Court Opinion

ID: 9496218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:20:41.603554+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:25.906803
License: Public Domain

HANSEN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because there is substantial evidence on the whole record to support the decision of the Commissioner to deny benefits in this case, I respectfully dissent.
There is no dispute that Ms. Jones meets the IQ requirement of the mental retardation listing for adults (Listing 12.05(C)) and for children (Listing 112.05(D)). The only issue on appeal is whether she also meets the second requirement of those listings — that of “a physical or other mental impairment” that imposes an “additional and significant limitation of function” (to satisfy the child listing) and an “additional and significant work-related limitation of function” (to satisfy the adult listing). Having considered the evidence in this record, I conclude that the Commissioner’s decision is supported by substantial evidence.
The court today finds that Ms. Jones is disabled after concluding that a speech impairment satisfies the second requirement of the adult and child listings for mental retardation because the speech impairment has more than a slight or minimal effect on her ability to function or to work. As the court notes, the ALJ did not find the existence of a speech impairment, and I note that no one at the hearing *702testified that Ms. Jones suffered from a speech impediment. The court nevertheless concludes that it exists -and that it has more than a slight or minimal effect on her ability to- function and work based on the following evidence: (1) a limitation that the ALJ chose to include in the hypothetical question precluding public speaking, and (2) a one-time evaluator’s recommendation, submitted after the ALJ’s decision, that Ms. Jones continue with speech therapy. In my opinion, this evidence is not a sufficient basis on which to conclude that the Commissioner’s decision is not based on substantial evidence.
First, after reviewing the record, I am convinced that the ALJ’s limitation in the hypothetical question — that Ms. Jones was unsuited to any work involving public speaking was not based on Ms. Jones’s speech impediment, but on her testimony that she becomes nervous “in front of people.” (R. at 18.) Ms. Jones’s complete comment at the hearing before the ALJ, in response to her attorney’s question of what makes her nervous, was that she gets nervous “[w]hen I have to be in front of people or have to say a speech or something.” (R. at 62.) There was no indication that this limitation was caused by a speech impediment. In fact, there was no mention of a speech impediment at all during the hearing before the ALJ. There is no indication from the transcriptions or the ALJ’s comments that anyone noticed a speech impediment or had difficulty understanding Ms. Jones. Ms. Jones’s mother did not testify that Ms. Jones had a speech impediment but was solely concerned with her ability to understand language. Not once during the hearing did Ms. Jones’s attorney ask either Ms. Jones or her mother about an articulation problem. Thus, this public speaking limitation cannot be isolated as an indication that she suffers from a speech impediment that has more than a slight or minimal effect on the claimant’s ability to function or perform work. The record indicates that the public speaking limitation is a product of nervousness, and no other limitation in the hypothetical question deals with a speech impediment.
Second, the court also relies on statements by one expert evaluator from University of Iowa Health Care. Again, this evidence is not a sufficient basis on which to conclude that the ALJ’s decision is not supported by substantial evidence. This evaluator’s statements are found in a collection of reports comprising a comprehensive developmental evaluation, which Ms. Jones’s mother pursued in an attempt to help Ms. Jones succeed in college. The report was submitted after the ALJ’s decision but was considered and rejected by the agency Appeals Council as not providing a basis for changing the ALJ’s recommendation. See Cunningham v. Apfel, 222 F.3d 496, 500 (8th Cir.2000) (“In these circumstances, we do not evaluate the Appeals Council’s decision to deny review, but rather we determine whether the record as a whole, including the new evidence, supports the ALJ’s determination.”)
The report indicates that one physician noted articulation deficits and encouraged her to continue with speech therapy. On the other hand, in the same report, the speech and language expert evaluators discussed only language comprehension problems, which are cited in the court’s opinion today. These specialists mentioned no speech or articulation problems in their portion of the report. Specifically, the speech and language experts observed that Ms. Jones’s “[pjitch, intensity, and vocal quality appeared adequate, and no concerns regarding fluency were noted.” (R. at 250.) The word substitution errors quoted by the court were noted in the results of a learning aptitude subtest, not as part of any discussion regarding speech *703impediments. The speech expert evaluators recommended support services and the use of simple language in educational settings, but notably, they did not mention a need for speech therapy or the diagnosis of any articulation disorder. The agency was free to give greater weight to this, and other evidence in the record, which is discussed more fully below. When there is conflicting evidence on the record, it is the function of the ALJ, not this court, to resolve those conflicts, Cabrnoch v. Bowen, 881 F.2d 561, 564 (8th Cir.1989).
Other evidence in the record also indicates the following. Ms. Jones’s mother indicated on the SSI application that Ms. Jones had speech therapy in school from the first through the fourth grade. (R. at 118.) She did not report ongoing speech therapy, and there is no record evidence from any currently treating speech therapist. School reports from high school indicate that Ms. Jones’s communication skills are adequate for her communicative purposes, though language organizational skills continue to be an area of difficulty. (R. at 159.) Ms. Ogden, a school psychologist who prepared a confidential student report’in 1998 by evaluating Ms. Jones’s performance, reviewing her school records, and interviewing teachers, does not report the existence of any speech impediment or any complaints from teachers or employers regarding Ms. Jones’s speech articulation.
The court’s opinion states that Ms. Jones’s speech impediment limits her “to the rare job which requires no regular, responsive communication.” Supra at 701. In fact, the only speech restrictions listed by the ALJ were “no public speaking to groups of people and no reading aloud,” (R. at 35), neither of which indicates a limitation on responsive communication. Similarly, the new evaluation does not suggest that Ms. Jones is limited by her speech impediment to jobs requiring no responsive communication. Thus, ! would conclude that there is substantial evidence to support the Commissioner’s decision to deny benefits, because any speech impediment has no more than a slight or minimal effect on Ms. Jones’s ability to work or function.
The court’s opinion states that Ms. Jones’s speech impediment is entirely separate from her low intelligence. The Commissioner cites a policy interpretation ruling, SSR 98-lp, 1998 WL 147011 (Mar. 30, 1998), that provides guidance for determining when a child has a speech limitation. This policy interpretation indicates that a speech impediment “must be separate from [the] mild mental retardation” in or.der for it to qualify as an additional impairment under the listings. Id. The ruling states:
It is possible for a child with mental retardation to have limitations in speech that do not constitute an impairment separate from the mental retardation. In a child with mental retardation, speech development is often commensurate with the level of cognitive functioning. Therefore, in the absence of an impairment of speech that is separate from the child’s mental retardation, a speech pattern that has been and continues to be consistent with the child’s general intellectual functioning is not regarded as separate from the mental retardation and will not be found to satisfy the ... physical or other mental impairment [requirement].
Id. On the other hand, when the origin of the speech problem is unknown, it may still be separate from the mental retardation if shown to be significantly below that which would be expected given the claimant’s level of cognitive functioning. Id. We. generally give deference to the agency’s rulings on its own regulations. See In*704gram v. Barnhart, 303 F.3d 890, 894 (8th Cir.2002); see also Lowery v. Social Security Admin., 55 Fed.Appx. 333, 335 (6th Cir.2003) (unpublished) (deferring to SSR 98-lp as a reasonable agency ruling).
After thoroughly reviewing the record in this case, I can find no evidence concerning the etiology or severity of Ms. Jones’s speech impediment on which to base a conclusion that the problem is separate from her mild mental retardation. There is no indication that Ms. Jones’s speech development is significantly below what would normally be expected given her level of cognitive functioning. To the contrary, there is a report from a medical consultant for the State of Iowa Disability Determination Services indicating that Ms. Jones’s “Communication skills are generally consistent with her over-all cognitive ability, and are not significantly limited.” (R. at 232.) Consistent with this opinion, a student report from Ms. Jones’s high school indicates that while her organizational language skills continue to be an area of difficulty, her speech and language skills were thought to be “adequate for her communicative purposes.” (R. at 159.) The comprehensive evaluation from the University of Iowa Health Care specialists contains no discussion of the origin, cause, or severity of Ms. Jones’s speech articulation problems. Similarly, there is no opinion expressed that her speech articulation was significantly below what would be expected for someone of her cognitive ability. A general encouragement to continue with speech therapy to aid her in college, without further analysis or even a description of how the impediment manifests itself in or affects this claimant, is simply insufficient to demonstrate an additional impairment, beyond the mild mental retardation itself, that significantly affects the claimant’s ability to function or perform work-related tasks. See SSR 98-lp (recommending that evidence of the severity of a speech limitation should include the results of a comprehensive examination of the claimant’s speech and descriptions of the claimant’s speech in daily circumstances by both lay and professional sources).
The court’s opinion dismisses the significance of the Bailey case. While I agree that it does not control the outcome in this case, I find that it provides valuable guidance. In Bailey, the speech pathologists indicated that the claimant’s speech was intelligible and yet there was evidence that a former employer indicated he had difficulty understanding Bailey, and speech tests indicated a severe articulation disorder. 230 F.3d at 1066. This lay and professional testimony provided some evidence of the severity of the speech impediment on which to conclude that the problem was more than slight or minimal. Additionally, the court ultimately concluded that Bailey’s speech impediment, “combined with his inability to read and write,” severely limited his work-related function. Id. While the work-related limiting function need only be more than slight or minimal, there must be some evidence of the severity of the disorder on which to base such a conclusion. The record in this case provides neither lay nor professional descriptions of the severity of any articulation disorder or the intelligibility of her speech on which to conclude that it results in more than a minimal work-related limitation.
Ms. Jones also asserts that her language-based learning disorder and a mathematics disorder are specific learning disabilities that satisfy the other impairment requirement of the mental retardation listings. I disagree. Again, when the ALJ reviewed the record, it contained no evidence of specific learning disabilities. In the later submitted evaluation from the University of Iowa Health Care specialists, an education evaluator concluded that Ms. *705Jones has a language-based learning disorder and a mathematics disorder. This is the only mention in the record of specific learning disabilities, and it is contradicted by Ms. Jones’s school reports.
Ms. Ogden’s confidential student report indicates that when Ms. Jones was in eleventh grade, the school gave Ms. Jones’s mother a choice of designating Ms. Jones as within the category of mental disability or learning disability. Her mother chose the mental disability category because of the probable greater access to adult services. Ms. Ogden concurred in the appropriateness of this designation (R. at 191), and also concluded that “[t]here is no evidence to suggest a specific learning disability” (R. at 193). Ms. Ogden noted that teachers rated Ms. Jones as within the average range on adaptive behaviors. The University of Iowa Health Care speech and language evaluators noted that Ms. Jones had significant defects in her ability to comprehend language as compared to others her age, but they made no comparison of her abilities to others who are of a comparable cognitive ability.
While the University of Iowa Health Care education evaluator concluded that Ms. Jones’s math scores were so low that they were “not considered to be commensurate with her cognitive profile,” (R. at 247), no other evidence contains a diagnosis of a math-based learning disability. The state medical consultant, Janet S. Mc-Donough, Ph.D., noted, consistent with the school records, that while Ms. Jones’s scores were somewhat lower than expected, they were not low enough to qualify for an additional label of learning disability. (R. at 231.) On this record, the agency was free to weigh the competing expert testimony and give less weight to the recently submitted one-time evaluator. The record supports the Commissioner’s implicit conclusion that in this case, Ms. Jones’s communication and mathematical difficulties are merely a manifestation of the mild mental retardation. See Buckner v. Apfel, 213 F.3d 1006, 1012 (8th Cir.2000).
“We are not permitted to reverse merely because substantial evidence also exists that would support a contrary outcome, or because we would have decided the case differently.” Jones ex rel. Morris v. Barnhart, 315 F.3d 974, 977 (8th Cir.2003) (internal quotations omitted). Accordingly, I would affirm the denial of benefits.