Iowa officials who guard against discrimination sue state for discrimination

From 2017 until May 2021, the state of Iowa had two disability hearing officers, officials charged with determining whether the state was being unfair when it cut or denied government benefits for disabled Iowans.

Both are now suing the state, saying they themselves are victims of discrimination.

The lawsuits brought by Ellen McComas and Randy Reiter, first reported by the Iowa Capital Dispatch, accuse the state of improprieties in promotions and compensation for its highly specialized hearing officers. Reiter said he was forced to retire in 2021 or face demotion and loss of valuable retirement benefits, while McComas alleged she was paid less than Reiter and previous male colleagues for the same work and job duties.

Documents provided by the Iowa Attorney General's Office, which is defending the state, show the state acknowledges paying Reiter almost double what McComas made for the same work, and explain from its perspective how that situation came to be. The filings also indicate the state believes age and gender were not factors in the discrepancy, and that neither lawsuit has legal merit.

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McComas, through her attorney, declined to speak about her case, while Reiter's attorney did not respond to a message seeking comment. The attorney general's office declined to comment beyond providing the documents from Iowa Civil Rights Commission proceedings.

Two workers, one job, and a $66,000 pay discrepancy

Under federal law, individuals receiving federal disability payments are sometimes subject to a "continuing disability review," and payments may be reduced or ended for those who are found to no longer be disabled, or to have never been disabled at all. Appeals of such decisions go first to state disability hearing officers, such as Reiter and McComas, who review evidence and can overturn the decisions.

According to the state's filings, such officers in other states earn on average $76,000 a year. Until 2017, however, Iowa classified its two hearing officers as "Administrative Law Judge 2," a title that carries a salary well into six digits.

In 2017, longtime hearing officer Gary McComas retired, and Ellen McComas, his wife, applied to replace him. The state, according to its civil rights commission filings, reviewed the job description and compensation for the job and determined it should be reclassified as "Disability Examiner Specialist Advanced," a role that according to state records was eligible for pay of up to $88,000 in 2021.

But Reiter, who'd then been with the department for more than 40 years, remained classified as an administrative judge, with higher compensation.

In her complaint, filed in April, McComas said she asked repeatedly about a promotion to match her new duties, and that her supervisor "generally responded ... by expressing skepticism or doubt that it would or could happen." That means, she pointed out, that she's been doing the same work that her husband did previously, and that Reiter was doing at the same time, for substantially less pay.

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"Defendants have paid (McComas) at a lesser rate than her male counterparts whom they employed within the same establishment for equal work on jobs which have required equal skill, effort, and responsibility and which have been performed under similar working conditions," her complaint said.

State salary records confirm that as of 2021, McComas was making $88,039 a year. Before his retirement, Reiter, her fellow hearing officer, was on track for annual compensation of $155,248.

Judge: demotion would have cost $45,000 a year

Reiter filed his own lawsuit in July. According to his complaint, he worked for the Department of Education, which handles Social Security disability appeals through its vocational rehabilitation services division, for about 46 years, including 25 years as an administrative law judge. As early as 2019, the complaint said, his superiors began to pester him about when he planned to retire.

In 2020, it alleges, after Ellen McComas complained about their unequal compensation, the department notified Reiter that it intended to reclassify him as an examiner specialist advanced, matching McComas' title and pay grade. Although his duties would have remained unchanged, his complaint said, that demotion would have cut his salary by more than $45,000, a reduction that also would have been applied to his payout for accrued vacation and sick time upon retirement.

The complaint said Reiter complained to his superiors, who responded "that they were reclassifying and reducing Randy’s pay because the Bureau could not justify paying him so much more than his female counterpart, Ms. McComas."

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"Randy responded that the Bureau had it backwards; and it should be raising Ms. McComas’s pay rather than reducing Randy’s pay," said Reiter's complain. It said administrators allegedly responded only that "they had to be 'good stewards of Social Security monies.'"

To protect his retirement benefits, Reiter retired in May 2021. Both he and McComas allege wage discrimination from the state on the basis of sex and, for Reiter, age.

State: changes fit with other states, job descriptions

In its filings before the civil rights commission, the state argued that Reiter had it backward. It's only because of his age and long tenure with the department that he was allowed to remain at the more lucrative administrative law judge classification as long as he did.

The timeline, according to the state's filings, is that after Gary McComas retired in 2017, the state reviewed his position, determined it should be classified at the lower examiner specialist advanced wage scale going forward, and hired Ellen McComas for that role. The department held off on reclassifying Reiter only because he had mentioned possible retirement.

"(The state) was reluctant to reclassify Mr. Reiter's position, even though it was necessary to do so, when it was possible he would soon retire on good terms with the agency," the state's filings said. "However, this decision left (the state) with a problem: two individuals, doing the same job, with different job classifications and different rates of compensation. This situation continued for several years."

That situation became untenable in late 2020, when Ellen McComas asked to be reclassified as an administrative law judge, and triggered the process to demote Reiter, according to the state.

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State officials maintain the examiner specialist advanced title is a better fit for the disability hearing officer's job. Unlike other administrative law judges, the state argued, disability hearing officers do not preside over contested cases and apply only a limited cross-section of federal laws and regulations. Nor does the Social Security Administration require or expect state hearing officers to be full administrative law judges.

Reiter, in his complaint, responded that the job duties for examiner specialist advanced, including "bureau-wide training" and "cooperation in disability investigations," do not describe the job he'd been doing.

The state additionally argued before the civil rights commission that Reiter could have appealed the reclassification of his position, but didn't, and now should be barred from contesting it in court. As for McComas, the state said her complaint should be dismissed as untimely because she did not file it after she first complained of the pay discrepancy in 2017.

Court records show McComas' suit is scheduled for trial in January 2024, with Reiter's trial set four months later.

William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa disability hearing officers sue state for age, sex discrimination