686 F. App'x 420
9th Cir.2017Background
- Plaintiff Linda Lemauga appealed the district court’s grant of summary judgment affirming an ALJ’s denial of disability insurance benefits; Ninth Circuit reviews ALJ for substantial evidence and district court de novo.
- The ALJ denied benefits at Step 5, finding Lemauga could perform three jobs: dowel inspector, ticket checker, and telephone clerk.
- Commissioner conceded the ALJ erred in relying on ticket checker and telephone clerk because those jobs require reasoning levels inconsistent with Lemauga’s RFC; only the dowel inspector job remained valid.
- Vocational expert (VE) testified there are 1,530 dowel inspector jobs in the regional economy and 12,600 in the national economy.
- The Ninth Circuit held the VE/ALJ failed to define the geographic region for the 1,530 regional jobs, preventing meaningful assessment of whether that number is significant; the court could not confidently conclude the ALJ’s error was harmless and remanded to define the region and reassess significance.
- The government did not argue the 12,600 national jobs were significant; court noted prior Ninth Circuit decisions treating substantially larger nationwide job totals as significant.
Issues
| Issue | Plaintiff's Argument | Defendant's Argument | Held |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whether ALJ’s reliance on two invalid jobs was harmless error at Step 5 | Lemauga: error not harmless unless remaining valid jobs exist in significant numbers; contest significance of inspector jobs | Commissioner: remaining dowel inspector jobs (1,530 regional; 12,600 national) suffice to uphold denial | Reversed and remanded: court cannot deem error harmless without ALJ defining the region and assessing whether 1,530 regional jobs are significant |
| Whether 1,530 regional jobs are significant without region size specified | Lemauga: unspecified region prevents meaningful comparison to precedent | Commissioner: implied region sufficient; VE testimony adequate | Held: region must be defined; without it harmless-error analysis fails |
| Whether 12,600 national jobs are significant | Lemauga: argues numbers are not clearly significant given precedent | Commissioner: did not argue 12,600 is significant on appeal | Held: court observed 12,600 has not been treated as significant in prior Ninth Circuit decisions |
| Whether plaintiff waived challenge to inspector-job significance by not raising it before ALJ | Lemauga: did not waive because issue is part of harmless-error analysis on appeal | Commissioner: argued waiver or forfeiture | Held: no waiver; issue appropriate for appellate harmless-error review |
Key Cases Cited
- Berry v. Astrue, 622 F.3d 1228 (9th Cir. 2010) (standard of review for ALJ credibility and findings)
- Beltran v. Astrue, 700 F.3d 386 (9th Cir. 2012) (framework for assessing whether job numbers are significant)
- Marsh v. Colvin, 792 F.3d 1170 (9th Cir. 2015) (harmless-error standard when ALJ relies on erroneous jobs)
- Gutierrez v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 740 F.3d 519 (9th Cir. 2014) (examples of significance thresholds for statewide and national job numbers)
- Thomas v. Barnhart, 278 F.3d 947 (9th Cir. 2002) (nationwide job numbers held significant)
- Moore v. Apfel, 216 F.3d 864 (9th Cir. 2000) (nationwide job numbers held significant)
- Moncada v. Chater, 60 F.3d 521 (9th Cir. 1995) (nationwide job numbers held significant)
- Meanel v. Apfel, 172 F.3d 1111 (9th Cir. 1999) (issue-preservation principles—new evidence raised on appeal may be forfeited)
- Allino v. Colvin, 83 F. Supp. 3d 881 (N.D. Cal. 2015) (regional-job comparison methodology)