Appeals to federal court

What the court does

The action is filed in the United States District Court within 60 days of the Appeals Council's decision. There is no new testimony and no new evidence. The court reviews the record already made and decides two things: whether the decision applied the law correctly, and whether the evidence in the file supported it.

A win at this stage usually means the case is sent back to Social Security for a new hearing, not an award of benefits outright. An outright reversal is uncommon.

Why it is different work

A federal appeal is not a matter of resubmitting the claim. It means reading the judge's decision for a legal error — a misapplied rule, an unsupported finding, an ignored piece of evidence — and briefing that error to a federal court. That is litigation, and it draws on 35 years of it.

The two conditions

Chris Rouse takes these appeals when both are true:

• He represented the claimant at the Social Security hearing. The appeal is only as strong as the record and the argument built at the hearing level — and those are known from the inside when the same lawyer handled the hearing.
• The denial presents a real legal argument. Not every unfavorable decision contains an error a court will act on. A federal appeal without one is a long shot, and it is more honest to say so at the outset.

Handled here, not referred out.

Costs

Federal court charges a filing fee to start the case — typically $405, although we can request that the District Court waive that fee. It is a cost of the action, separate from the fee for the work — see fees.