Social Security disability judges approved 59.1 percent of the cases they decided in fiscal year 2025, according to hearing office data compiled from the Social Security Administration.1Impact Disability Law. SSA OHO Hearing Office Approval Rates That national average hides a lot. Some offices approve more than 80 percent of hearings. Others sit well below the mean. Individual judges within the same building can differ by tens of percentage points. If you have a hearing coming up, the odds you actually face depend less on the national number than on where you live, which judge draws your case, and what your file looks like when it reaches the bench.
What the Approval Rate Actually Measures
The rate refers to decisions issued by Administrative Law Judges — ALJs — inside the SSA’s Office of Hearing Operations. This is the third stage of the disability process, reached after an initial claim denial and a reconsideration denial. The average wait to get in front of a judge ran about 7.8 months in fiscal year 2025.1Impact Disability Law. SSA OHO Hearing Office Approval Rates
Every judge is required to apply the same five-step sequential evaluation set out in federal regulation.2Social Security Administration. 20 C.F.R. § 404.1520 – Evaluation of Disability The judge looks at whether you are currently working above the substantial gainful activity threshold, whether your impairment is severe and expected to last at least 12 months, whether it meets or medically equals one of the agency’s published Listings, whether you can still do any of your past relevant work from roughly the last five years, and whether you could adjust to other work in the national economy given your age, education, and residual functional capacity. Age matters more at the final step: claimants 55 and older are treated as significantly limited in their ability to transition to new work.3Social Security Administration. Disability Evaluation – Steps 4 and 5
Same framework, same regulations, same required order. And yet the outcomes vary widely.
How Approval Rates Vary by Hearing Office
In fiscal year 2025, the highest-approving offices were far above the national average. Ponce, Puerto Rico approved 84.8 percent of cases. Queens, New York approved 80.2 percent. Santa Barbara, California; Long Island and Rochester, New York; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma all cleared 72 percent.1Impact Disability Law. SSA OHO Hearing Office Approval Rates Other offices sit well below the 59.1 percent mean. Your hearing is assigned to the office that serves your address, so geography is not something most claimants can shop for.
How Approval Rates Vary by Individual Judge
The SSA publishes disposition data for every sitting ALJ. The public dataset includes total decisions issued, total awards, total denials, and the split between fully favorable and partially favorable outcomes.4Social Security Administration. ALJ Disposition Data If you know which judge is assigned to your case, you can look up their track record.
Treat those numbers as context, not prediction. A September 2025 report from the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General looked at judges with the highest and lowest allowance rates using fiscal year 2023 data and concluded that the gap reflects a mix of operational and contextual factors rather than a direct measure of decision quality.5SSA Office of the Inspector General. Administrative Law Judges With the Highest and Lowest Allowance Rates The Inspector General pointed to how the judge interprets the evidence, how much medical documentation is in the file, the claimant’s access to healthcare, and regional demographics as drivers.
What Actually Drives the Variation
Some of what looks like judicial idiosyncrasy is really the file. Judges who see thorough medical records — treating source opinions, imaging, longitudinal notes — have more to work with at Step 3 and Step 4. Claimants in regions with better healthcare access tend to arrive with better-documented conditions. Regional demographics affect the mix of claims coming through a given office: an older working-age population, a population with more physically demanding job histories, or a population with less education can each shift the Step 5 analysis in the claimant’s favor.
Medical experts and vocational experts also shape outcomes. A medical expert may testify about how your impairment affects your ability to work, but cannot decide whether you are disabled or set your residual functional capacity. Those calls belong to the judge.6Social Security Administration. HALLEX I-2-6-70 – Medical Expert Testimony Where an impairment does not meet a listing outright, the judge must obtain medical expert testimony to evaluate whether it medically equals a listing, so the expert’s read on your records can carry real weight.
How the Hearing Format Affects Your Case
In November 2024, the SSA made remote hearings a permanent option. During fiscal year 2024, 68 percent of hearings were held by phone, with the rest split between online video and in-person appearances. Under the finalized rules, the SSA picks the initial format from four options: audio by phone, online video through Microsoft Teams, in-person at a hearing center, or agency video from an SSA field office.7AARP. Remote Disability Hearings
You have 30 days after receiving the hearing notice to object to a remote format and request an in-person hearing. The agency also cannot schedule an online video hearing without your consent.8Government Executive. Social Security Finalizes Rules Making Expanded Phone, Video Hearings Permanent Disability advocates have raised concern that some vulnerable applicants may struggle to navigate the objection process, and that phone hearings can disadvantage claimants whose credibility rests partly on visible physical symptoms.
What Happens If the Judge Denies You
A denial at the hearing level is not the end. You can ask the Appeals Council to review the ALJ’s decision. The Appeals Council checks whether the decision is supported by substantial evidence and free of legal error.
The percentage of ALJ decisions upheld on Appeals Council review — the “agree rate” — is one of the agency’s internal quality metrics. A 2017 Inspector General audit found the national decision agree rate was 88 percent, but 310 judges fell below the 85 percent goal, and 27 judges had agree rates below 65 percent.9SSA Office of the Inspector General. Oversight of Administrative Law Judge Decisional Quality The audit also flagged a limitation worth understanding: agree rates covered less than 23 percent of total dispositions, because favorable decisions and uncontested denials never reach the Appeals Council.
If the Appeals Council denies review or rules against you, the next step is a civil action in federal district court. You have 60 days from receipt of the Appeals Council’s notice to file, with receipt presumed five days after the notice date, which gives you an effective window of 65 days.10Social Security Administration. POMS HA 01410.002 – Civil Action Filed in Federal Court
Federal judges do not retry the case. They review under the “substantial evidence” standard, which asks whether the decision is supported by the kind of evidence a reasonable person would accept as adequate. District courts remand roughly 45 percent of the Social Security cases they hear, but remand rates swing hard by jurisdiction, from around 21 percent at the low end to 76 percent at the high end. Courts in the First, Second, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits remand more often; those in the Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits remand less often.11Administrative Conference of the United States. SSA Federal Courts Analysis A remand sends the case back to an ALJ for a new decision, often with instructions to fix specific errors, and remains one of the meaningful pressures keeping hearing-level decisions honest.