MARGARET M. HECKLER, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, ET AL., PETITIONERS V. CITY OF NEW YORK, ET AL. No. 84-1923 In The Supreme Court Of The United States October Term, 1984 Pursuant to Rules 43 and 44 of the Rules of this Court and 28 U.S.C. 2101(f), the Acting Solicitor General, on behalf of the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Acting Commissioner of Social Security, respectfully applies for a partial stay of the judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York pending disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari to review the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in this case. The petition for a writ of certiorari was filed on June 7, 1985. Application For A Stay Pending Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Second Circuit The district court previously had granted a partial stay of its judgment pending appeal. However, after the court of appeals affirmed the judgment of the district court, it denied the Secretary's application for a further stay of its mandate pending certiorari. In this application, we seek only the reinstatement of the partial stay that the district court itself previously had granted pending appellate review. The opinions and orders of the court of appeals and district court are reproduced in the appendix to the petition for a writ of certiorari. /1/ STATEMENT This case is a class action brought on behalf of New York residents challenging the interpretation by certain Social Security Administration (SSA) personnel of several regulations that implement the substantive standards of eligibility for disability benefits under Title II and Title XVI of the Social Security Act. The merits of the dispute are not presented in the petition for a writ of certiorari filed on June 7, 1985. Instead, we there seek review of the court of appeals' affirmance of the district court's sweeping judgment that: (i) ordered relief to those class members who were still in the process of exhausting their administrative remedies when that judgment was entered; and (ii) ordered the Secretary to reopen administrative decisions denying the claims of thousands of other class members that had become final and binding when the claimants involved failed to seek further administrative review or judicial review within 60 days (Pet. App. 64a-66a). Under this Court's rulings, the district court clearly had no jurisdiction over the claims of these class members under 42 U.S.C. 405(g) or 28 U.S.C. 1361. 1. In the petition for a writ of certiorari, we have fully described the pertinent statutory and regulatory framework (see Pet. 2-9) and the proceedings in this case (see Pet. 9-14). We shall only summarize that discussion here. a. Congress and the Secretary have established, in general, a four-stage administrative process for the review of claims for benefits under Title II and Title XVI of the Social Security Act. These four stages are: the initial determination, de novo reconsideration, an evidentiary hearing before an administrative law judge (ALJ), and discretionary review by the Appeals Council. The initial determination and reconsideration stages are performed by a state agency on behalf of the Secretary. See Heckler v. Day, No. 82-1371 (May 22, 1984), slip op. 2-3; Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 337-339 (1976). See generally Pet. 3-7. In reviewing a claim for disability benefits, the decisionmaker at any of these four stages applies the regulations promulgated by the Secretary to implement the statutory definition of the term "disability." 42 U.S.C. 423(d)(1)(A) and (2)(A), 1382(a)(3)(A) and (B). See Heckler v. Campbell, 461 U.S. 458, 461 (1983); 20 C.F.R. Pt. 404, Subpt. P; id. Pt. 416, Subpt. I. See generally Pet. 7-9. b. This class action was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York on February 8, 1983 (C.A. App. 8-32), and an amended complaint was filed on October 11, 1983 (C.A. App. 54-88). The named plaintiffs, respondents herein, are eight individuals who had received or applied for disability benefits under Title II or Title XVI of the Social Security Act (C.A. App. 12-15, 59-66). /2/ The plaintiffs challenged an interpretation of the disability regulations, as applied to individuals seeking benefits on the basis of a mental impairment, that was given by certain SSA personnel to the state agency responsible for making disability determinations in New York (C.A. App. 22-27, 74-81). Plaintiffs contended that the interpretation created a "presumption" that claimants who did not have especially severe impairments were able at least to do unskilled work, and that, as a result, the state agency did not make an adequate and realistic evaluation of the individual claimant's capacity to perform in an actual work setting. Pet. 9-10. The district court acknowledged that the challenged interpretation had been revised by SSA (Pet. App. 39a). Nevertheless, the district court reached the merits of that interpretation, found it to be contrary to the Act and regulations, and ordered broad relief to the members of the certified class (Pet. App. 31a-42a, 60a-63a). The certified class, as amended, consists of all New York residents who, between April 1, 1980 and May 15, 1983, were found by the New York state agency to have a severe functional psychotic or functional non-psychotic mental impairment, and whose applications for benefits were denied or whose benefits were terminated because they were found to be capable of performing substantial gainful activity (Pet. App. 65a). The court rejected the Secretary's contentions that it could not include within the class under 42 U.S.C. 405(g) any persons who had not exhausted their administrative remedies or obtained judicial review within 60 days of the Secretary's final decisions on their individual claims for benefits (Pet. App. 43a-46a, 59-60a). In its judgment dated January 31, 1984, the district court ordered the Secretary to reopen all adverse administrative decisions affecting the class members, although it provided that any class member who had an active administrative appeal pending before an ALJ or the Appeals Council could elect to have his case decided on that appeal instead of by reopening (Pet. App. 65a-66a). The court also ordered the payment of interim benefits, pending reopening and redetermination, to class members who previously had been receiving benefits but whose benefits were terminated after the state agency found that their disabilities had ceased (id. at 66a). On January 31, 1984, the district court granted a partial stay of its judgment pending appeal (Pet. App. 67a-68a). Specifically, the district court stayed the judgment except for those portions that required the Secretary to identify all members of the class, to pay interim benefits on a prospective basis to class members whose benefits were terminated after a continuing disability review, and to implement the judgment for all class members who still had administrative appeals pending before an ALJ or the Appeals Council or who had fully exhausted their administrative remedies on or after this suit was filed on February 8, 1983 (Pet. App. 68a). /3/ c. In an opinion dated August 27, 1984, the court of appeals affirmed the judgment of the district court (Pet. App. 1a-26a), rejecting the Secretary's arguments that the district court did not have jurisdiction over the claims of those class members who had not exhausted their administrative remedies and had not sought judicial review within 60 days of the Secretary's "final decision," as required by 42 U.S.C. 405(g) (Pet. App. 12a-20a). On February 7, 1985, the court of appeals denied the Secretary's timely petition for rehearing (Pet. App. 24a-29a). By order dated February 21, 1985, the court of appeals granted the Secretary's motion for a stay of its mandate to and including March 18, 1985. However, by order dated March 29, 1985, the court of appeals denied the Secretary's application for a further stay of the mandate pending certiorari (App. A, infra). 2. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has furnished us with the following information concerning the implementation of the portions of the district court's judgment that were not stayed pending appeal: a. In order to comply with the requirement that SSA identify the persons who are members of the class, it has been necessary for SSA to conduct a manual review of scores of thousands of disability case files involving New York residents from April 1, 1980 through May 15, 1983. The procedures utilized and SSA's progress are described in the May 20, 1985 affidavit of Hilton Friend, an official in SSA's Office of Disability. That affidavit, a copy of which is appended hereto (App. B, infra), was filed in district court in the instant case in connection with a June 5, 1985 hearing concerning implementation of the judgment. According to the Friend Affidavit, computer runs produced a list of 76,970 New York decisions in "denial" cases (those in which a new application for benefits was denied) and 18,223 decisions in "cessation" cases (those in which an individual's benefits were terminated) during the relevant time period (App. B. infra, 7, 8). /4/ These cases then had to be retrieved from storage and manually reviewed to determine whether they actually fell within the class -- i.e., whether the claim involved was based on a mental rather than physical impairment, whether the mental impairment was a functional psychotic or non-psychotic disorder, whether the impairment was "severe" (see note 4, supra), and whether the decision in fact was rendered during the relevant time period (App. B, infra, 5, 7-8, 13-14). Of these appropriately 95,000 cases that had to be manually screened, all but approximately 9,000 denial cases and 1,400 cessation cases had been screened as of May 20, 1985 (id. at 14). This screening process resulted in the identification of approximately 11,000 class members (id. at 14-15). More precisely, we have been informed by HHS that, as of May 31, 1985, there were 11,113 individuals who had been identified as class members -- 9,355 denial cases and 1,758 cessation cases. b. The district court further required, pending appeal, that class members in cessation cases be given the opportunity to have their benefits reinstated on a prospective basis. We have been informed by HHS that when a cessation individual was determined in manual screening to be a class member, SSA sent the individual a notice informing him of his status as a class member and of his right to elect to receive such benefits, effective as of January 31, 1984 (the date of the district court's judgment), subject to recoupment if the district court's judgment were reversed on appeal. No similar notices have yet been sent to the 9,355 claimants in denial cases that have been identified as class members, because they are not entitled to interim benefits. c. The district court also required, pending appeal, that SSA apply "proper" standards under the regulations in any case actively pending on administrative review before an ALJ or the Appeals Council as of January 31, 1984 (Pet. App. 68a). However, because the interpretation of the regulations contained in the SSA instructions to the state agency that plaintiffs challenged did not bind the ALJs or the Appeals Council (Pet. 5), and because SSA agreed that the interpretation that appeared to have been conveyed in those instructions was incorrect, this aspect of the district court's order did not require any change in the practices of the ALJs and the Appeals Council. d. Unless this Court reinstates the stay originally entered by the district court, SSA will be required to proceed with the reopening and readjudication of the 9,355 individual denial cases that have been identified to date and to pay those class members retroactive benefits if they are found to be disabled. It is that requirement that we principally seek to have stayed here. The district court's judgment now is of little independent significance as it affects the 1758 cessation cases identified thus far. This is because these individual class members also are members of the certified class in a separate class action brought on behalf of New York disability recipients in 1980, in which the plaintiffs contended that the Secretary could not terminate a recipient's disability benefits without showing "medical improvement" in his condition. Schisler v. Heckler, Civ. No. CIV-80-572E (W.D. N.Y.). Under Section 2(d)(3) of the Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-460, 98 Stat. 1798, the cases of the individual class members in such a class action must be remanded to the Secretary for readjudication, whether or not the class members satisfied the exhaustion and 60-day requirements in 42 U.S.C. 405(g). See Heckler v. Kuehner, No. 83-1593 (Nov. 5, 1984); Heckler v. Lopez, No. 84-115 (Dec. 10, 1984). /5/ The district court in Schisler entered such an order on December 5, 1984. The cessation class members in the instant case therefore are entitled to have their cases reopened and readjudicated under the remand order in Schisler, without regard to the judgment in the instant case. In that readjudication, the cessation class members' claims will be reviewed not only under the new statutory "medical improvement" standards, but also under applicable standards for the evaluation of mental impairments. See pages 16-19, infra. /6/ ARGUMENT Respondents never asked the court of appeals to vacate the partial stay that was entered by the district court itself on January 31, 1984. That stay continued in effect for more than a year during proceedings in the court of appeals, and it should be reinstated by this Court so that the status quo may be further maintained pending disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari that has already been filed on behalf of the Secretary. In deciding whether to grant a stay pending certiorari, the Court or Circuit Justice ordinarily regards it as appropriate "to determine whether four Justices would vote to grant certiorari, to balance the so-called 'stay equities', and to give some consideration as to predicting the final outcome of the case in this Court." Heckler v. Lopez, No. A-145 (Sept. 9, 1983), slip op. 3 (Rehnquist, Circuit Justice). See also Heckler v. Lopez, No. A-145 (Oct. 11, 1983), slip op. 2 (Brennan, J., dissenting); Heckler v. Blankenship, No. A-689 (Jan. 26, 1984), slip op. 2 (O'Connor, Circuit Justice). These factors clearly weigh in favor of a stay in this case. 1. There Is A Very Strong Likelihood That Four Justices Will Vote To Grant Certiorari As we have explained in the certiorari petition (Pet. 23, 29), the jurisdictional rulings by the Second Circuit in the instant case squarely conflict with decisions of the Fourth and Sixth Circuits. See Hyatt v. Heckler, 757 F.2d 1455, 1460-1461 (4th Cir. 1985); Hunt v. Schweiker, 685 F.2d 121, 123 (4th Cir. 1982); Biron v. Harris, 668 F.2d 259, 261 (6th Cir. 1982); Whipp v. Weinberger, 505 F.2d 800, 801 (6th Cir. 1974). Other courts of appeals have reached contrary conclusions. See, e.g., Reed v. Heckler, 756 F.2d 770 (10th Cir. 1985); Polaski v. Heckler, 751 F.2d 943, 951-955 (1984); Mental Health Ass'n of Minnesota v. Heckler, 720 F.2d 965, 973 n.19 (8th Cir. 1983); Hatchell v. Heckler, 708 F.2d 578, 580 n.1 (11th Cir. 1983). That conflict plainly warrants review by this Court. Review is all the more appropriate because the Second Circuit's decision is flatly inconsistent with this Court's repeated rulings on questions of jurisdiction in Social Security cases, most recently just a year ago in Heckler v. Ringer, No. 82-1772 (May 14, 1984). See pages 11-13, infra. These questions also are of broad importance in the administration of the Social Security Act. HHS has informed us that there are approximately 60 class actions now pending under the Social Security disability programs alone that involve the exhaustion issue under 42 U.S.C. 405(g) (Pet. 23) and that a number of these cases also raise the question whether a court may dispense with the requirement that judicial review be sought within 60 days of the Secretary's final decision. Where, as here, the courts disregard these prerequisites to judicial review in a massive class action, the result is to require the reopening of thousands of administrative decisions that had become final and binding, and thereby substantially to disrupt the "orderly administrative mechanism" for the adjudication of millions of claims annually. See Califano v. Sanders, 430 U.S. 99, 102 (1977). In light of these considerations, we believe there is a manifest likelihood that four Justices will vote to grant the petition for a writ of certiorari. /7/ 2. There Is A Very Strong Likelihood That The Secretary Will Succeed On The Merits If the Court grants review, there is a clear probability that the Secretary will succeed on the merits of her jurisdictional arguments. Those arguments are fully set out in the certiorari petition (Pet. 16-29) and need not be repeated at length here. Suffice it to say that with regard to exhaustion, this Court held in Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U.S. 749, 766 (1975), that the requirement in 42 U.S.C. 405(g) that a claimant receive a "final decision" of the Secretary is a "statutorily specified jurisdictional prerequisite" that may not be dispensed with by a judicial determination that exhaustion would be futile. Indeed, even the dissenting Justices in Salfi concluded that where, as here, the plaintiff is not attacking the constitutionality of a provision of the Social Security Act that prohibits an award of benefits, but is instead seeking benefits to which he claims he is entitled under the Act, he "must exhaust administrative remedies" (id. at 790 (Brennan, J., dissenting)). The Court reiterated the Salfi holding just last Term in Ringer, slip op. 13-16, and the concurring and dissenting opinion for three Justices in Ringer (at slip op. 2) expressly agreed with the majority that exhaustion is required where, as in the instant case (see Pet. 18-20), relief is not foreclosed at the administrative level. Thus, this Court has twice unanimously concluded that full exhaustion through the Appeals Council stage is required in circumstances such as those presented here. /8/ On the 60-day issue, this Court held in Califano v. Sanders, 430 U.S. 99, 107-109 (1977), again unanimously, that a district court does not have jurisdiction under 42 U.S.C. 405(g) to review a decision of the Secretary denying an individual's request to reopen an administrative decision that had become final and binding when he failed to seek judicial review of that decision within the 60 days allowed by 42 U.S.C. 405(g). It necessarily follows that the district court in the instant case likewise had no jurisdiction to order the Secretary to reopen the administrative decisions of thousands of class members who did not seek judicial review within the 60 days allowed (Heckler v. Lopez. No. A-145 (Oct. 11, 1983), slip op. 3 (Stevens, J., concurring and dissenting)), especially since the individual class members in this case, unlike the claimant in Sanders, have not even filed a request with the Secretary to reopen those decisions. In Heckler v. Lopez, No. A-707 (Apr. 30, 1984), presumably in part because this conclusion as regards the 60-day filing requirement was so clear, the Court unanimously granted a stay pending certiorari of the Ninth Circuit's ruling excusing the class members' failure to comply with the 60-day filing requirement. Lopez v. Heckler, 725 F.2d 1489, 1507-1509 (1984). The Second Circuit in the instant case relied on the Ninth Circuit's decision in Lopez (see Pet. App. 17a, 18a), and the likelihood that the Secretary will succeed on the merits of the 60-day issue in this case necessarily is as great as the Court unanimously found it to be in Lopez. /9/ 3. The Balance of the Equities Clearly Supports The Granting Of A Stay Finally, a consideration of the equities clearly warrants the reinstatement by this Court of the partial stay that was granted by the district court on January 31, 1984 and that remained in effect for the duration of the proceedings in the court of appeals. a. Under the district court's original stay order, the Secretary was required to implement that portion of the judgment that required her to provide for the payment of interim benefits on a prospective basis to those class members who previously had been receiving benefits but whose benefits were terminated after they were found no longer to be disabled. This exception to the stay had the effect of restoring the status quo ante for persons who previously might have relied on the continued receipt of disability benefits. In addition, because these cessation class members also happen to be members of the class in Schisler v. Heckler, they are entitled to have the prior decisions terminating their benefits reopened and readjudicated pursuant to Section 2(d)(3) of the 1984 Disability Reform Act, irrespective of whether such reopening and readjudication occurs in the context of the instant case. /10/ Accordingly, the reinstatement by this Court, pending certiorari, of the partial stay previously granted by the district court would not visit any hardship on the cessation class members. /11/ b. The balance of equities also favors the Secretary as regards those class members who had not previously been receiving disability benefits and whose applications to receive such benefits were denied. These class members of course are in a position that is markedly different from that of class members whose benefits were terminated, because they had never received and thereby become dependent upon disability payments. Moreover, the partial stay granted by the district court, which we request this Court to reinstate, preserved the status quo ante as to these claimants, because it excused the Secretary, pending appeal, from readjudicating the administrative decisions denying their applications for benefits and from paying them retroactive benefits if they were found on that readjudication to have been disabled. These class members therefore will experience no substantial incremental hardship if this status quo ante is continued pending the disposition of the Secretary's certiorari petition. Other considerations further undermine the equities of these class members. First, the class members themselves previously allowed the administrative decisions denying their applications to become final and binding by failing to seek further administrative review or judicial review within 60 days, despite receiving a notice from the Secretary informing them of their right to do so. Individuals who previously abandoned their claims in this manner do not have a strong equitable claim to have them reopened. Second, there is no indication that any of the thousands of unnamed class members in this case has ever requested the Secretary to reopen the administrative decision denying his application. Instead, it is the handful of named plaintiffs who have requested the Secretary to do so, even though they were not parties to those decisions. At least until this Court has ruled on the issue, the Secretary should not be required to reopen these claims in the absence of any request by the claimants directly affected. Third, it is not necessary in any event for the Court independently to weigh the relative equities. Congress itself balanced the equities of individual claimants against the compelling public interest in repose and the orderly processing of millions of claims annually when it enacted the exhaustion and 60-day requirements in 42 U.S.C. 405(g). Heckler v. Ringer, slip op. 23-24. A court has no authority to dispense with these statutory prerequisites to suit based on its own view of the relative equities. Ibid. A fortiori, in the context of an application for a stay of a judgment that grants relief to individual claimants notwithstanding their conceded failure to comply with these explicit statutory requirements, the Court should respect the balance struck by Congress. In Heckler v. Lopez, the Court unanimously granted a stay of the district court's judgment insofar as it required reopening of administrative decisions terminating class members' benefits that were rendered more than 60 days before the complaint in that case was filed. In this case, the vast majority of state agency decisions denying applications for benefits that might have been affected by the disability adjudication policy challenged in this suit presumably were rendered before December 10, 1982, the 60th day prior to the filing of this suit on February 8, 1983. /12/ Because the stay here affects the denial of new applications for benefits, not the termination of benefits as in Lopez, the balance of the equities reflected in this Court's stay order in Lopez a fortiori compels the granting of a stay here as well. Fourth, in order to reopen and readjudicate claims of class members in a case such as this, SSA and the state agencies are required to divert scarce resources from the processing of claims of other claimants who, unlike the 9,000 class members here, have conscientiously pursued their administrative remedies in conformity with applicable time limits and other requirements. Until this Court has disposed of the Secretary's petition, the Secretary should not be required to effect such a reallocation of resources to a task Congress has not ordained; for the special benefit of claimants in one state, in derogation of the statutory goal of nationwide uniformity (Heckler v. Day, slip op. 12); and at the expense of other claimants whom Congress sought to protect. c. If there could be any remaining doubt regarding the appropriateness of a stay pending certiorari, it is dispelled by Congress's enactment of Section 5 of the 1984 Disability Reform Act, 98 Stat. 1801. In that Section, Congress has addressed the very questions respondents have raised in this suit and prescribed the remedial measures it deemed appropriate for persons who were denied benefits under prior standards pertaining to evaluation of mental impairments. First, Congress directed the Secretary to develop new standards for evaluating claims based on an alleged mental impairment. Those standards must be designed to "realistically evaluate the ability of a mentally impaired individual to engage in substantial gainful activity in a competitive work place environment." Section 5(a), 98 Stat. 1801; Pet. App. 73a-75a. This statutory provision addressed respondents' substantive concern in this suit that the interpretation of regulations conveyed to the state agency did not adequately consider the claimant's actual ability to work. The new regulatory standards have been published in proposed form. 50 Fed. Reg. 4948 (1985). Second, and of particular relevance here, Congress further provided that any person who claimed a disability based on mental impairment and was found not to be disabled on or after March 1, 1981 could reapply and be reevaluated under these new statutory standards. Sec. 5(c)(3), 98 Stat. 1802. This statutory relief for persons in respondents' position differs in a number of respects from that ordered by the courts below. The district court's judgment, for example, requires the reopening of cases back to April 1, 1980, almost a year earlier than the date Congress selected. Moreover, Congress, unlike the court of appeals, did not provide that any claimant who reapplies and is found disabled will be entitled to full retroactive benefits. Instead, under the special reopening provision in Section 5(c)(3) of the 1984 Act, persons who are found on reapplication to be disabled are entitled to benefits only on the basis of the reapplication, not the original application. Under Title II, a claimant reapplying under this provision would be entitled to benefits only for a period of up to 12 months prior to the date of his reapplication (42 U.S.C. 402(j)(1); Schweiker v. Hansen, 450 U.S. 785, 786-787 & n.2 (1981)), while under Title XVI a claimant would be entitled to benefits commencing with the date of the reapplication itself (42 U.S.C. 1382(c)(5)). /13/ Third, Congress did not waive the exhaustion and 60-day requirements for persons who are class members in class actions raising mental impairment issues in court, as it did under Section 2 of the 1984 Act (98 Stat. 1794) with regard to class actions raising the medical improvement issue. See Heckler v. Lopez, No. 84-115 (Dec. 10, 1984); Heckler v. Kuehner, No. 83-1593 (Nov. 5, 1984). The judgment of the district court, affirmed by the court of appeals, that dispenses with the exhaustion and 60-day requirements in this case in order to afford to class members the relief the courts thought appropriate thus is flatly inconsistent with the approach Congress prescribed in the 1984 Act for claimants having mental impairments. These new statutory provisions also further undermine the equities of the class members whose new applications for benefits were denied. Under Section 5(c)(3) of the 1984 Act, any class member whose new application for disability benefits was denied on or after March 1, 1981 is free to reapply for benefits; if he is found to be disabled under the new criteria governing the evaluation of mental impairments, he may receive benefits beginning with the date of his reapplication (and, under Title II, for up to 12 months prior to that date). Indeed, these class members have been free to submit such a reapplication under Section 5(c)(3) since October 9, 1984, the effective date of the 1984 Act. These class members have no substantial equitable claim of a right, pending certiorari, to spurn the special statutory relief Congress has made available and instead to insist upon immediate implementation of a judicial decree that takes a different approach. /14/ This is especially so since, as we have said, the individual unnamed class members are not even personally requesting that relief, as they must do under Section 5(c)(3) of the 1984 Act. The Secretary should not be required to take that action until this Court has had an opportunity to review the patently erroneous jurisdictional rulings by the court of appeals. CONCLUSION The Court should grant the application for a partial stay of the judgment of the district court, as set forth in the district court's stay order dated January 31, 1984 (Pet. App. 67a-68a), pending the disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari filed by the Secretary on June 7, 1985. Respectfully submitted. CHARLES FRIED Acting Solicitor General JUNE 1985 /1/ A copy of the March 29, 1985 order of the court of appeals denying the Secretary's motion for a further stay of the mandate pending certiorari is appended hereto. App. A, infra. /2/ The individuals were joined as plaintiffs by the City of New York, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, the State of New York, and two state officials (C.A. 11-12, 58-59). The court of appeals did not reach the question whether these additional plaintiffs had standing to bring this suit (Pet. App. 6a n.3). /3/ The court of appeals subsequently denied the Secretary's application for a stay of those portions of the judgment that were not stayed by the district court (Pet. App. 8a). /4/ The computer runs were able to eliminate 72,000 other denial and cessation cases in which the initial determination by the state agency subsequently was reversed on administrative or judicial review (App. B, infra, 5-6). An additional 144,000 denial cases also were eliminated by computer runs on the ground that the claimants' impairments were found not to satisfy the threshold requirement under the statute and regulations that an impairment be "severe" (App. B, infra, 6; see Pet. 7-8, Pet. App. 36a). The computer screening could not identify cessation cases that were outside the class definition because the impairments were not "severe," and those cases therefore had to be identified manually (App. B, infra, 8). /5/ The operation of the remand provisions in Section 2 of the 1984 Act is explained in our Supplemental Brief filed on October 23, 1984 in Heckler v. Kuehner, supra. /6/ There is a disagreement between the Secretary and the plaintiffs in Schisler regarding the scope of the class in Schisler that could affect one narrow category of cessation class members in the instant case. The district court's August 12, 1981 order in Schisler did not identify a beginning date for the class. The Secretary argued that the certification must be understood to include only those claimants who received an adverse decision on or after the 60th day before the complaint in Schisler was filed (i.e., on or after May 11, 1980), because under 42 U.S.C. 405(g) judicial review must be sought within 60 days of the Secretary's final decision. The plaintiffs in Schisler contended that the class should include all claimants whose benefits were terminated since 1976. In its December 5, 1984 order, the district court in Schisler agreed with the plaintiffs. The Secretary has appealed the district court's order in Schisler insofar as it includes the class those claimants whose termination decision was rendered before May 11, 1980 (No. 85-6092, 2d Cir.). On May 24, 1985, the court of appeals entered an order in Schisler staying the district court's order as to these pre-May 11, 1980 class members, pending appeal. If the Secretary prevails on her appeal in Schisler, class members in the instant case who received a cessation decision between April 1, 1980 (the beginning date of the class as certified by the district court in the instant case) and May 11, 1980 will not obtain relief under Schisler and Section 2 of the 1984 Act. Presumably, however, no more than a handful of New York residents fall in this category, since it is defined by a period of a little more than one month that elapsed more than five years ago. Accordingly, for purposes of this stay application, we shall disregard the possibility that these few cessation class members in the instant case might be excluded on appeal from the class in Schisler. /7/ The Secretary's direct appeal in Heckler v. Owens, No. 84-1905 (docketed June 5, 1985), also presents the exhaustion and 60-day issues, in addition to seeking review of the district court's holding of a provision of the Social Security Act unconstitutional. /8/ The only exception the Court has recognized to this requirement is for situations in which the plaintiff seeks judicial review of a discrete legal issue that is "entirely" or "wholly" collateral to the merits of his claim for benefits and he has presented a colorable argument that he would be irreparably injured if judicial review were postponed. Ringer, slip op. 14-15; Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 330-332 (1976). That exception plainly has no application here (see Pet. 20-22), and indeed the court of appeals conceded that the legal issue respondents raise concerning the interpretation of regulations implementing the statutory definition of the term "disability" is not wholly collateral to the class members' claims for benefits (see Pet. App. 14a). /9/ After the Second Circuit rendered its decision in the instant case, the Ninth Circuit's decision in Lopez was vacated by this Court in light of Section 2 of the 1984 Disability Reform Act. Heckler v. Lopez, No. 84-115 (Dec. 10, 1985). This Court has thus removed the principal precedential basis for the Second Circuit's ruling in this case. /10/ Under Section 2(e) of the 1984 Amendments (98 Stat. 1798), any individual class member in a class action raising the medical improvement issue may apply for interim benefits, on a prospective basis, pending the readjudication of his claim. Because the 1984 Amendments independently provided for the payment of interim benefits to cessation class members, we chose not to present in the certiorari petition in this case the question whether a court has authority to order the payment of interim benefits where Congress has not so provided. /11/ As noted above (see note 6, supra), it is possible that a handful of cessation class members in this case might later be eliminated from the Schisler class by the court of appeals. These class members, however, are those whose claims are the most stale, since their benefits were terminated almost four years before the district court entered its judgment. They therefore have the least substantial equities of any of the cessation class members. Moreover, if any such class members should be eliminated from the Schisler class at a later date, they could move at that time to require the Secretary to proceed to readjudicate their claims pursuant to the judgment in the instant case if this Court has not finally disposed of the certiorari petition by that time. /12/ The class includes all New York residents whose applications were denied on the basis of a state agency decision rendered at any time between April 1, 1980 and May 15, 1983. Only a little more than five months of this three-year period occurred after December 10, 1982. Moreover, on January 3, 1983, less than a month after December 10, 1982, the Commissioner of Social Security notified the state agencies and regional commissioners that the challenged interpretation should not be followed. See Pet. 10-11. There accordingly is no reason to believe that the challenged interpretation substantially affected many claimants after this suit was filed, or even during much of the 60-day period prior to filing. /13/ The effect of Section 5(c)(3) of the 1984 Act therefore is to permit the individual to establish a period of disability during the elapsed period (42 U.S.C. 416(i)(2)(A)), which might have the effect of protecting his entitlement to retirement benefits in the future (42 U.S.C. 414 and 415), but not to permit him to obtain disability benefits for that period. /14/ Section 5(c)(3) does not permit reapplication by those class members whose prior applications were denied during the period between April 1, 1980 (the beginning date of the class certified in this case) and March 1, 1981 (the beginning date of eligibility under the 1984 Act). However, these claims are the most stale, and Congress determined that they should not be reopened. The judgment below does not respect this line drawn by Congress. Moreover, if any of these class members believe they are now disabled, even though they were found not to be in 1980 or 1981, nothing prevents them from submitting new applications for benefits outside of the special procedures in Section 5(c)(3) and receiving benefits on the basis of their new applications, if they are found to be disabled.