantial gainful activity. All it says and means is that if you can still do your past work, and that past work was substantial gainful activity, you’re probably not disabled, provided further (as the ruling goes on to explain) that the work was not in the remote past or merely sporadic or intermittent. Of course this ruling couldn’t be used to deny Lauer his benefits, because his past work was not substantial gainful activity. But no one proposes to use this ruling for that purpose. The parties agree that if Lauer couldn’t work more than 8 hours a week he would be disabled. The administrative law judge, however, found on adequate evidence that Lauer is capable of substantial gainful activity. The ruling on which my brethren rely is not pertinent to that dis-positive finding. The ruling does not purport to prevent the administrative law judge from using evidence of past insubstantial work in combination with other evidence to reach a conclusion that the applicant is not disabled. The sentence before the one quoted above reads: “An individual who has worked only sporadically or for brief periods of time ... may be considered to have no relevant work experience.” Id. at 159 (emphasis added). “May” — not “shall.” Any evidence of physical activity — evidence for example that the applicant worked in his yard or around the house — can be used to show that the applicant is capable of engaging in substantial gainful activity, even though the evidence is not of such activity. See, e.g., Broadbent v. Harris, 698 F.2d 407, 413 (10th Cir.1983) (per curiam). Evidence of past work is also relevant to such a showing, whether or not the past work rises to the level of substantial gainful activity, in which event the evidence would be not merely relevant but controlling.
This case is thus unlike Vaughn v. Heckler, 727 F.2d 1040 (11th Cir.1984), where the administrative law judge improperly gave controlling weight to the applicant’s ability to perform past work that had fallen short of being substantial gainful activity. The administrative law judge in this case relied on evidence from a vocational expert that the applicant could engage in substantial gainful activity — his past work, raised to nearly full-time employment. My brethren, to their credit, are troubled by this point, for they remark in a footnote (naturally) that “in the present case [unlike Vaughn ] the AU’s findings implied that appellant could perform his previous job as a loan processor at a substantial gainful activity level.” (Emphasis added.) The distinction is vital. How do my brethren get around it? By remarking inconsequently, “the rulings of the Secretary seem *643to us to require more than simply a showing ... that some form of work was previously engaged in____” Agreed; but the administrative law judge did not stop with that showing; that would be Vaughn, not this case. He went on to consider the testimony of the vocational expert that Lauer could perform his previous work on an essentially full-time basis.
This case is covered not by SSR 82-62 or Vaughn, but by a sentence in the regulation that appears at 20 C.F.R. § 404.1571: “Even if the work you have done was not substantial gainful activity, it may show that you are able to do more work than you actually did.” This sentence fits this case like a glove. Lauer worked 8 hours a week as a loan processor; his physical impairment (so the administrative law judge could and did find) has not worsened significantly since then. The question is, could he work more than 8 hours a week as a loan processor? Enough more to count as substantial gainful activity? The vocational expert — a witness whose testimony the administrative law judge was entitled to credit and did credit — answered “yes” to both questions. The dispositive finding by the administrative law judge is the following: “The vocational evidence clearly shows that ... the claimant could return to his past relevant work as a loan processor for a credit union on a full time basis____” (Emphasis added.)
The regulation I have quoted from also states, “If you are able to engage in substantial gainful activity, we will find that you are not disabled.” 20 C.F.R. § 404.-1571. (This is a paraphrase of the statute. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 423(d)(1), (d)(2)(A).) So if as here the administrative law judge finds that the applicant is able to engage in substantial gainful activity, that is the end of the case. This is what the administrative law judge found, in two steps, each of which is proper under the regulation and not barred by SSR 82-62. First, the applicant could still do his old work, which was loan processing; second, he could do it on a sufficiently full-time basis to make it a substantial gainful activity. As my brethren point out, Lauer “argues that he need only demonstrate that his impairments preelude his returning to his previous full-time job as a machine operator at a meat packing plant in order to establish his entitlement to benefits.” This is a ridiculous argument, and I hope my brethren have not accepted it. It amounts to saying that an applicant for social security disability benefits is disabled unless he can perform a full-time job that he once performed, even if there is evidence that he can perform other substantial gainful activity. The regulation makes clear that if he can engage in any substantial gainful activity, whether or not it was a full-time job that he once held, he is not disabled. It might be his last part-time job, performed on a full-time basis, if, as here, the applicant is capable of performing his former part-time job on a full-time basis.
Cases such as this tug at the heart; but misreading the Social Security Administration’s rulings and regulations can only sow confusion and reduce the funds available to pay benefits to persons entitled to them under the standards established by the responsible government agency — which happens not to be the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.