Ann Biddle , Emilia Sicilia – Is Your ALJ Biased?

Course Description

Archive : Ann Biddle , Emilia Sicilia – Is Your ALJ Biased? Digital Download
Salepage : Ann Biddle , Emilia Sicilia – Is Your ALJ Biased?
Delivery : Online With Any Device

Advocates may experience ALJ hearings or decisions that call into question whether the client received a full and fair hearing. Some of these instances raise issues of bias on the ALJ’s part. This session will discuss the elements of bias, how to recognize it, and how to respond to it at the ALJ level, the Appeals Council level and in federal court.

Ann Biddle is the Litigation Supervisor for the Mental Health Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City.   She is also a statewide coordinator for the Disability Advocacy Project at Legal Services NYC.   Ann is a 1984 graduate of Emory University and she worked in the financial services sector before returning to school in 1990.   She is a 1992 graduate, with honors, of Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she spent two years on the Cardozo Law Review and was fortunate enough to meet her fabulous husband.   She has worked for various civil legal services organizations for the past 27 years, specializing in Social Security disability issues and issues affecting the elderly.   She is admitted to practice law in the State of New York, in Federal District Courts (Eastern and Southern Districts of New York), and in the Courts of Appeals for the Second and the Federal Circuits.

Emilia SiciliaRelated seminars and products: 1

Attorney

Emilia Sicilia is the Director of Disability Benefits Advocacy at the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project.   She represents individuals with mental illness in appealing the denial of disability benefits in their individual administrative and federal court claims, and in impact litigation against the Social Security Administration, including the lawsuit Amin v. Berryhill, challenging SSA’s failure to process non-disability appeals, the class action Martinez v. Astrue, which challenged SSA’s policy of suspending and denying benefits based on an outstanding warrant, and Padro v. Astrue, which charged the denial of due process and anti-claimant bias by five administrative law judges in SSA’s Queens hearing office.   Prior to joining the Urban Justice Center, Ms. Sicilia worked at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.   She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School and Wesleyan University.