Page:Michael J. Biestek v. Nancy A. Berryhill, Acting Commissioner of Social Security.pdf/20

4 hat—and, thus, may wind up being clearly mistaken, fake, or speculative evidence too. Unsurprisingly given all this, the government fails to cite even a single authority blessing the sort of evidence here as substantial evidence, despite the standard’s long history and widespread use.

Veteran Social Security practitioners must be feeling a sense of déjà vu. Half a century ago, Judge Henry Friendly encountered Kerner v. Flemming, 283 F. 2d 916 (CA2 1960). There, the agency’s hearing examiner offered “nothing save [his own] speculation” to support his holding that the claimant “could in fact obtain substantial gainful employment.” Id., at 921. The Second Circuit firmly explained that this kind of conclusory claim is insufficient to meet the substantial evidence standard. In response, the Social Security Administration began hiring vocational experts, like the one in this case, to document the number of jobs available to a given claimant. But if the government can do what it did in this case, it’s hard to see what all the trouble was for. The agency might still rest decisions on a hunch—just so long as the hunch comes from an agency contractor rather than an agency examiner.

Instead of addressing the realities of this case, the government asks us to imagine a hypothetical one. Assume, it says, that no one had requested the underlying data. In those circumstances, the government points out, even Mr. Biestek appears to accept that the agency’s decision could have stood. And if that’s true, the government asks, why should it make a difference if we add only one additional fact—the expert’s refusal to produce the data? See ante, at 7–9 (presenting the same argument).

The answer is an old and familiar one. The refusal to supply readily available evidentiary support for a conclusion strongly suggests that the conclusion is, well, unsupported. See, e. g., Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. United States, 306 U. S. 208, 226 (1939) (“The production of weak evidence when strong is available can lead only to the