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If you have looked up the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) assigned to your Social Security disability hearing, you may have found an approval rating by their name. That number needs context before you make conclusions about a Social Security disability judge.
ALJ judge approval ratings show how often a judge approved claims in a specific time period, but they don’t tell you how likely your claim is to be approved.
Also, a 60% approval rating means the judge approved 60% of the claims in that calculation, not that your claim has a 60% chance of being approved.
Before you draw conclusions from ALJ approval ratings, you need to know more about the details behind them. Without that context, the rating can be misleading.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) publishes information about how hearings ended for each Social Security disability judge. The ALJ Disposition Data includes how many of the judge’s hearings ended with a decision, how many were dismissed, and how many decisions were favorable or unfavorable.
Here’s what those terms mean:
Because some cases are dismissed, meaning they end without a decision, a judge can have more dispositions (case endings) than decisions.
Example: A judge has 110 total dispositions. Of those, 100 are decisions and 10 are dismissals. Among the 100 decisions, 60 are awards and 40 are denials. The 60 awards include 50 fully favorable decisions and 10 partially favorable decisions.
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Get EvaluationIn the example, the judge issued 100 decisions, 60 awards and 40 denials.
Of the judge’s 60 awards, 50 were fully favorable and 10 were partially favorable. The SSA counts both as awards, even though the outcomes are not the same.
A fully favorable decision means the judge approved everything being decided. A partially favorable decision means the judge approved some parts, but not all. For example, the judge may find a claimant disabled but not approve the alleged disability onset date.
That’s why the total number of awards is often higher than the number of fully favorable decisions.
An ALJ approval rating is a favorable decision rate based on how many decisions were favorable compared with the total number of decisions counted.
In our example, the judge has 60 awards out of 100 decisions: 60 awards ÷ 100 decisions = 60% approval rating
The SSA doesn’t publish an official ALJ approval rate for each judge. The agency publishes the data, and other sources calculate approval ratings. Because they may use different time frames, case totals or other data, they might show different approval ratings for the same judge.
You can only compare two approval ratings if they cover the same time period and are based on similar case totals. Make sure the approval ratings you’re looking at are from the same year or the same span of months.
Keep in mind that case totals also matter. The fewer decisions behind an approval rating, the more each decision affects the rating.
If two judges both have a 60% approval rate, but one rate is based on 20 decisions and the other is based on 200, each decision has 10 times more impact on the first judge’s rating.
So, when you compare approval ratings, look at how many decisions were considered too.
Judge-specific approval rates can differ for many reasons.
Each judge has a unique mix of cases with different medical evidence, work history, and other facts that affect outcomes. The cases judges hear may vary greatly from time to time. Judge-specific approval rates can also vary depending on the cases heard in different time periods.
The SSA notes that the ALJ decision data doesn’t reflect factors that can affect a judge’s workload, such as administrative duties, special assignments, part-time status, or extended leave. A judge may work in more than one hearing office as well, so an approval rating from one office won’t reflect all of the cases that judge hears.
A higher ALJ approval rate shows that one judge had more favorable outcomes in the cases measured. It doesn’t explain why. Resist assuming that your judge is a “hard judge” or an “easy judge” based on approval ratings you see.
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Get EvaluationALJ statistics can help you understand a judge’s past results. They can't help you predict what will happen with your claim.
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