Consuelo Griselda Nerio Mejia sued the Commissioner of Social Security after an administrative law judge denied her disability benefits. Mejia raised three objections to the ALJ's decision: two regarding the vocational expert's testimony and one regarding the ALJ's rejection of her symptomology testimony. The district court found that the ALJ's rejection of her symptomology testimony lacked substantial justification and reversed the denial of benefits, remanding the case to the agency. Because this single issue was sufficient to require a remand, the district court explicitly declined to address the other two objections regarding the vocational expert. Mejia then sought attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act. While the district court agreed that the government's position was not substantially justified and that the hourly rate and total hours were reasonable, it reduced the fee award by excluding the 24.05 hours spent researching and drafting the two alternative arguments it had not reached. The district court relied on its prior decision in Hardisty v. Astrue to conclude that fees for unaddressed issues were not compensable as a matter of law.
Judge Collins, writing for the panel, held that the district court committed legal error by applying Hardisty v. Astrue to bar fees for alternative arguments. The court explained that Hardisty addressed whether a claimant was eligible for fees at all when the government's position on the dispositive issue was substantially justified. In Hardisty, the claimant was ineligible for any fees, so the court had no occasion to decide how to calculate a reasonable fee for work on alternative arguments. Here, Mejia was clearly eligible for fees because the government's position on the dispositive issue was not substantially justified. The court turned to the Supreme Court's decision in Hensley v. Eckerhart and the Ninth Circuit's en banc decision in Ibrahim v. DHS to determine the proper standard for calculating the fee amount. Under Hensley, when a plaintiff raises alternative legal grounds for a desired outcome in good faith, the court's failure to reach certain grounds is not a sufficient reason for reducing a fee. Ibrahim clarified this into a two-step test: first, determine if the claims are unrelated; second, assess the level of success. The court found that Mejia raised a single claim for relief supported by alternative theories, meaning the claims were not unrelated. Furthermore, Mejia achieved 'excellent results' by securing a reversal and remand, which was her primary litigation goal. Consequently, the fee award should encompass all hours reasonably expended on the litigation, including work on the alternative arguments that were not reached.
The decision clarifies that in Social Security cases where a plaintiff prevails on at least one significant issue, they are entitled to fees for all reasonable work on related alternative arguments, provided they achieve excellent results. The case is remanded to the district court to enter an amended order awarding the full $13,426.42 requested. This ruling limits the ability of district courts to reduce fee awards based solely on the fact that some arguments were not reached, reinforcing the Hensley-Ibrahim standard for fee reasonableness.
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