NO MATCH LETTERS WON’T BE SENT OUT BY SSA

Due to an ongoing lawsuit from a coalition of labor and business organizations, the Social Security Administration announced last month that that it will delay mailing out ‘no-match’ letters this year to some 138,000 employers nationwide, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. The rule, first proposed by the Department of Homeland Security in August, gives employers 90 days to terminate workers whose paperwork could not be reconciled once they receive the no-match letter.

The rule is on hold after a federal district judge in California issued an injunction in October. The case is currently on appeal to the Ninth District Court of Appeals. Labor groups, including the AFL-CIO, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union argued in the lawsuit that legal workers and others might be fired unfairly. They also said the government did not consider the impact on small businesses.

The suit criticized the number of Social Security mismatches in the DHS database, which may target innocent citizens instead of the undocumented immigrants that DHS seek out. As a result, DHS said they would revise the rule. “We are in no way abandoning the no-match rule,” DHS spokeswoman Veronica Valdes said.