Alexander v. Commissioner of Social Security

Background

Kenneth Spencer Alexander filed a complaint and two amended complaints against the Commissioner of Social Security. He alleged that the Social Security Administration improperly withheld retirement benefits to recover an alleged overpayment. According to his pleadings, he received supplemental security income beginning in 2013, moved to Jerusalem, Israel, and continued receiving those payments even though the applicable rules made him ineligible after he was outside the United States for 30 days. After the payments stopped, he obtained regular retirement benefits. Beginning in 2016, the Social Security Administration made repeated attempts to withhold those benefits because of the alleged overpayment.

Alexander said that he had made numerous requests for waiver of recovery, reconsideration, and changes to the withholding rate. He also alleged that, in August 2023, Social Security representatives gave him conflicting information about whether the deductions would stop. He asked the court to order the Social Security Administration to stop collecting the alleged overpayment and return the benefits and money withheld.

Alexander litigated without a lawyer. He stated that he resides in Jerusalem and described himself as an expatriate without permanent state citizenship. He did not attach a final agency decision. He acknowledged that he had not taken the matter before an administrative law judge and said that the decision he sought to challenge had been communicated verbally by a Social Security representative.

Venue and transfer

The court held that venue was improper in the Southern District of New York. The Social Security Act provides that a case seeking judicial review of a final decision generally must be filed in the judicial district where the plaintiff resides or has a principal place of business. If the plaintiff does not reside or have a principal place of business in any such district, the case must be brought in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Because Alexander’s pleadings stated that he lived in Israel and did not have a principal place of business in a federal judicial district, the court concluded that the case could proceed, if at all, in the District of Columbia. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a), a court may transfer a case filed in the wrong venue to a district where it could have been brought. The court chose transfer rather than dismissal to promote an orderly decision on the merits. It transferred the action to the District of Columbia without waiting for a formal motion from the Commissioner.

The transfer order did not decide whether the Social Security Administration properly withheld Alexander’s benefits. It also did not decide whether he had identified a reviewable final agency decision or exhausted the required administrative process.

Other motions and deadlines

The court denied as moot the Commissioner’s request for a briefing schedule concerning a proposed transfer motion. It also denied as moot Alexander’s motion for permission to participate in the court’s electronic case-filing system. The Clerk was directed to close those motions. The court stated that, unless the transferee court ordered otherwise, the Commissioner would have to answer or file a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12 by October 10, 2023, or within 14 days after the case was docketed in the District of Columbia, whichever was later. The court also set the same deadline for the Commissioner’s response to Alexander’s then-pending emergency motion.