The last few months had disability attorneys on edge that the Trump administration was going to institute rule changes that would have made it significantly more difficult for many people to get approved for disability – and potentially stop benefits for thousands more.
However, after significant pushback from disability advocates and reporting by major media outlets, the administration has reportedly abandoned those plans.
The exact details of the proposed regulations still haven’t been made public, but leaks suggested that the Social Security Administration was going to drop the so-called “grid rules” that take age and education into account when a claimant turns 50.
This would have meant a 50-year-old would have the same difficulty being approved for disability as a 20-year-old. As most individuals approved for benefits are over the age of 50, this likely would have meant a significant drop in disability awards.
It was also unclear whether this meant that those already approved would have their benefits terminated, or be subject to some sort of review process.
Part of what the regulations were going to look at as well was the job data SSA uses to make disability determinations.
Anyone who works with the disability system knows that this information is woefully outdated, though the proposed changes were also apparently going to make it much more difficult to be approved for benefits, supposedly telling many applications to pursue jobs such as Uber driving or DoorDash.
While this is good news for now, disability advocates will continue to monitor the situation for any other upcoming changes to the Social Security regulations.
