Social Security Enshrines Remote Options for Disability Hearings

Pandemic accommodations made permanent as SSA seeks to reduce wait times

Sharon Jayson,

AARP

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Published October 14, 2024

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Before 2020, people turned down for Social Security disability benefits basically had one option to have their cases heard on appeal: going to a Social Security Administration (SSA) facility to appear before an administrative law judge.

When COVID-19 struck and SSA offices nationwide shut down, the agency had to pivot to remote hearings — initially by phone, and later with an option for online teleconferencing. Now, the SSA is making that pandemic workaround a permanent part of its procedures, establishing remote hearings as a standard option for disability claimants.

The new policy primarily affects people challenging an initial rejection of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the two types of disability benefits administered by Social Security.

The SSA says the new rule gives claimants more flexibility in determining how their appeals are heard and could reduce the time it takes to get a decision. The national average wait time for a hearing decision was more than 11 months in the 2024 federal fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, and it took considerably longer at some hearing office locations.

Darren Lutz, an SSA spokesperson, says remote hearings help the agency balance the workload more efficiently “because we can more easily transfer cases from one hearing office to another. This flexibility will help reduce wait and processing times, thereby providing more timely hearings for all claimants.”

Professional advocates who represent SSDI and SSI applicants have generally welcomed the expanded options, says David Camp, CEO of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives, but some say Social Security could have gone further to accommodate vulnerable applicants, such as those who are unhoused.

“It will give claimants flexibility, but it’s a qualified 'yes,'” says Eduardo Blount, a senior staff attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid, which serves clients in the San Francisco region, many of them veterans, working poor or people with scant financial resources or limited English proficiency.

4 options now standard

Under the old rules, disability hearings typically took place at one of the SSA’s 162 hearing offices nationwide. In limited circumstances, you could request a hearing by phone. The only video option was a teleconference in which you went to an SSA office and used the agency’s equipment.

The new policy, finalized in August and set to take effect Nov. 23, establishes four standard “manners of appearance” for a disability hearing:

Audio, without restrictions.
Online video, using your smartphone, tablet or computer and Microsoft Teams (currently the only videoconferencing platform approved by SSA for hearings).
In-person at a hearing center.
Teleconference from an SSA office, now called “agency video.”

The regulations effectively enshrine procedures that have been in place since March 2022, when the SSA began incrementally reopening hearing offices that had been closed for two years due to the pandemic.

Claimants will not be able to proactively select the option they want. Setting the manner of appearance for a hearing, as well as the date and time, remains the SSA’s purview. Rather, when you file a request for a hearing, you’ll receive a notice that includes forms with which you can object or consent to different types of remote hearings. Taking your choices into account, the SSA will schedule a hearing “based on which manner would be the most efficient and any facts that provide good reason" for a particular type of hearing, Lutz says.

The SSA says it will not schedule an online video hearing unless the claimant positively consents to this method but may schedule an audio hearing over an applicant’s objections in “very limited circumstances” when no other method is feasible.

Timing can be an issue. Claimants have 30 days after receiving the hearing notice to consent or object to a remote appearance. If they do not and subsequently object to the SSA’s selection, they must show “good cause” for failing to respond in time, such as a serious illness, death in the family or receiving incorrect information about scheduling procedures.

Most hearings by phone

The SSA says it receives 20,000 to 40,000 hearing requests a month and had about 262,000 hearings pending as of September. The backlog has shrunk steadily since peaking at more than 1 million in 2017, but waits of a year or more for a hearing decision remain common.

The agency has set a goal of lowering the wait time to 270 days in 2025, and remote proceedings are part of that plan. In an August post on X, Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley listed “promote virtual hearings to keep up with demand” as one of the agency's three key steps to reduce disability wait times.

Most claimants are on board, according to Lutz.

“We conducted feedback surveys for our online video appearances during the COVID-19 national public health emergency and our survey data at that time showed that 83 percent of claimants were satisfied with their online video hearing,” Lutz says. Even with hearing offices open again, most hearings — 68 percent in the 2024 fiscal year — are by phone, with the remainder largely split between online video and in-person.

“Most claimants turn out to want it. Most reps want it. And it’s the same thing for the judges,” says Camp. “They found out it worked very, very well, and we’re very glad it’s permanent. It’s a win for claimants, their reps and the judges that hear the cases and therefore for all the disability processes, while still preserving the need for exceptions.”

Still, Camp says some in his membership group of lawyers and professional disability advocates remain concerned the new policy disfavors those who want or need an in-person hearing but fear it means waiting longer.

Rather than requiring people to opt out of remote to get an in-person hearing, Blount says Social Security could have left physical hearings as the default and allowed claimants to opt in for another type of appearance.

“If they don’t object to these alternate manners of appearance, they will be subject to them,” says Amy Marinacci, a senior Social Security specialist with the Legal Council for Health Justice in Chicago. “The opportunity for a face-to-face hearing is a very personal and important matter. It’s too important of a right to lose inadvertently because you didn’t get the notice or you didn’t understand this notice.”

Camp says there are times when an in-person hearing is critical to making a benefit claim.

“It turns out claimants are nearly universally comfortable talking on the telephone,” he says. “The exception is when it’s so compelling that if [the judge] can see them face-to-face in a room, credibility is established. They can see neurologically that hands tremor or there’s a limp. Sometimes the judge says they actually need to see this person.”

But, he adds, “It’s good that [in-person] is not the dominant share of the cases. Otherwise, it would be very, very slow.”

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Sharon Jayson is a contributing writer who covers aging, family, health care and retirement. She previously worked for USA Today and the Austin American-Statesman, and she also has written for Kaiser Health News, Time magazine and The Washington Post.