Case No. 19-199 | 5th Cir.
November 2, 2020
Preview by Laura Stanley, Member
In this case, the Court will determine whether, under the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, the Railroad Retirement Board’s (“the Board”) denial of a request to reopen an earlier benefits determination is a “final decision” subject to judicial review.
In the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, Congress gave parties the ability to seek judicial review of “any final decisions of the Board.” 45 U.S.C. § 355(f). Courts treat § 355(f) as the “sole path for challenging Board decisions, to the exclusion of review under the Administrative Procedure Act.” Brief for the Petitioner at 9, Salinas v. U.S. R.R. Ret. Bd., No. 19-199 (U.S. filed Mar. 31, 2020).
There is currently a circuit split over whether the Board’s denial of a request to reopen a prior claim qualifies as a final, reviewable decision. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits hold that courts do not have jurisdiction in such cases. The US. Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the Second and Eighth Circuits hold that § 355(f) grants the courts the jurisdiction to review such decisions.
Petitioner Manfredo Salinas began working at Union Pacific Railroad in 1979. After “a twelve-pound sledgehammer fell from a bridge, landing on Mr. Salinas’s hardhat,” he suffered ongoing neck pain and eventually needed spinal-fusion surgery. Brief for Petitioner at 11. Two years after returning to work, Mr. Salinas was struck by timber that fell from a truck, requiring another surgery. He tried to return to work but had to stop, and in 2006 he requested disability benefits that the Board denied. In 2013, Mr. Salinas successfully re-applied for disability benefits, and at the same time he requested a reopening of his prior application.
After the Board rejected Mr. Salinas’s request to reopen the prior application, he challenged the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit dismissed the petition due to a lack of “jurisdiction under § 355(f) to review the Board’s decision not to reopen a prior claim for benefits.” Salinas v. U.S. R.R. Ret. Bd., 765 F. App’x 79, 80 (5th Cir. 2019) (citing Roberts v. U.S. R.R. Ret. Bd., 346 F.3d 139, 140 (5th Cir. 2003). Although the court followed existing circuit precedent, it “acknowledged [the] circuit split on this issue.” Id.
Salinas argues the statutory text in § 355(f) is unambiguous and grants the courts jurisdiction to review any final Board decision. Additionally, he argues that a decision not to reopen a prior application is “final” as it is ordinarily understood because it stops the agency review process. The Court has also historically applied a presumption of judicial review of agency action which can only be rebutted with clear direction from Congress. Brief for Petitioner at 18–24.
The government contends that judicial review under § 355(f) is limited to a list of specific final Board decisions mentioned in the statutory text of that section. The section was designed as a single scheme that “contemplates exhaustion of an adverse decision under Section 355(c), followed by exclusive judicial review of that same decision under Section 355(f) and (g).” Brief for the Respondent at 23, Salinas v. U.S. Railroad Retirement Bd., No. 19-199 (U.S. filed Jul 8, 2020). Additionally, allowing for judicial review of a decision not to reopen a prior application would frustrate the statutory limitations period and exhaustion requirements that Congress intended to place on benefit applicants. Brief for the Respondent at 39.
This case has policy implications for parties seeking benefits in the highly complex benefits system administrated by the Board. The Board “administers benefits to hundreds of thousands of railroad workers” and “the price of . . . errors can be intolerably high.” Brief for Petitioner at 28. If courts do not have jurisdiction to review the Board’s denial of a reopening request, agency errors will be left to self-monitoring.