On universal injunctions, I'd be curious to know your thoughts how this relates to the traditional "nonacquiesence" of IRS, ICE, SSA, etc. to decisions they don't like (and don't appeal). I encountered this when a federal district court law clerk in the 1980s and the SSA was just routinely ignoring 5th Circuit decisions on disability insurance. The cases were easy to dispose of - the plaintiff would file a summary judgment motion saying "See X v SSA" and we'd grant it. SSA never appealed any of these and had not appealed X v SSA either, it just kept rejecting benefit applications on invalid grounds. This meant people who got lawyers got their benefits, people who didn't and didn't know better, didn't, which seemed grossly unfair. Here's a recent CRS report on the topic: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47882 for anyone interested.
I worked for SSA for 32 years and about 5 of those years were spent reviewing cases the Agency was weighing its position on pending court cases. Evaluation for disability under the Social Security Act is specific to the individual case, as I try to explain below.
More, perhaps, to your point, SSA disability determinations are individual assessments of the plaintiffs, the Agency calls them claimants. The ability to work based on his or her medical condition(s), foremost. If the claimant is not working at a "substantial" level (defined in regulation and on a yearly sliding upward scale) and his or her medical impairment(s) does not meet a set of listed medical criteria, the Agency then conducts a detailed medical-legal analysis of the claimant's ability to work. The Agency considers whether the individual's age, physical and mental limitations of all medical conditions in combination impose on the individual an inability to work. If necessary, a medical expert is asked to assess the degree of limitations imposed by the combination of impairments. Similarly, a vocational expert may be asked whether there are jobs that exist in significant numbers in the national economy given the limitations placed on the claimant by his or her combined medical conditions. (SSA decides those limitations, as is stated in the regulations.) The individual's adaptability to job change is considered given his or her age and a decision as to whether he or she is disabled within the meaning of the Social Security Act is made.
Subsequent to both your and my working with SS disability claims, modifications were made as to how the SSA considers and incorporates case law in disability evaluation. However, disability adjudication is still very much a personal evaluation.
There are, however, legal rules that govern the process of applying the facts. SSA (and other agencies) routinely violate these rules through "nonacquiesence" to federal court of appeals rulings which have told them that they are violating the law in how they are applying the law to the facts.
What nonacquiesence means is that agencies ignore court rulings AND do not appeal those rulings to the Supreme Court precisely because the agencies wish to continue to ignore the law and would be unable to do so if the Supreme Court definitively settled the issue. Saying disability determination is a "personal evaluation" is merely saying that there are factual determinations involved. (We can have a separate discussion of the problems with the factual determinations SSA makes - see Jerry Mashaw's classic book, Bureaucratic Justice, https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300034035/bureaucratic-justice/ for a detailed description of how problematic agency factual determinations are (TLDR version: the best we can hope for is that agencies like SSA give people benefits incorrectly about the same amount of time as they deny people benefits incorrectly, so on average agencies are right).)
This is highly problematic from a rule of law perspective.
I've been retired 15 years and didn't participate in "case work" for the greater part of the last ~25 years of my career. My background was astrophysics (BS) and MS in mathematical statistics. After my foray into programs, I worked integrating programs, policy, and information technology, as well as on a government-wide integration team for Public Key Infrastructure. I am not well-versed enough to comment beyond my earlier statement.
There could be a dynamic like that if the government simply doesn't appeal a bad district/circuit ruling because it then thinks it can implement its policy against everyone else. This will be tested very soon anyhow, because the same challengers have already filed a class action against the birthright citizenship EO.
On universal injunctions, I'd be curious to know your thoughts how this relates to the traditional "nonacquiesence" of IRS, ICE, SSA, etc. to decisions they don't like (and don't appeal). I encountered this when a federal district court law clerk in the 1980s and the SSA was just routinely ignoring 5th Circuit decisions on disability insurance. The cases were easy to dispose of - the plaintiff would file a summary judgment motion saying "See X v SSA" and we'd grant it. SSA never appealed any of these and had not appealed X v SSA either, it just kept rejecting benefit applications on invalid grounds. This meant people who got lawyers got their benefits, people who didn't and didn't know better, didn't, which seemed grossly unfair. Here's a recent CRS report on the topic: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47882 for anyone interested.
I worked for SSA for 32 years and about 5 of those years were spent reviewing cases the Agency was weighing its position on pending court cases. Evaluation for disability under the Social Security Act is specific to the individual case, as I try to explain below.
More, perhaps, to your point, SSA disability determinations are individual assessments of the plaintiffs, the Agency calls them claimants. The ability to work based on his or her medical condition(s), foremost. If the claimant is not working at a "substantial" level (defined in regulation and on a yearly sliding upward scale) and his or her medical impairment(s) does not meet a set of listed medical criteria, the Agency then conducts a detailed medical-legal analysis of the claimant's ability to work. The Agency considers whether the individual's age, physical and mental limitations of all medical conditions in combination impose on the individual an inability to work. If necessary, a medical expert is asked to assess the degree of limitations imposed by the combination of impairments. Similarly, a vocational expert may be asked whether there are jobs that exist in significant numbers in the national economy given the limitations placed on the claimant by his or her combined medical conditions. (SSA decides those limitations, as is stated in the regulations.) The individual's adaptability to job change is considered given his or her age and a decision as to whether he or she is disabled within the meaning of the Social Security Act is made.
Subsequent to both your and my working with SS disability claims, modifications were made as to how the SSA considers and incorporates case law in disability evaluation. However, disability adjudication is still very much a personal evaluation.
There are, however, legal rules that govern the process of applying the facts. SSA (and other agencies) routinely violate these rules through "nonacquiesence" to federal court of appeals rulings which have told them that they are violating the law in how they are applying the law to the facts.
What nonacquiesence means is that agencies ignore court rulings AND do not appeal those rulings to the Supreme Court precisely because the agencies wish to continue to ignore the law and would be unable to do so if the Supreme Court definitively settled the issue. Saying disability determination is a "personal evaluation" is merely saying that there are factual determinations involved. (We can have a separate discussion of the problems with the factual determinations SSA makes - see Jerry Mashaw's classic book, Bureaucratic Justice, https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300034035/bureaucratic-justice/ for a detailed description of how problematic agency factual determinations are (TLDR version: the best we can hope for is that agencies like SSA give people benefits incorrectly about the same amount of time as they deny people benefits incorrectly, so on average agencies are right).)
This is highly problematic from a rule of law perspective.
I've been retired 15 years and didn't participate in "case work" for the greater part of the last ~25 years of my career. My background was astrophysics (BS) and MS in mathematical statistics. After my foray into programs, I worked integrating programs, policy, and information technology, as well as on a government-wide integration team for Public Key Infrastructure. I am not well-versed enough to comment beyond my earlier statement.
There could be a dynamic like that if the government simply doesn't appeal a bad district/circuit ruling because it then thinks it can implement its policy against everyone else. This will be tested very soon anyhow, because the same challengers have already filed a class action against the birthright citizenship EO.