Thibodeau v. Kijakazi
- Alex Tse
- 3:21-cv-02638
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Thibodeau v. Kijakazi, Judge Tse granted summary judgment because Thibodeau filed her Social Security disability appeal nearly two years late.
Shannon J. Thibodeau’s attempt to obtain judicial review of the denial of her Social Security disability-benefits claim was ended because the complaint was filed after the court’s deadline.
What happened
Shannon J. Thibodeau asked the court to review the Social Security Administration’s denial of her disability-benefits claim. The agency’s appeals council denied review on March 8, 2019, giving her 60 days to file a court complaint, but she filed on April 9, 2021.
Thibodeau gave four reasons for missing the deadline: problems with a former lawyer, caring for her father after his stroke while raising her children, post-traumatic stress symptoms and being drugged without consent, and homelessness. She did not provide records or other supporting evidence, and she did not explain when some events occurred or why she could not file after ending her lawyer’s services.
Judge Alex G. Tse ruled that Thibodeau had not shown the extraordinary circumstances needed to excuse the late filing. The court granted Kilolo Kijakazi’s motion for summary judgment, so Thibodeau’s untimely case could not proceed.
The detailed version
- Thibodeau v. Kijakazi · No. 3:21-cv-02638
- Alex Tse
- Jan. 13, 2022
Background
The Social Security Administration’s appeals council denied Shannon J. Thibodeau’s request for review of a decision denying her disability-benefits claim on March 8, 2019. Under the governing statute and regulations, the court said a 60-day period for seeking judicial review began five days later. The appeals council could extend that period for good cause, but Thibodeau did not request an extension.
The court concluded that Thibodeau’s deadline was May 13, 2019. She filed her complaint on April 9, 2021, nearly two years after that deadline.
Arguments and evidence
Thibodeau offered four explanations for the late filing:
- She said she had a “crooked lawyer” who retaliated against her. She ended that lawyer’s services in April 2019, before the filing deadline.
- She said that her father had suffered a stroke in 2018 and that she had devoted her attention and energy to helping him while raising her two children without financial support.
- She said she had post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and was being drugged without consent.
- She said homelessness caused the late filing.
The court stated that Thibodeau offered no records or other evidence supporting these explanations. It treated her statements as conclusory—that is, unsupported assertions without enough factual detail. The court also said that, even if her testimony were accepted as true, it did not identify when she was homeless, when she experienced post-traumatic stress symptoms, or when she was drugged without consent. She also did not explain why she could not file after ending her lawyer’s services in April 2019, when time remained before the deadline.
Legal standard
The court said the 60-day filing deadline is strictly enforced unless a plaintiff shows extraordinary circumstances that caused the delay and made timely filing impossible. The court applied the summary-judgment standard, under which a party must provide enough evidence to create a genuine dispute requiring a trial.
The court noted that a form complaint commonly used in Social Security cases requires limited information, including the plaintiff’s name and address, the last four digits of the Social Security number, and the name of the Social Security case. The court concluded that Thibodeau had not provided enough evidence to show that her circumstances prevented her from completing and filing the form on time.
Ruling
Judge Alex G. Tse granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment. The court stated that Thibodeau’s untimely case could not proceed. The opinion also notes that the court had converted the defendant’s motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment on December 9, 2021, and allowed the parties 21 days to supplement the record; the court considered Thibodeau’s supplemental statement.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.