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Posts Tagged ‘social security’

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has agreed to repay more than $500 million to people whose benefits have been withheld since Jan. 1, 2007, because their names and birth dates matched those of people with arrest warrants.

Often the warrants involved traffic or other minor infractions, and sometimes were for completely different people with the same name.

The class action lawsuit, Martinez v. Astrue, settled last week by U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken, in Oakland, Calif., will assist the 200,000 people. The agreement not only ordered restitution for 80,000 people wrongfully denied benefits, but it also enabled another 120,000 individuals who were refused assistance from 2000-2006 to reapply for help or ask for back payments.

Source:  New America Media. August 19, 2009.