Disability Law and Policy
Author:
Blanck, Peter
Edition:
1st
Copyright Date:
2020
7 chapters
have results for SSDI
Chapter 4 Qualified Individuals 5 results
- was whether an individual who was a Social Security Disability Insurance (“SSDI”) recipient might also pursue an action for disability discrimination under ADA Title I, alleging failure to provide reasonable accommodations so that she could perform the essential functions of her job. The SSDI program, further discussed in Part 7 of this primer, provides governmental benefits to persons with employment histories, but with disabilities so severe they are not able to engage in “substantial gainful work” in the national economy. In the U.S., nine million working-age adults receive SSDI.
- , the Fifth Circuit had reasoned that claims under SSDI and the ADA would create directly conflicting propositions, namely, “I am too disabled to work” and “I am not too disabled to work.” When the case reached it, however, the Supreme Court held that the two claims do not inherently conflict, and that there are situations in which an SSDI claim and an ADA claim may comfortably coexist. Specifically, the ADA defines a “qualified individual” to include a person with a disability who can perform essential job functions with reasonable accommodation, such as job restructuring, part-time or modified work schedules, reassignment to a vacant position, modification of equipment or devices, modifications of examinations and training materials or policies, and the provision of qualified readers or interpreters. In contrast, an individual may be “disabled” for SSDI without consideration of the possibility of reasonable accommodation.
- may be explained by the history of the two laws. The Social Security Administration’s SSDI program and the ADA each were implemented to help individuals with disabilities in different ways. SSDI provides monetary benefits to insured individuals with disabilities who show an “inability to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason of any … physical or mental impairment which can be expected to result in death or which has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months.” The SSDI impairment must be of such severity that the individual is not only unable to do previous work, but also cannot engage in other kinds of substantial gainful work that exist in the national economy.
- Consequently, an ADA lawsuit in which the plaintiff claims she can perform her job with reasonable accommodation can be consistent with a claim for SSDI that the same plaintiff cannot perform her own job (or other jobs) without an accommodation. In other cases, however, an SSDI claim may conflict with an ADA claim; for example, when plaintiff fails to prove that she is a qualified individual with a disability.
- Court did hold that an ADA plaintiff may not completely ignore an apparent contradiction arising from an earlier SSDI total disability claim and must offer a sufficient explanation. , therefore, when examining a plaintiff’s previous assertion of “total disability” under SSDI, a court properly should require an explanation of the apparent inconsistency of the elements of that claim with the necessary elements of an ADA claim, so that the plaintiff demonstrates that the plaintiff may nonetheless perform the essential job functions in question, with or without reasonable accommodation.
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Chapter 14 Domestic Disability Law And Policy 9 results (showing 5 best matches)
- SSDI is limited to workers who have paid into the system, with work experience of at least ten years, and have paid payroll taxes into the Disability Insurance Trust Fund. Social Security benefits thus serve different purposes from the ADA. While SSDI aims to provide persons who become disabled with income support, ADA Title I focuses on equal opportunity for workforce participation and the prevention of invidious discrimination.
- An individual with a disability covered by TWWIIA is a person with a disability for purposes of SSI or SSDI, and may be considered a qualified individual with a disability under the ADA. The applicability of the ADA to ENs depends on the classification of the EN as individuals, cooperatives, and public and private rehabilitation providers.
- Interaction of the ADA and SSDI
- Historically, one of the barriers to work for persons with disabilities has been the inability to obtain health care coverage. Disability-based payments often diminish incentives to work, particularly when the attempt to work itself reduces eligibility for those health care benefits. Cash benefits, for instance, under the SSDI and SSI programs primarily are available to individuals who cannot engage in “substantial gainful activity.”
- Social Security Disability Insurance (“SSDI”) is a federally administered insurance program for long-term wage loss that provides a monthly income to individuals with physical or mental impairments that are expected to result in death or last one year or more.
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Chapter 16 Disability And Tax Policy 3 results
- There are multiple reasons to believe that ABLE will be transformative at the individual and systems levels of disability law and policy. ABLE recognizes that families raising a child with a disability, and working-age adults with disabilities, have additional and significant costs associated with living with a disability. ABLE is transformative because the approach for determining eligibility for an ABLE account decouples the dual-pronged test of severe disability and “inability to work” that currently exists for determining eligibility for SSI and SSDI; that is, “paying people with disabilities not to work.” The Social Security Disability Insurance (“SSDI”) program was introduced earlier in Part 2, § 4.3, in connection with the Supreme Court’s decision in
- ABLE accounts not only allow for tax-free use of income for disability, they also shield income from being counted against eligibility limits. Presently, millions of beneficiaries of Social Security Disability Insurance (“SSDI”) and individuals with severe disabilities who qualify for Supplemental Security Income (“SSI”) receive monthly benefits that typically are their only or major source of income. For SSI recipients, the determination of eligibility for public benefits requires a maximum level of assets of no more than $2,000, including education and retirement savings accounts.
- The eligibility component of the federal law establishes criteria for who may be considered an eligible individual and, therefore, a designated beneficiary of an ABLE account. The federal statute stipulates that an eligible individual is an individual who became disabled prior to age 26 and either has been determined for purposes of SSDI or SSI to meet the requirements relating to disability or blindness, or has filed a qualifying disability certification with the Secretary of the Treasury for the taxable year.
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Chapter 12 Prohibited Conduct 1 result
- ILLUSTRATION 5: A car rental company has a policy that customers using cash must have been employed at their present jobs for a year or more. A responsible, cash-paying customer with other sources of income, who is unemployed due to a disability, applies to rent a car and is rejected. The ADA requires the company to reasonably modify its procedures to permit rentals by such individuals with other adequate disability-related sources of income such as SSDI, Veteran’s Administration disability benefits, and employer’s disability benefits.
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Endnotes 2 results
- (plaintiff must make a showing and provide direct explanation for the contradiction between her SSDI and ADA claims);
- (perceptions of “deservingness” for U.S. Social Security Disability Insurance (“SSDI” discussed infra in Part 7)); Albert H. Fang & Gregory A. Huber, Perceptions of Deservingness and the Politicization of Social Insurance: Evidence from Disability Insurance in the United States (Amer. Pol. Res., Yale Inst. for Soc. & Pol’y Stud., July 29, 2019), doi.org/10.1177/1532673X19863439.
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- Publication Date: July 9th, 2020
- ISBN: 9781684672271
- Subject: Disability Law
- Series: Concepts and Insights
- Type: Hornbook Treatises
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Description:
Disability Law and Policy provides an overview of the major themes and insights in disability law. It is also a compelling compendium of stories about how our legal system has responded to the needs of impacted individuals. Peter Blanck is University Professor & Chairman of the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University.
The year 2020 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. During the past three decades, disability law and policy, including the law of the ADA itself, have evolved dramatically in the United States and internationally. Walls of inaccessibility, exclusion, segregation, stigma, and discrimination have been torn down, often brick-by-brick. But the work continues, many times led by advocates who have never known a world without the ADA and are now building on the efforts of those who came before them.
Lex Frieden, former Chairperson of the National Council on Disability, writes in the book’s Foreword: “In 1967, I survived a head-on car crash. When I woke up, I was paralyzed from the shoulders down. . . . My story is one of many in the modern disability rights movement. In Disability Law and Policy, Peter Blanck retells my story, and the personal experiences of many others living with disabilities, in a master tour of the area. Peter is a world-renowned teacher, researcher, lawyer, and advocate. He has been central to the modern sea change in disability civil rights . . . Disability Law and Policy should be read by all of us—people with the lived experience of disability and their advocates, parents, family members, and friends.”