Supreme Court clears way for lawsuit over COVID-19 pandemic-era unemployment claims in Alabama

WASHINGTON (AP) — People left waiting for months on their unemployment claims during the coronavirus pandemic in Alabama must be able to sue the state over the delay, the U.S. Supreme Court said Friday.

The 5-4 ruling comes after the Alabama Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from 21 people. Some waited for months for a decision on whether they qualified for benefits, while others never got a decision or saw benefits suddenly stop without explanation, according to court documents. One man’s claim was dismissed after he missed an administrative deadline because he was on a ventilator, they said.

The lawsuit seeking to speed up the process was dismissed by the state’s highest court, which found the plaintiffs must go through unemployment agency appeals before they can sue.

But the U.S. Supreme Court found that created a paradox.

“Because the claimants cannot sue until they complete the administrative process, they can never sue to obtain an order expediting the administrative process,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts as well as the nine-member court’s three liberal justices.

The plaintiffs got support from groups across the ideological spectrum, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Requiring people to finish an appeals process before suing would undermine other lawsuits ranging from civil rights claims to businesses’ challenges to state regulations, they wrote.

Alabama, which had one of the nation’s highest per-capita death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, said that a skyrocketing number of unemployment claims overwhelmed the understaffed agency during the pandemic but that many of the plaintiffs’ claims have since been resolved.