Which Social Security Hearing Office Handles Your Appeal

How Social Security Assigns a Hearing Office

Social Security's office locator shows the field office that serves the ZIP code you search, a local office that takes applications and appeal requests. Social Security's hearing office list, the data behind its hearing office locator, places field offices under hearing offices, and the hearing office whose list includes yours generally handles the hearing when you request one after a reconsideration denial. A few field offices appear on no list or on different lists in different Social Security sources. Where Social Security's own sources disagree about an office, or name it differently, the result says so.

Social Security's operations manual says hearing office jurisdiction is determined by the claimant's residence address, though you can ask through a field office, in a signed statement giving your reasons, to have a case transferred, and Social Security decides whether to do it. Social Security's hearings manual also lets it reassign some cases to another hearing office to relieve a temporary workload imbalance or increase productivity, only when the other office can hear and decide them more quickly. Social Security does not reassign a case this way when you have properly objected to both a phone hearing and an agency video hearing, have not agreed to online video, and have not changed your residence. If you move while your hearing request is pending, the hearing-format rules in 20 CFR 404.936 and, for SSI, 20 CFR 416.1436 let Social Security decide again how you will appear, including by phone or agency video, despite the objection, and it considers the move only once you send evidence verifying your new residence. Its hearings manual says management will still honor the objection after a move when doing so causes no additional delay and nothing else calls for scheduling you another way. When Social Security moves a case to another hearing office for workload or productivity reasons, the office that receives it is responsible for notifying you and your representative of the move as soon as possible. Our hearing office directory lists every office with its field offices. For an in-person or agency video hearing, the Notice of Hearing names the place, so go by that notice for your own case.