Woldemdhin v. D.C. Dep't of Employment Services ( 2024 )

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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS
No. 23-AA-0225
KASSAHUN A. WOLDEMDHIN, PETITIONER,
V.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICES, RESPONDENT.
Petition for Review of an Order of the
District of Columbia Office of Administrative Hearings
(2023-DOES-000126)
(Argued February 14, 2024 Decided August 15, 2024)
Alec Z. Sandler, with whom Jonathan H. Levy was on the briefs, for petitioner.
Jeremy R. Girton, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Brian L. Schwalb,
Attorney General, Caroline S. Van Zile, Solicitor General, Ashwin P. Phatak,
Principal Deputy Solicitor General, and Carl J. Schifferle, Deputy Solicitor General,
were on the brief, for respondent.
Before BLACKBURNE-RIGSBY, Chief Judge, and DEAHL and SHANKER,
Associate Judges.
DEAHL, Associate Judge: Kassahun Woldemdhin challenges a determination
that he does not qualify for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA, benefits.
Woldemdhin began working as a taxi driver in 2015, but he stopped working for
several months beginning on March 23, 2020, and he claims that he did so because
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of a lack of fare-paying customers at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He
applied for PUA benefits—temporary benefits for workers who lost income for
certain reasons as a result of the pandemic. His claim was initially denied on the
basis that he stopped working “due to general concerns about exposure to COVID-
19,” not because of a lack of fare-paying customers. Woldemdhin appealed that
determination to the Office of Administrative Hearings, where an Administrative
Law Judge upheld the denial of benefits. Taking a slightly different tack, the ALJ
found that Woldemdhin had not substantiated his claim that he had lost income as a
result of the pandemic’s outset, describing his claims on that front as “vague,
conclusory, and uncorroborated.”
We disagree. Woldemdhin’s belief that he could not turn a profit driving a
taxi during the first months of the pandemic was well-founded in the evidence, and
there was no countervailing evidence. It does not even appear to have been a
disputed point. Anybody who lived in the District during those early months of the
pandemic could not reasonably doubt it, either. Because the ALJ’s contrary
determination was arbitrary and capricious, we reverse and direct that Woldemdhin
be granted PUA benefits.
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I. Factual Background
The relevant facts are largely uncontested, save for the parties’ disputes about
(1) whether Woldemdhin stopped driving his taxi because of a belief that he could
no longer make any money, and (2) whether any such belief was substantiated.
Woldemdhin worked as a taxi driver in the District beginning in 2015. He was an
independent contractor, and he rented both his vehicle and his meter system from
United Ventures Consortium, or UVC. The bulk of his income came from tourist
fares.
That all changed, as so much else did, in March 2020, when the COVID-19
pandemic took the world by storm. On March 11, 2020, Mayor Muriel Bowser
declared a public health emergency in the District because of the COVID-19
pandemic. That same day—in what is etched in some of our minds as the unofficial
onset of the COVID-19 pandemic—the National Basketball Association announced
it was indefinitely suspending the 2019-20 NBA season. And just two days later,
President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020.
Within days, Woldemdhin came to realize that he could no longer make
enough money to offset the cost of renting his vehicle and meter system, and he
returned them to UVC on March 23, 2020, and stopped driving his taxi. The next
day, on March 24, 2020, the Mayor ordered all non-essential businesses to cease
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operations. Mayor’s Order 2020-053 at 6 (Mar. 24, 2020) (“the Shutdown Order”). 1
Under the Shutdown Order, taxis and ride-sharing companies were considered
essential businesses that could continue to operate. A week later, the Mayor issued
a Stay-At-Home order that required “all individuals anywhere” in the District “to
stay in their residences except to perform essential activities,” such as receiving
healthcare treatments, shopping, or “engag[ing] in essential business.” Mayor’s
Order 2020-054 (Mar. 30, 2020) (“the Stay-At-Home Order”).
Meanwhile, Congress passed the CARES Act, which created a system for
administering PUA benefits to support people who lost income due to the pandemic.
15 U.S.C. § 9021. To be eligible for PUA benefits, a person must be ineligible for
other state unemployment benefits, 2 id. § 9021(a)(3)(A)(i), and must be “otherwise
able to work and available for work” but “unemployed, partially unemployed, or
unable or unavailable to work because” of one of a variety of factors related to the
COVID-19 pandemic. Id. § 9021(a)(3)(A)(ii)(I). One of those factors—listed at id.
§ 9021(a)(3)(A)(ii)(I)(kk), which we refer to simply as subsection (kk)—specified
that a person was eligible for PUA benefits if “the individual meets any additional
1
The ALJ consistently asserted that Woldemdhin stopped driving on March
25, but the parties agree that the correct date reflected in the evidence is March 23.
The District of Columbia is considered a state for purposes of administering
2
PUA benefits. 15 U.S.C. § 9021(a)(5).
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criteria established by the Secretary [of Labor] for unemployment assistance under
this section.”
Within weeks, the Secretary of Labor issued a letter providing guidance as to
when “certain gig economy workers” are eligible for PUA benefits. Unemployment
Insurance Program Letter 16-20, p.2, § 3(b) (April 5, 2020) (“UIPL”). The Secretary
then updated that letter several weeks later to make clear that “a driver for a
ridesharing service who is forced to significantly limit his or her performance of
customary work activities because of the COVID-19 public health emergency” is
eligible for PUA benefits under subsection (kk). UIPL 16-20 Change 1, attach. I,
p.10-11, § F(42-43) (April 27, 2020) (“Updated UIPL”). However, “an individual
who does not go to work due to general concerns about exposure to COVID-19, and
who does not meet any of the other COVID-19 related criteria for PUA, is not
eligible for PUA.” Id. On April 26, 2020, Woldemdhin applied for PUA benefits.
He sought those benefits dating back to March, and ultimately through November
2020, when he resumed driving for hire (for Uber).
A claims examiner with the Department of Employment Services, or DOES,
initially approved Woldemdhin for PUA benefits. But for reasons that are not clear
from the record, DOES later initiated a review of Woldemdhin’s PUA benefits and
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eventually sent Woldemdhin a letter directing him to repay roughly $15,000 in PUA
benefits that he had received but was allegedly not entitled to.
Woldemdhin contested that decision and responded to the DOES letter with
evidence that he was eligible for PUA benefits. In his response, he provided (1) a
letter from UVC stating he had ended his taxi rental on March 23, 2020, (2) his 2019
and 2020 1099-K forms detailing his monthly earnings in those years, which showed
that his March 2020 income was only about a quarter of his March 2019 income,
and (3) a statement written on a DOES form that Woldemdhin signed, but which
was apparently written for him by a DOES employee (because, as Woldemdhin later
testified through a translator, his English was limited). That form listed “Fear of
Catching Covid” as the reason he stopped driving his taxi. A claims examiner
considered this additional evidence and upheld the earlier determination that
Woldemdhin was ineligible for PUA benefits. The examiner reasoned that
Woldemdhin was ineligible for PUA benefits—consistent with the Secretary of
Labor’s guidance—because he “voluntarily quit due to the fear of contracting
COVID-19 from patrons,” not because he could no longer make any income driving
a taxi.
Woldemdhin appealed that decision to OAH, where he received an
evidentiary hearing before an Administrative Law Judge. During the hearing,
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Woldemdhin testified that fear of catching COVID-19 was not the primary reason
that he stopped driving his taxi. He had simply responded in the affirmative when
asked by the DOES employee if he had been afraid of catching COVID-19, and she
then in turn listed that as the reason he deactivated his taxi when she filled out the
form for him. He explained, through a translator:
So the letter . . . is not the letter that I wrote. It’s the letter
that Patricia Jackson wrote. She was one of the person that
was following my case. She told me to write a letter and I
told her, I don’t have the skills to write a letter since
English is my second language. So she said, I can help
you write the letter. And she wrote the letter for me, and
she asked me questions like, Were you afraid that you
might catch the COVID? And I told her, Yes, I was afraid
that . . . I might catch the COVID.
Woldemdhin confirmed that he was not “able to read the [letter] and understand the
document before [he] signed it,” and he said that he “just knew that [Jackson] was
being kind to write that letter and she was—she did that to help me, so to be honest,
I didn’t understand each and every word hundred percent.” Woldemdhin then
conceded that “it was [his] decision to stop driving for UVC,” but explained that he
made that decision because he “was sure that [he] wouldn’t make any income even
if [he] worked.”
After the hearing, the ALJ upheld the decision to deny PUA benefits. Unlike
the claims examiner, the ALJ did not place any reliance on the DOES form letter
that Jackson drafted which stated that Woldemdhin quit due to a fear of catching
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COVID-19. The ALJ also rejected an argument made by Woldemdhin’s attorney
that he was eligible for benefits because he could not work as a result of the Mayor’s
Stay-At-Home order, which by itself would have made him eligible for benefits
under a section of the CARES act that is not relevant here. See 15 U.S.C.
§ 9021(a)(3)(A)(ii)(I)(ee). The ALJ rejected that argument both because
Woldemdhin stopped driving several days before that order took effect and because
the order exempted taxi drivers. That aspect of the ALJ’s ruling is not challenged
now.
The ALJ then considered the critical question before us, which is whether
Woldemdhin quit because he “experienced a significant diminution of [his]
customary or usual services because of the COVID-19 public health emergency.”
The ALJ concluded that Woldemdhin’s testimony on that point was “vague,
conclusory, and uncorroborated.” She continued that Woldemdhin presented “no
financial records” comparing his pre-March 2020 income to the narrow stretch of
time during March 2020 where he still drove his taxi, so that there was “nothing in
the record aside from [Woldemdhin’s] fundamentally flawed reasoning” connecting
the pandemic to his loss of income. The ALJ expressly did not credit Woldemdhin’s
“testimony that a reduced volume of tourists in the District . . . related to the
pandemic was the direct cause of an asserted diminution” of his income because he
provided no “substantial evidence” to support that claim.
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Woldemdhin now petitions this court for review.
II. Analysis
Our review of OAH decisions is limited. We will “affirm an agency’s
decision ‘if the decision contains findings on each material, contested issue of
fact; substantial evidence supports each factual finding; the decision’s legal
conclusions flow rationally from the factual findings; and the decision is
not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise contrary to law.’” Fort
Myer Constr. Corp. v. Briscoe, 298 A.3d 770, 775-76 (D.C. 2023) (per curiam)
(quoting Tyler v. George Washington Med. Fac. Assocs., 75 A.3d 211, 213 (D.C.
2013)). We conclude that the ALJ’s decision was arbitrary and capricious, and at
points unsupported by substantial evidence, for several reasons.
A. Woldemdhin’s Undisputed Testimony Established His Eligibility
The ALJ acted arbitrarily and capriciously when she concluded that
Woldemdhin had not sufficiently substantiated his claim that his income from
driving his taxi was significantly diminished during the early weeks of the pandemic.
To put a point on it, we do not see how anybody who lived in the District during the
pandemic’s onset could possibly doubt Woldemdhin’s testimony on this subject.
Consider this graph, from the District’s own Department of Vehicles For Hire,
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Woldemdhin testified that by the time he turned in his taxi and meter on March
23, he “was sure that [he] wouldn’t make any income even if [he] worked.” It is in
some sense true that he did not present a trove of evidence substantiating that
testimony (though he presented a fair bit, as discussed in the next section), but it was
undisputed—and in our view, beyond reasonable dispute—that Woldemdhin’s
belief was well-founded. At no point did any witness, DOES attorney, or any prior
determination (of a claims examiner, for example), suggest that Woldemdhin’s claim
should fail because of a lack of evidence that the taxi industry had been ravaged by
the onset of the pandemic. Woldemdhin’s burden did not extend to proving obvious
and irrefutable points, like that the pandemic significantly restricted peoples’
movements and use of taxis. While factfinders should of course follow the evidence
even when it is contrary to their own prior beliefs, they should not cast undue
skepticism on undisputed points, acting as a tabula rasa in need of firm evidence to
prove what the human experience and unrefuted evidence makes evident enough.
To elaborate more on the conditions in the District in the days before
Woldemdhin deactivated his taxi: On March 16, 2020, this court cancelled all oral
arguments for the remainder of the month. D.C. Ct. of App. Order (March 16, 2020).
One week later (the day Woldemdhin returned his taxi and meter) this court
cancelled arguments through the end of May. D.C. Ct. of App. Order (March 23,
2020). Similarly, on March 18, 2020, the District’s Superior Court suspended all
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jury trials and suspended virtually all other non-emergency proceedings. D.C.
Super. Ct. Order (March 18, 2020). For the ALJ to have closed her eyes to the
pandemic’s realities, all because Woldemdhin did not provide conclusive proof to
support what was in any event unrefuted, was capricious. See, e.g., Chesapeake and
Potomac Tel. Co. v. Pub. Serv. Comm’n of D.C., 514 A.2d 1159, 1171-72 (D.C.
1986) (holding that it was arbitrary and capricious to make rate decisions based on
data known to be false).
Anyone who lived through March 2020 knows from direct experience that
tourism dried up in the District—and throughout most of the world—and that people
started working from home. Both of those things would obviously substantially
diminish the demand for taxi services. It was arbitrary and capricious for the ALJ
to demand any more evidence from Woldemdhin beyond his undisputed testimony. 3
3
Woldemdhin argues that because the CARES Act permitted him to
self-certify his eligibility for PUA benefits, DOES was in fact forbidden from later
demanding that he substantiate that eligibility with evidence. We disagree. The
Secretary of Labor explicitly instructed that “when investigating the potential for
fraud and improper payments, the state has . . . [the] authority to request supporting
documentation about [the] COVID-19 related reason” justifying the PUA benefit, as
DOES did here. Updated UIPL, attach. I, p.9. So while DOES was permitted to
request that Woldemdhin substantiate his claim—though he had no reason to think
DOES was seeking substantiation for the particular fact that the taxi industry had
tanked by the time he stopped driving—he more than adequately did that.
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B. Woldemdhin Substantiated his Claim with Evidence
While it was perhaps overkill, Woldemdhin did in fact substantiate his claim
with powerful evidence that he lost the vast majority of his income as a result of the
pandemic, and the ALJ simply overlooked it. While the ALJ asserted that
Woldemdhin “presented no financial records . . . comparing his pre-March 2020
income with his income between March 10, 2020 and March 25, 2020,” see supra
n.1, Woldemdhin in fact presented evidence that was stronger than that, but it went
overlooked by the ALJ. Woldemdhin’s 1099-K for 2020 showed that he made
$1,887.69 in January, $2,210.84 in February, and only $917.14 in March. That is,
in March 2020, Woldemdhin made about 49% of what he made in January, and about
41% of what he made in February of that same year. Compare that to the previous
year, where Woldemdhin’s 1099-K from 2019 showed that he made $2,684.31 in
January, $2,427.86 in February, with a significant spike to $3,498.11 in March (as
one would naturally expect as the tourism season kicks into gear). So Woldemdhin’s
March 2020 income was just 26% of what it was in March 2019, and sharply dropped
off relative to prior months where the previous year it had increased. To demand
more specific evidence than that on what was essentially an uncontested point is
capricious.
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The District’s response is unpersuasive. It argues that the 1099-Ks “do not
break Woldemdhin’s income down by day or week, so they merely confirm that
Woldemdhin quit his job sometime during March 2020.” That vastly understates
the strength of the above 1099-K evidence. It does not just show that he stopped
driving his taxi at some point during March, but that he made only about a quarter
of the income he had made in March of the previous year, suggesting that fares had
dried up long before he returned his taxi on March 23. In any event, the ALJ did not
even attempt to reconcile the above 1099-K evidence with her ruling. The ALJ
instead faulted Woldemdhin for presenting “no financial records . . . comparing his
pre-March 2020 income with his income between March 10, 2020 and March 2[3],
2020.” But his 1099-K from 2020 was pretty close to that mark: it showed precisely
how his income had dropped precipitously in March 2020, as compared to January
and February of that year (his “pre-March 2020 income”). And it also showed how
it had dropped to about a quarter of his March 2019 income. It is true enough that
he did not further break down his March 2020 income to focus exclusively on March
10 to March 23, but it is hard to see how Woldemdhin’s failure to present such hyper-
tailored evidence should be held against him when (1) nobody asked for that
particular breakdown of his income, (2) in any event, such evidence would have
been far less probative than the evidence he actually did present (if fares had already
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bottomed out during those first nine days of March, that would not be any point
against granting Woldemdhin PUA benefits).
C. The District’s Alternative Basis for Affirmance Is Unconvincing
Finally, the District argues that even if Woldemdhin did substantiate his claim
of lost income due to the pandemic, that is entirely consistent with his quitting out
of fear of contracting COVID-19. And a person who stopped working exclusively
because of “general concerns about contracting COVID-19” is not eligible for PUA
benefits. Updated UIPL, attach. I., p.10-11, § F(42-43). In this argument, the
District invites us to revive the claims examiner’s conclusion that the real reason
Woldemdhin stopped driving was out of fear of catching COVID-19, not because he
could not make any money at the time, and asking us to affirm on that basis. We
reject that invitation: Woldemdhin would only be ineligible for PUA benefits if he
stopped working solely out of concerns about contracting COVID-19, and we
conclude that the evidence simply cannot support such a finding. As the updated
UIPL explicitly states, “an individual who does not go to work due to general
concerns about exposure to COVID-19” is not eligible for PUA only if they do “not
meet any of the other COVID-related criteria for PUA,” such as the pandemic
diminishing their income. Updated UIPL, attach. I, p. 10-11, § F(42-43) (emphasis
added).
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Recall the evidence on this point: Woldemdhin testified at an evidentiary
hearing before the ALJ that he “was sure that [he] wouldn’t make any income even
if [he] worked” and that is why he returned his taxi in March 23, 2020. The ALJ did
not question the sincerity of that belief, but concluded (capriciously, in our view)
that Woldemdhin’s testimony was so conclusory that it could not be credited. The
District now asks us to reject his testimony because of a letter he signed—written on
his behalf by a DOES staffer because his English was limited—which summarizes
Woldemdhin as saying that he voluntarily quit his job as a taxi driver “due to fear of
catching COVID-19.” When he was pressed about that statement during the hearing
before the ALJ, he explained that the staffer asked if he was “afraid that [he] might
catch the COVID,” and he “told her, Yes, I was afraid that . . . I might catch the
COVID.”
We do not think that is substantial evidence from which one might conclude
that Woldemdhin quit driving solely out of concerns about contracting COVID-19,
especially in light of his contrary and cogent testimony on this point. Not being able
to make any money, and fear of catching COVID-19, are simply not mutually
exclusive bases to stop driving a taxi. They are complementary ones. To illustrate
the point, if you were making $900 a month (Woldemdhin’s March 2020 income)
driving a taxi at the height of the pandemic, you might decide that the risk of catching
COVID-19 is reason enough to give up that income stream. But it does not at all
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follow that the same fear would motivate you to walk away from a $3,500 a month
income stream (what Woldemdhin made in March 2019). Woldemdhin’s testimony
that he quit driving because he was not making income is thus not in the slightest
tension with the written statement listing fear of catching COVID as a reason he
deactivated his taxi (why risk an infection for nothing?).
That is particularly true here, where the undisputed evidence was that
Woldemdhin could not even read the written statement that was drafted on his behalf
and that he ultimately signed. We have explained, in a situation that mirrors the one
before us today: “Despite the fact that [claimant] placed his signature on the
statement, it is clear that he did not read or write English, and did not know precisely
what it said. Under these circumstances, [his] sworn testimony before DOES
effectively contradicted any inference from the written statement,” so that the
“written statement was of little, if any, probative value.” See Jadallah v. D.C. Dep’t
of Emp’t Servs., 476 A.2d 671, 676-677 (D.C. 1984) (per curiam). We reach the
same conclusion in this case.
III. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the ALJ’s ruling, conclude that
Woldemdhin is eligible for PUA benefits, and remand for calculation of those
benefits.
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So ordered.