Judge Halts New ‘No Match’ Rules for Employers

Judge Halts New ‘No Match’ Rules for Employers

by James Parks, Oct 11, 2007

A federal judge yesterday issued a preliminary injunction stopping the government from enforcing a new rule that would have caused U.S. citizens and legal residents to lose their jobs because of errors in the Social Security Administration (SSA) database.

The order prevents any implementation—until the court makes a final ruling—of a Department of Homeland Security rule punishing employers if they do not take action after receiving Social Security “no match” letters.

The “no match” letters are notices that SSA sends once per year to employers who report a certain number of discrepancies between their employment records and SSA’s database. According to the government’s own records, 70 percent of the discrepancies belong to native-born U.S. citizens.

“No match” letters have long been used by employers to defeat worker organizing. Time after time, employers have tried to use the letters as a pretext to fire workers when they try to organize, file a wage claim or otherwise exercise their workers’ rights. The new rule would have given employers an even stronger pretext.

The judge found that the new rule “would result in irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers.” He noted that the letters would affect more than 8 million workers, and “result in the termination of employment to lawfully employed workers.” He also recognized that SSA itself has conceded that it will not be able to correct all mismatches—even if the mismatch is the result of SSA error—within the period provided in the rule. As a result, the judge found that AFL-CIO members who are authorized to work would be fired as a result of the letter.