MADISON, Wis. — A group of disabled Wisconsin workers is filing a class-action lawsuit Tuesday, looking to overturn the state’s ban on people who receive SSDI benefits from also collecting unemployment if they lose their jobs.
Wisconsin state law prevents people who are on federal disability benefits from also getting regular unemployment benefits if they lose their part-time jobs, a blanket ban that attorneys say is one of just two in the country.
“To treat them differently is treating them differently because of their disability,” attorney Paul Kinne said Tuesday afternoon during a press conference in Madison. “In other words, it’s disability discrimination.”
Last year, that law led to a temporary block on pandemic unemployment assistance for people with disability benefits before the federal government reversed course. Now, this class-action lawsuit is trying to get the law itself overturned.
“It’s not just me that’s suffering,” one plaintiff told News 3 Now as they explained how they were continuing to wait for benefits after losing their job in the pandemic. “There’s thousands of people that need help.”
The plaintiffs
John Feriozzi isn’t a stranger to pain–or trying to keep working through it. With a string of ailments including arthritis, back and joint pain, and multiple surgeries including neck fusion, two rotary cuff surgeries, and forearm surgery in both arms–a judge straight up told him, ‘You’re a mess,’ when he applied for disability benefits more than six years ago.
“It’s quite hard to do anything physical for very long,” Feriozzi explained.
More than 172,000 working-age individuals in Wisconsin used SSDI benefits in 2019, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Social Security Administration–or about 6% of the state’s labor force. The vast majority of them, about 156,000, also hold part-time jobs.
But when they lose those jobs, they can’t get the unemployment benefits many others are eligible for–a problem that was magnified during the pandemic. The existing state law led to about 1,500 people on federal disability benefits in Wisconsin being initially denied pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA), according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, until the U.S. Department of Labor reversed course.
Like many others on disability, Feriozzi kept working part-time for years to supplement his income. (In 2019, the Disability Benefits Center reported that the average monthly SSDI payout was $1,234.)
Physical work is painful, but he’s been able to keep a machinist job where he handles smaller, lighter parts. Until the pandemic, that is, when he got laid off. He’s been approved for PUA payments after a hearing to appeal an initial decision that denied them. But even after the 2020 reversal that allowed disabled people to get the extra pandemic assistance not available to regular unemployment beneficiaries, he still hasn’t seen a penny.
“It’s not helping, let me tell ya,” he said. “I still haven’t gotten any.”
Wisconsin’s eligibility ban
Social security disability benefits cover workers who have paid into the Social Security program already. “People receiving this benefit typically have earned enough “credits” or quarters of work to qualify,” the DWD notes.
In 2013, the Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Scott Walker signed off on a law banning people on disability benefits from getting unemployment benefits. The reasoning, according to a letter to the Department of Workforce Development, was based on:
- To receive unemployment insurance benefit payments, claimants must state that they are able to work.
- To receive disability insurance benefit payments, claimants must state that they are unable to work.
The federal guidance for disability benefits allows those on benefits to get part-time jobs and is based on individuals being “unable to engage in substantial gainful activity.” Republicans, however, said getting both benefits if laid off from a job could amount to fraud. The ban started in 2013, but was replaced with a 2015 law that closed loopholes in the original law, effectively sealing off all unemployment benefits from people on disability.
Only North Carolina has a similar blanket ban against disabled people collecting regular unemployment benefits if they lose work, according to Forberger. According to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, most other states take a case-by-case approach.
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