The Social Security Administration isn’t “evolving” as quickly as certain policymakers and the Supreme Court when it comes to addressing the needs of Americans in same-sex marriages.
More than 120 Democratic Representatives and Senators on Monday called on Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration Carolyn Colvin to take responsibility for failing to update computer systems in the wake of historic Supreme Court decisions that validated gay and lesbian marriages across the nation.
The glitches have resulted in lingering discrimination, the lawmakers claimed. They said that “for some time after” the high court’s 2013 United States v. Windsor decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, the SSA continued sending Supplemental Security Income to individuals in same sex marriages as though they were still single. Since benefits for single recipients is actually higher than it is for those who are married, the agency has since sent overpayment notices to many of these individuals, demanding reimbursement for its own errors. The lawmakers reported that in some cases, the “SSA is still doing so.”
“SSA should not penalize people who are poor, elderly or disabled because SSA continued issuing benefits to these married individuals as though they were single,” the lawmakers stated in their letter, which was also addressed to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
They went on to note that the agency’s regulations instruct it to avoid penalizing individuals for overpayment if the individual is not at fault or if recovery of the benefit would be “against equity and good conscience.”
“We urge the SSA to issue a blanket waiver for recovery of overpayment for all of these individuals automatically,” the letter goes on to say. “Under these circumstances, any effort on the part of SSA to collect overpayments would exacerbate the unlawful discriminatory effect of the Defense of Marriage Act and would be against equity and good conscience.”
The Social Security Administration claimed in July that it is working with the Department of Justice to implement new policies following the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision this year. That ruling struck down state laws prohibiting same sex couples from getting wed.
Monday’s note from lawmakers was as much of a fact-finding mission as it was a demand for the agency to own up to its benefit disbursement errors. The letter called on the SSA to identify by Nov. 18 the total number of overpayment notices it sent out to those misidentified as not being in a same sex marriage, and how much the SSA has recouped so far from those notices.
The bicameral outreach was led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.).
