Federal Court Grants Rehearing in Survivor’s Social Security Case

Setting aside a ruling made last year which denied Supplementary Security Income (SSI) to a disabled Holocaust victim because she receives reparations from the West German government, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal has granted a petition by Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a local Jewish legal aid society, for a rehearing of the case, Terry Friedman, the agency’s legal director, reported today.

According to an order filed here June 12 and signed by Chief Judge James Browning, a majority of the 23 judges on the Ninth Circuit voted to reconsider the appeal of Felicia Grunfeder, a 45-year-old who is psychologically disabled from wartime childhood injuries suffered in the Warsaw Ghetto and in a Nazi concentration camp. No date has been set for the rehearing.

The rehearing decision came almost exactly one year after a panel made up of three judges of the Ninth Circuit ruled unanimously in support of a lower federal court ruling denying Grunfeder’s claim for SSI against the Social Security Administration, which treats German reparations payments as “countable income” in determining eligibility for SSI, a federal aid program for the needy disabled, blind and elderly persons.

Jana Zimmer, a Bet Tzedek attorney, said there are about 50,000 recipients of German reparations living in the United States. Bet Tzedek attorneys estimate that several thousand needy Holocaust survivors could be affected by the outcome of the Grunfder case.

Grunfeder had been getting SSI payments until it was determined she was also getting small monthly benefits under the German Restitution Act as compensation for the injuries she suffered during the war.

In the ruling nullifying Grunfeder’s right to SSI payments, the three-judge panel held that reparations were no different under the Social Security Act than annuity payments, gifts, prizes, workers compensation or other income that could be used to meet a person’s basic needs. The new petition challenges the Social Securtiy Administration’s policy of treating German reparations payments as “countable income.”