Case Law Update: Demelia v. Commissioner of Social Security — Court Rejects ALJ's Reuse of Old Job Numbers After Remand

A second remand, because the ALJ used the first hearing's job numbers

A Florida federal court has again reversed the Social Security Administration's denial of disability insurance benefits to Ann Marie Demelia, ruling that the administrative law judge who reheard her case rested the denial on vocational testimony from the 2023 hearing rather than on the testimony actually given at the 2024 hearing held after the first remand. The case is Demelia v. Commissioner of Social Security, Case No. 6:25-cv-920-JRK, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division. The Opinion and Order was signed September 15, 2026 and entered on the docket September 16, 2026, reversing and remanding the Commissioner's final decision under sentence four of 42 U.S.C. section 405(g).

How the case reached a second appeal

Demelia applied for disability insurance benefits with a protective filing date of February 11, 2021, later amending her alleged onset date to August 27, 2020. Her claim rested on headaches and mental health impairments including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. Because she was last insured on December 31, 2020, she had to establish disability by that date.

An ALJ denied the claim after a March 2023 hearing, and the Appeals Council denied review on August 31, 2023. Demelia then filed suit, and in February 2024 the court reversed and remanded on the Commissioner's own unopposed motion. The Appeals Council returned the case to an ALJ with detailed directions: consider the representative's objection to the vocational expert's job-number source, obtain supplemental vocational evidence, and, "before relying on the [VE] evidence," identify and resolve any conflicts between that evidence and "information in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and its companion publication, the Selected Characteristics of Occupations," citing Social Security Ruling 00-4p. The Appeals Council noted the 2023 decision "did not properly address the representative's objection to the [VE]'s source for job numbers." A second hearing followed in December 2024, and a March 2025 decision again found Demelia not disabled.

What the court found

The dispute was confined to step five of the five-step sequential evaluation. As the order notes, citing Bowen v. Yuckert, "[t]he claimant bears the burden of persuasion through step four, and at step five, the burden shifts to the Commissioner." Quoting Phillips v. Barnhart, the court described that step as requiring the ALJ to "determine if there is other work available in significant numbers in the national economy that the claimant has the ability to perform." Because the ALJ found Demelia had "no past relevant work," step five carried the entire denial.

The two hearings produced different vocational testimony. The 2023 expert identified sweeper-cleaner (industrial) with 16,484 positions, waxer with 110,782, and "cleaner, wall" with 110,444. At the 2024 hearing, presented with the same hypothetical, a vocational expert initially named sweeper-cleaner and then, per the order, "evidently retracted that testimony because it was 'loud,'" conflicting with a residual functional capacity limiting Demelia to "up to a moderate noise level (e.g., a typical office setting)." That expert put waxer at 118,778 before reducing it to just more than 100,000 for noise, put "cleaner, wall" at 118,000, and added a fourth job, hand packager, at roughly 15,000 to 16,000 positions after a noise reduction.

The written decision did not track that testimony. "Inexplicably, the ALJ in the written Decision relied on the VE's testimony during the 2023 hearing, not the 2024 hearing," the court wrote, and all three jobs and their "exact corresponding numbers" came from the earlier hearing. That was so, the order continued, "despite the VE in the 2024 hearing eliminating one of these jobs entirely, reducing another one of them because of noise issues, and adding a fourth."

The Commissioner asked the court to treat the discrepancies as scrivener's errors and uphold the decision overall. The court declined. The ALJ "was on notice that the step five findings were specifically at issue on remand," and the failure to rely on the 2024 testimony "amounted to a failure to meaningfully follow the remand instructions of both this Court and the Appeals Council." Nor could the newer testimony rescue the result, "because all of the ALJ's step five job findings rely on the old 2023 VE testimony that was found problematic by this Court in the first instance." The court concluded: "On this record, the ALJ's step five findings cannot be upheld."

The court did not reach Demelia's separate argument about the job-number source, leaving it for remand. The instructions direct the agency to "[r]econsider the step-five findings consistent with the foregoing."

What this means if you are appealing an SSDI denial

A remand is not an award of benefits. It returns the claim to the agency for a new decision, and the claimant may still be found not disabled.

The review standard is also deferential. Quoting Dyer v. Barnhart, the order describes substantial evidence as "more than a mere scintilla, but less than a preponderance," and notes a decision must be affirmed if substantial evidence supports it "even if the evidence preponderates against the Commissioner's findings."

Within those limits, two observations follow, and neither is a prediction about any particular claim. First, hearing transcripts matter. The mismatch here was visible only by comparing what the 2024 vocational expert said against what the written decision listed. Second, objections made on the record can shape later review: Demelia's representative objected to the source of the job numbers, and that objection is part of why the Appeals Council directed the ALJ to revisit the issue.

If your disability claim has been denied, or a case sent back to an ALJ has been denied again, you can learn more in our Social Security disability guide or request a free case evaluation.

This summary describes one court's ruling in one case as of September 20, 2026, and is general information, not legal advice about any individual claim.