Chambers v. Kijakazi ( 2023 )

Case: 20-10918 Document: 00516974181 Page: 1 Date Filed: 11/20/2023
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
____________
United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
No. 20-10918
Summary Calendar FILED
____________ November 20, 2023
Lyle W. Cayce
Reshunn Chambers, Clerk
Plaintiff—Appellant,
versus
Kilolo Kijakazi, Acting Commissioner of Social Security; Leonard
Burns, SSA Claims Representative; Janet Yellen, Secretary, U.S.
Department of Treasury; Miguel Cardona, Secretary, U.S. Department
of Education,
Defendants—Appellees.
______________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Texas
USDC No. 3:19-CV-1062
______________________________
Before Smith, Higginson, and Engelhardt, Circuit Judges.
Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiff-Appellant Reshunn Chambers, proceeding pro se, filed suit
against multiple private entities and government officials including, as rele-
vant to the instant appeal, the Social Security Commissioner, a Social Secu-
rity claims representative, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary
of Education (the “Federal Defendants”), asserting a number of claims
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relating to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) allegedly improper
withholding of his disability benefits.
I.
Mr. Chambers began receiving disability benefits in 2007, following
injuries he sustained as a result of a work-related accident. In March 2015,
Mr. Chambers received an SSA letter notifying him of his ineligibility for ben-
efits beginning in January 2012, due to his engagement in substantial work.
Mr. Chambers requested an administrative appeal of the decision—and the
SSA later revised, finding on April 30, 2018, that Mr. Chambers’ disability
was continuing and thereby reinstating his benefits.
However, also in March 2015, the SSA sent Mr. Chambers another
letter explaining that he had been overpaid benefits, which would require re-
payment. Although not entirely clear, the record evinces at least a few bases
upon which the SSA expressed that it would withhold from Mr. Chambers’
disability benefits, 1 including: communications in mid-2015 indicating that
Mr. Chambers had been previously overpaid benefits 2; an April 4, 2018 letter
demanding payment of Mr. Chambers’ Medicare premiums; a March 20,
2019 letter informing Mr. Chambers of an administrative offset for an out-
standing student-loan debt that he owed to the Department of Education, 3; a
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1
At times, Mr. Chambers’ brief provides differing figures regarding the amounts
that he claims were wrongly withheld (claiming first, for instance, that the SSA seized
$34,000.00 on September 12, 2018, and then later claiming the amount seized on that date
was $22,128.90).
2
Some documents show that the amount of overpayment was $34,434.20. Another
document shows an additional overpayment of $36,526.20 (apparently communicated in a
May 10, 2017 letter, not itself in the record). Still other documents indicate that Mr.
Chambers had been overpaid $22,128.90.
3
Though Mr. Chambers was initially approved for a conditional discharge of this
debt, he failed to provide required annual certifications of income and employment status,
despite receiving several letters requesting such documentation—and warning that his
2
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May 19, 2019 letter seeking repayment for a check advance in the amount of
$1,495 that Mr. Chambers had requested and received from a local field office
on January 19, 2019; and a May 23, 2019 letter explaining that Mr. Chambers’
monthly payments were decreased due to the removal of substantial wages.
Although Mr. Chambers submitted various letters and forms to the
SSA and other entities challenging these decisions, he also filed the instant
lawsuit on May 2, 2019, seeking judicial review of the SSA’s decisions to ter-
minate his disability payments for several months, withhold prior benefits al-
legedly owed to him, offset overpaid benefits against his future payments, and
reduce his monthly payment amounts due to a recalculation of past wages.
The Federal Defendants filed a motion to dismiss, which the magistrate judge
recommended granting under both Rule 12(b)(1) for lack of jurisdiction and
Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim. The district court did so. 4
II.
Mr. Chambers appeals the district court’s order granting the motion
to dismiss his amended complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and
failure to state a claim, which we review de novo. See Lane v. Halliburton, 529
F.3d 548, 557 (5th Cir. 2008).
A.
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loans would be reinstated if he failed to act. As a result, his debt was reinstated on June 9,
2014. (The notice also indicated that the loan would be returned to conditional discharge
status if the requested documentation were provided, but nothing in the record indicates
that he either did so or appealed the decision.) This debt was later referred to the
Department of Treasury for administrative offset against his future disability benefit
payments (up to 15% would be withheld).
4
As the district court accepted the magistrate judge’s findings and conclusions as
the findings and conclusions of the Court, the magistrate judge’s Recommendation will be
henceforth referred to as the opinion of the district court.
3
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The burden of proving federal jurisdiction rests with the party assert-
ing it. See Ramming v. United States, 281 F.3d 158, 161 (5th Cir. 2001). On
appeal, Mr. Chambers argues the district court erred because jurisdiction ex-
ists under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (federal question), 42 U.S.C. § 405(g), and 28
U.S.C. § 1361 (mandamus). Each is unavailing.
Federal judicial review of claims arising under the Social Security Act
is defined in 42 U.S.C. §§ 405(g) and (h). Section 405(h) “largely curtail[s]”
jurisdiction: it explains that “no findings of fact or decision of the Commis-
sioner of Social Security shall be reviewed . . . except as [provided in
§405(g)].” Matter of Benjamin, 932 F.3d 293, 296 (5th Cir. 2019) (quoting 42
U.S.C. § 405(h)). It also specifies the limitation that “[n]o action against the
United States, the Commissioner of Social Security, or any officer or em-
ployee thereof shall be brought under [28 U.S.C. § 1331 or § 1346] to recover
on any claim arising under [Title II of the Social Security Act].” Id.
As we have explained, § 405(h) serves a “channeling” function, by
“strip[ping] district courts of the most obvious sources of federal jurisdic-
tion” and then “mak[ing] exclusive the judicial review method set forth in
§ 405(g),” “which, in turn, grants jurisdiction to district courts to review fi-
nal agency decisions made after a hearing.” Id. (citations omitted) (emphasis
added).
On this basis, Mr. Chambers’ first two claimed bases for jurisdiction
fail. In accordance with the last sentence of § 405(h), no actions may be
brought under § 1331; the plain language of the text brooks no exceptions.
And even if we assume Mr. Chambers’ claim is one that may be channeled to
§ 405(g), 5 that section calls for judicial review only after a “final decision of
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5
Citing Benjamin and Becker v. Berryhill, 772 F. App’x 215 (5th Cir. 2019), the
district court found that, since Mr. Chambers was not challenging an initial benefits
determination, his claim was not the type of claim that § 405(h) channels into § 405(g), and
4
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the Commissioner of Social Security.” This necessitates administrative ex-
haustion, which generally requires claimants to first “proceed through a four-
step process before they can obtain review from a federal court”: (1) an initial
determination regarding eligibility; (2) reconsideration of the initial determi-
nation; (3) request for a hearing, conducted by an administrative law judge
(“ALJ”); and (4) review of the ALJ’s decision by the Appeals Council. See
Smith v. Berryhill, 139 S. Ct. 1765, 1772 (2019).
Mr. Chambers has not met his burden in demonstrating administra-
tive exhaustion. By his own admission, he had “approximately 15 outstanding
appeal(s) request[s]” before the SSA, and, even after filing suit, requested
informal conferences to discuss his “reduction in monthly benefits” and the
“wrongful and illegal calculations against [him],” and sought administrative
reconsideration of repayment for his critical check. 6
Mr. Chambers has also not demonstrated that waiver of the exhaus-
tion requirement would be appropriate here. Mr. Chambers’ claims are in-
deed “inextricably intertwined” with his substantive claim for benefits, and
there is no indication that harm suffered pending exhaustion, if any, would
be irreparable. See Affiliated Pro. Home Health Care Agency v. Shalala, 164
F.3d 282, 285-86 (5th Cir. 1999); see also Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319,
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therefore he would need an independent source of jurisdiction. As the district court also
noted, however, Benjamin seems to leave open the possibility for subject matter jurisdiction
over challenges to termination or suspension of benefits when the claimant was either
entitled to a hearing or was given the opportunity to appeal that decision. Because Mr.
Chambers did not demonstrate his right to a hearing, however, we express no view on that
issue here.
6
In its jurisdictional analysis, the district court properly considered documents
provided by the Federal Defendants that were central to Mr. Chambers’ claims in response
to the Federal Defendants’ factual attack on jurisdiction, see Williamson v. Tucker, 645 F.2d
404, 413 (5th Cir. 1981), though it refrained from considering the same material for its
12(b)(6) analysis “in an abundance of caution.”
5
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330-32 (1976). Nor is there an indication that exhaustion would be futile.
Though Mr. Chambers complains that his appeals have fallen on deaf ears for
at least four years, the record indicates otherwise. The termination of his dis-
ability benefits was reversed. And by letter of April 16, 2019, the SSA indi-
cated that it was “currently processing [his] claim” and that once it “com-
plete[d] the process [of working on his claim],” it would inform him of “any
back pay or underpayments due.” 7
Mr. Chambers’ final asserted basis for jurisdiction, mandamus under
§ 1361, also lacks merit. While this argument was not raised before the district
court, Mr. Chambers has not met the threshold showing that he has a “clear
right to relief” for which “no other adequate remedy exists”—in no small
part because mandamus also requires administrative exhaustion. Randall D.
Wolcott, M.D., P.A. v. Sebelius, 635 F.3d 757, 768 (5th Cir. 2011).
B.
While the lack of jurisdiction is a sufficient basis on which to affirm
the district court, Mr. Chambers’ broad challenges to “any of [the court’s]
holdings dismissing the federal government defendants” warrant but a brief
note. We find no error in the district court’s dismissal of the Treasury Sec-
retary, given its purely ministerial role in administering the offset for Mr.
Chambers’ outstanding loan, or its dismissal of the Secretary of Education,
given Mr. Chambers’ similar failure to exhaust administrative remedies with
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7
The record also suggests that the SSA did schedule personal conferences with
Mr. Chambers regarding its collection of overpayment amounts. These communications,
along with various notice letters available in the record, debunk Mr. Chambers’ arguments
that he was not given prior notice, or that the SSA had been ignoring his appeal requests.
6
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that department and failure to advance a colorable constitutional violation. 8
Nor do we find that the district court erred in deciding to dispense with Mr.
Chambers’ expansive, but unsupported, claims of “discriminatory practices,
defamation, slander, libel, and reporting of adverse credit reporting, derelic-
tion of duty, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, misrepresentations and decep-
tive trade practices, tortious interference, breach of contract, and violations
of the Act, the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, the FDCPA, or the Privacy
Act,” given that he neither pled sufficient facts at the trial level nor ade-
quately briefed these issues on appeal. See Yohey v. Collins, 985 F.2d 222,
224–25 (5th Cir. 1993).
III.
The district court below correctly concluded that it did not have sub-
ject matter jurisdiction over Mr. Chambers’ claims against the Social Secu-
rity Administration representatives concerning his Social Security benefits,
and that Mr. Chambers has failed to state a claim as to its remaining claims
against the Federal Defendants. Accordingly, we AFFIRM.
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8
As Appellees have noted, further, Mr. Chambers makes no arguments about his
claims against either the Secretary of the Treasury or the Secretary of Education, and
therefore has abandoned his arguments on appeal.
7