The complaint had no statistical evidence of disparate impact - and the court noticed
The Social Security Administration can press ahead with plans to cut 7,000 jobs after a court threw out a disability discrimination challenge to the layoffs.
Five advocacy organisations and seven individuals receiving Social Security Disability Insurance benefits had argued the cuts - roughly 12 percent of SSA’s 57,000-strong workforce - created “systemic access barriers” that hit people with disabilities harder than everyone else. They pointed to prolonged phone delays, reduced field office hours, missing sign language interpreters, and an online portal that kept locking them out.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed all three claims on October 9, 2026.
The layoffs trace back to a January 2025 executive order directing federal agencies to prepare for large-scale reductions in force. SSA announced its plan about two weeks later: a mix of separation incentives and RIF programs to shed the positions.
The plaintiffs brought a Section 504 Rehabilitation Act claim alleging disparate impact, plus two Administrative Procedure Act (APA) counts - one arguing SSA never properly explained the cuts, the other arguing the agency ignored the reliance interests of beneficiaries who depended on a fully staffed operation.
The court found it had jurisdiction and that at least one plaintiff had standing. That individual described customer-service delays that had “lengthened since early 2025, reflecting the agency’s sharply diminished capacity.”
But standing was as far as the case got.
On the Rehabilitation Act claim, the court held the plaintiffs had not plausibly shown disparate impact. The reductions in force (RIF) was “neutral on its face” and did not target staff who specifically served people with disabilities. No plaintiff alleged a single lost dollar of benefits. And the complaint offered no statistical evidence - not even “basic allegations of statistical comparisons” - showing the cuts fell harder on people with disabilities than on the general public. Personal stories of long waits and inaccessible services, the court held, “say nothing about whether the [RIF] had a disparate impact on persons with disabilities’ access to [SSA services] as opposed to persons without disabilities’ access to [those services].”
The APA claims collapsed too. SSA had published a press release describing its structure as “bloated” and explaining the RIF would “implement efficiencies and reduce costs.” That satisfied the requirement for a reasoned explanation. And the agency’s prior budget requests for 61,000-plus staff were “merely an aspirational figure” - not the kind of settled policy that triggers the change-in-position doctrine.
For HR professionals planning workforce restructurings, the practical takeaway sits in what was missing from the complaint: statistical evidence of disparate impact. A facially neutral RIF with a basic public rationale survived early challenge here, but stronger data from future plaintiffs could change the calculus.
The claims were resolved on a motion to dismiss. No trial was held and no factual findings were made beyond the court’s assessment of the pleadings.
