By Sarah Whites-Koditschek | swhites-koditschek@al.com
The U.S. Supreme Court this fall will take up a case about Alabama’s troubled handling of unemployment claims during the pandemic.
The high court scheduled oral arguments in the case for Monday, Oct. 7.
“Petitioners have experienced lengthy delays in receiving unemployment compensation benefits they believe they are owed,” the plaintiffs said in their petition for certiorari to the court.
A group of Alabamians sued in state court in 2022, arguing they were wrongly denied unemployment benefits and appeal opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a backlog of cases stacked up, Gov. Kay Ivey in 2022 called it “outrageous”.
In their lawsuit, the group argued the system was excessively delayed. Some people who did receive benefits later got notices from the department demanding repayment, sometimes thousands of dollars, without access to appeal.
The Alabama Department of Labor declined to comment for this story because of ongoing litigation.
In June of 2023, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Labor Department and Secretary Fitzgerald Washington, finding that the plaintiffs had to go through the full administrative appeals process before filing a lawsuit.
The department argued that Alabamians who had problems with their unemployment should seek appeals, “not by bringing this collateral suit to skip the line.”
Alabama’s appeals were backlogged by several years. According to an analysis of federal data by The Century Foundation. In 2021, Alabama had the greatest delays of any state. The average wait time for an appeal was 566 days. At that time, some states were hearing appeals within 20 days.
“It just seems so nonsensical,” said Larry Gardella, attorney for Legal Services Alabama which filed the lawsuit.
“They take forever to make a decision, (and) you have to wait for them to make a decision before you can challenge the decision?”
The U.S. Supreme Court will now weigh in. Gardella said he expects the court will rule on the issue by next summer.
In October, the high court will hear arguments from both sides about whether states are required to follow a reconstruction-era law that provides protections for citizens who feel their rights have been violated or whether such claims must exclusively be made through federal courts.
In its filing before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Alabama Department of Labor noted that between April of 2020 and March of 2022, the state received almost one and a half million unemployment claims, one million of which were COVID related. The department was short-staffed, it said, which amounted to inevitable delays.
