Barbara Burgess/Unsplash
Signs from the Hands Off protest in Nashville, Tennessee, April 2025.
It made me very happy to hear that some organizations representing people with disabilities, and some disabled folks themselves, are engaging in the highly honorable activity of suing the hell out of the administration of the squatter currently occupying the White House.
The federal lawsuit that they filed on April 2, which names Elon Musk as a defendant, challenges all the slashing and burning that’s been going on lately at the Social Security Administration (SSA).
“The defendants’ actions,” the lawsuit says, “are an unprecedented and unconstitutional assault on Social Security benefits, concealed beneath the hollow pretense of bureaucratic ‘reform.’ ” It refers to the squatter’s notion of reform as “administrative vandalism.”
The lawsuit was filed by the American Association of People with Disabilities, along with four other organizations and seven individuals who rely on Social Security benefits. Among other things, the plaintiffs take issue with the recently announced staff and service reductions at SSA, particularly the plan to cut the number of SSA staff from 57,000 to 50,000, which, according to the complaint, would be the lowest staff level at the agency since 1972.
The complaint also objects to the plan to reduce the number of SSA regional offices from ten to four. “In an agency already beset by mounting backlogs and debilitating delays,” it says, “the closure of offices, and reduction of staff only exacerbate an already untenable situation.”
It notes that the average wait time for an initial SSA disability eligibility determination is currently eight months. Reducing the SSA workforce by 7,000 people, the complaint says, “will increase claim processing times by at least thirty-one additional days, and [cause] an additional 272,000 backlogged cases.”
All this hatchet work is being done at the direction of Musk, the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been leading the austerity rampage through federal agencies. “Meanwhile,” the complaint says, “false claims by Defendant Musk and DOGE regarding widespread fraud within Social Security serve a clear strategic purpose to justify drastic agency cuts that would deprive eligible beneficiaries of their rightful payments.”
Verified cases of fraud account for only 0.3 percent of SSA claims, a rate the complaint calls “minuscule.” It continues: “These numbers expose Defendant Musk’s rhetoric for what it is—an attempt to manufacture a crisis to erode public confidence in Social Security and justify his dismantlement of SSA.”
These actions, the lawsuit charges, violate Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as well as the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act. It asks the court to block the SSA austerity plan from moving forward.
It does my heart proud to see people with disabilities playing such a significant part in the resistance against the squatter’s dictatorial aspirations.