Court Opinion

ID: 9940484
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-14 17:00:46.391796+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:44:54.790607
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                         FILED
                       UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                      FEB 14 2024
                                                                       MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                        U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                              FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ANNA CUESTAS,                                     No.   22-16833

                   Plaintiff-Appellant,           D.C. No. 5:20-cv-08746-EJD

     v.
                                                  MEMORANDUM*
MARTIN O’MALLEY,

                   Defendant-Appellee.

                      Appeal from the United States District Court
                        for the Northern District of California
                      Edward J. Davila, District Judge, Presiding

                             Submitted February 12, 2024**
                               San Francisco, California

Before: MILLER, BADE, and VANDYKE, Circuit Judges.

          Anna Cuestas appeals the district court’s order affirming the Commissioner’s

decision denying her application for disability benefits under Title II of the Social

Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 423. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. “We

review a district court’s judgment upholding the denial of social security benefits de

*
   This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as
provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
   The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral
argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
novo” and “set aside a denial of benefits only if it is not supported by substantial

evidence or is based on legal error.” Bray v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec. Admin., 554 F.3d

1219, 1222 (9th Cir. 2009) (citations omitted).

      To establish a disability for purposes of the Social Security Act, a claimant

must prove that she is unable “to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason

of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment which ... has lasted or

can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months.” 42

U.S.C. § 423(d)(1)(A). “In order to determine whether a claimant meets this

definition, the ALJ employs a five-step sequential evaluation.” Molina v. Astrue,

674 F.3d 1104, 1110 (9th Cir. 2012) (citations omitted), superseded on other

grounds by 20 C.F.R. § 404.1502(a).

      In this case, the ALJ found that Cuestas was not disabled at step five because

she could perform other work available in the national economy. The ALJ gave

limited weight to parts of Cuestas’s testimony, gave varying weight to the opinions

of some medical professionals, and relied on the testimony of a vocational witness.

Because the ALJ applied the correct legal standards and supported the findings with

substantial evidence, we affirm.

      First, the ALJ did not err in weighing the medical experts’ opinions. An ALJ

must “explain how it considered the supportability and consistency factors in

reaching these findings,” but need not discuss other factors. Woods v. Kijakazi, 32

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F.4th 785, 792 (9th Cir. 2023) (quotation marks, brackets, and citations omitted).

Here, the ALJ sufficiently explained why each opinion was or was not supported by

the medical record and consistent with the other evidence.

      Second, the ALJ did not improperly discount Cuestas’s subjective testimony.

“Although lack of medical evidence cannot form the sole basis for discounting pain

testimony, it is a factor that the ALJ can consider in his credibility analysis.” Burch

v. Barnhart, 400 F.3d 676, 681 (9th Cir. 2005). Here, the ALJ’s decision to disregard

some of Cuestas’s allegations was not improper because they were not only

unsupported by medical evidence, but were at odds with some of the medical

evidence, and because Cuestas failed to comply with medical advice to attend pain

management treatment. Smartt v. Kijakazi, 53 F.4th 489, 498 (9th Cir. 2022); Fair

v. Bowen, 885 F.2d 597, 603 (9th Cir. 1989), superseded on other grounds by

20 C.F.R. § 404.1502(a).

      Finally, the ALJ did not err at step five. Cuestas argues that the ALJ failed to

consider or account for her proffered Bureau of Labor Statistics evidence, which

suggested that the jobs identified by the vocational witness required more interaction

with people than Cuestas’s limitations allowed. But the vocational witness testified

that according to the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and her own experience, each

of the three jobs she identified required little to no socialization and therefore was

consistent with Cuestas’s limitations. It was not error for the ALJ to accept the

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vocational witness’s opinion over Cuestas’s proffered Bureau of Labor Statistics

data.

        Cuestas also argues that the ALJ erred at step five by not accounting for all of

her limitations in the hypothetical posed to the vocational witness. But Cuestas fails

to identify any specific limitation left out of the hypothetical, and any limitations

presented by Cuestas’s subjective testimony were not improperly disregarded.

        AFFIRMED.

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