Victoria L. Williams v. Commissioner, Social Security Administration

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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 15-15243
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 1:14-cv-00218-MP-CAS
VICTORIA L. WILLIAMS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
COMMISSIONER, SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION,
Defendant-Appellee.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Florida
________________________
(September 23, 2016)
Before TJOFLAT, JULIE CARNES, and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
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Claimant Victoria Williams appeals the district court’s grant of summary
judgment in favor of the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (“the
Commissioner”). Williams argues that the district court erred by finding that her
appeal from the Administrative Law Judge’s (“ALJ”) denial of her application for
disability insurance benefits was untimely. After careful review, we affirm.
DISCUSSION
In September 2011, Williams filed an application for disability insurance
benefits based on hypertension, diabetes, mellitus, and peripheral vascular disease.
The ALJ denied Williams’s application, concluding that she was not disabled
because she was capable of performing her past relevant work. The Appeals
Council thereafter denied Williams’s request for review in a notice dated
September 15, 2014.
Williams did not file a complaint in the district court requesting review of
the Appeals Council’s decision until November 21, 2014. The Commissioner
moved to dismiss Williams’s complaint as untimely because it was filed more than
sixty days after she received the notice from the Appeals Council.
Construing the Commissioner’s motion to dismiss as one for summary
judgment, a magistrate judge issued a Report and Recommendation (“R&R”),
recommending that summary judgment be granted in favor of the Commissioner
because the complaint was untimely filed. Because the regulations presume that
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the claimant receives the notice within five days of the date of the notice, it was
presumed that Williams received the Appeals Council’s notice by or on September
20, 2014. Given that Williams did not provide any evidence to rebut this
presumption, her complaint filed more than 60 days later—on November 21,
2014—was untimely. After considering Williams’s objections to the R&R, the
district court adopted the R&R and dismissed Williams’s complaint. This appeal
followed.
We review a district court’s grant or denial of summary judgment de novo.
Holloman v. Mail-Well Corp., 443 F.3d 832, 836 (11th Cir. 2006); Jackson v.
Astrue, 506 F.3d 1349, 1352 (11th Cir. 2007) (reviewing de novo the district
court’s dismissal of a claimant’s complaint as untimely).
Under the Social Security Act, a claimant is entitled to disability insurance
benefits if she is “disabled” due to a physical or mental impairment. See 42 U.S.C.
§ 423(d)(1). A claimant such as Williams may dispute the Commissioner’s
adverse determination of her entitlement to benefits first through review by an
administrative law judge. 20 C.F.R. § 404.900(a)(3). If the decision remains
adverse to the claimant, she may seek further review from the Appeals Council. 20
C.F.R. § 404.900(a)(4). After the claimant has exhausted the administrative
process, she may seek judicial review by filing a complaint in the appropriate
federal district court. See id. § 404.900(a)(5); 42 U.S.C. § 405(g).
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A claimant may only proceed in the district court if her civil action is
“commenced within sixty days after the mailing to [her] of notice” of “any final
decision of the Commissioner of Social Security made after a hearing to which
[she] was a party” or “within such further time as the Commissioner of Social
Security may allow.” 42 U.S.C. § 405(g); see also Bowen v. City of New York, 476
U.S. 467, 478–79 (1986) (concluding that the 60-day time period is not
jurisdictional but is instead a statute of limitations that operates as a waiver of
sovereign immunity).
The regulations promulgated by the Commissioner further provide that a
civil action must be “instituted within 60 days after the Appeals Council’s notice of
denial. . . or notice of the decision by the Appeals counsel is received . . . except
that this time may be extended by the Appeals Council upon a showing of good
cause.” 20 C.F.R. § 422.210(c). “[T]he date of receipt of . . . notice of the
decision by the Appeals Council shall be presumed to be 5 days after the date of
such notice, unless there is a reasonable showing to the contrary.” 20 C.F.R.
§ 422.210(c); accord 20 C.F.R. § 404.901 (“Date you receive notice means 5 days
after the date on the notice, unless you show us that you did not receive it within
the 5-day period).
Here, the district court did not err by granting summary judgment in favor of
the Commissioner. The Appeals Council’s notice of decision denying Williams’s
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request for review was dated September 15, 2014. Unless there is a reasonable
showing to the contrary, Williams is presumed to have received that notice five
days later on September 20, 2014. See 20 C.F.R. §§ 404.901, 422.210(c); see also
Hatchell v. Heckler, 708 F.2d 578, 579 (11th Cir. 1983) (explaining that “[t]he date
of receipt is presumed to be five days after mailing unless there is a reasonable
showing to the contrary”). Williams therefore had 60 days from September 20,
2014, to file her complaint in federal district court. Stated another way, she had
until November 19, 2014, to file her complaint. Williams did not file her
complaint in the district court until November 21, 2014, however. As such, her
complaint was untimely filed.
Williams contends that in determining whether she timely filed her
complaint, we should not look at the date of the Appeals Council’s notice of
denial. Instead, she asserts that we should look at the date the envelope was
postmarked, September 17, 2014, and presume that she received the Appeals
Council’s notice five days later on September 22, 2014. Using September 22 as a
starting point, Williams contends that her complaint filed on November 21, 2014,
was timely.
We are not persuaded by Williams’s argument. The regulations clearly state
that the date of receipt should be presumed to be five days after the date of the
actual notice. See 20 C.F.R. §§ 404.210(c), 404.901. The regulations do not
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saying anything about interpreting the date of receipt as five days after the
postmark date. See Cook v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 480 F.3d 432, 436–37 (6th Cir.
2007) (rejecting the claimant’s attempt to calculate the five-day period from the
postmark date, rather than from the date of the notice of denial). Moreover, the
envelope Williams submitted that shows a postmark date of September 17, 2014, is
not sufficient to rebut the presumption that she received the Appeals Council’s
notice of denial by September 20, 2014. And notably, Williams has not argued or
produced any evidence showing that she did not receive the Appeals Council’s
notice by that date.1 Nor did she request an extension of time from the Appeals
Council to initiate a civil action. Accordingly, the district court did not err by
dismissing her complaint as untimely.
For the foregoing reasons, the district court’s grant of summary judgment in
favor of the Commissioner is AFFIRMED. 2
1
We further conclude that Williams’s passing reference to the phrase “equal protection” without
any elaboration or citation to legal authority was not sufficient to preserve this argument on
appeal. Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 682 (11th Cir. 2014) (concluding
that a passing reference in an appellate brief is not sufficient to preserve an argument on appeal);
see also Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8)(A) (stating that an Appellant’s brief must contain the
Appellant’s “contentions and the reasons for them, with citations to the authorities and parts of
the record on which the [A]ppellant relies”).
2
We recognize that the 60-day statute of limitations period is subject to equitable tolling. See
Jackson, 506 F.3d at 1353. However, Williams does not argue that she is entitled to equitable
tolling of the limitations period.
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