Woldemdhin v. D.C. Dep't of Emp't Serv.

• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: Deahl, Associate Judge
• Citation: 320 A.3d 325
• Docket Number: 23-AA-0225
• Decision Date: 15 August 2024
• Parties: Kassahun A. WOLDEMDHIN, Petitioner, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICES, Respondent.

320 A.3d 325

Kassahun A. WOLDEMDHIN, Petitioner,

v.DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICES, Respondent.

No. 23-AA-0225

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued February 14, 2024

Decided August 15, 2024

Petition for Review of an Order of the District of Columbia Office of Administrative Hearings (2023-DOES-000126)

Alec Z. Sandler, with whom Jonathan H. Levy was on the briefs, for petitioner.

Jeremy R. Girton, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Brian L. Schwalb, Attorney General, Caroline S. Van Zile, Solicitor General, Ashwin P. Phatak, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, and Carl J. Schifferle, Deputy Solicitor General, were on the brief, for respondent.

Before Blackburne-Rigsby, Chief Judge, and Deahl and Shanker, Associate Judges.

Deahl, Associate Judge:

Kassahun Woldemdhin challenges a determination that he does not qualify for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA, benefits. Woldemdhin began working as a taxi driver in 2015, but he stopped working for several months beginning on March 23, 2020, and he claims that he did so because of a lack of fare-paying customers at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He applied for PUA benefits—temporary benefits for workers who lost income for certain reasons as a result of the pandemic. His claim was initially denied on the basis that he stopped working "due to general concerns about exposure to COVID-19," not because of a lack of fare- paying customers. Woldemdhin appealed that determination to the Office of Administrative Hearings, where an Administrative Law Judge upheld the denial of benefits. Taking a slightly different tack, the ALJ found that Woldemdhin had not substantiated his claim that he had lost income as a result of the pandemic’s outset, describing his claims on that front as "vague, conclusory, and uncorroborated."

We disagree. Woldemdhin’s belief that he could not turn a profit driving a taxi during the first months of the pandemic was well-founded in the evidence, and there was no countervailing evidence. It does not even appear to have been a disputed point. Anybody who lived in the District during those early months of the pandemic could not reasonably doubt it, either. Because the ALJ’s contrary determination was arbitrary and capricious, we reverse and direct that Woldemdhin be granted PUA benefits.

I. Factual Background

The relevant facts are largely uncontested, save for the parties’ disputes about (1) whether Woldemdhin stopped driving his taxi because of a belief that he could no longer make any money, and (2) whether any such belief was substantiated. Woldemdhin worked as a taxi driver in the District beginning in 2015. He was an independent contractor, and he rented both his vehicle and his meter system from United Ventures Consortium, or UVC. The bulk of his income came from tourist fares.

That all changed, as so much else did, in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic took the world by storm. On March 11, 2020, Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a public health emergency in the District because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That same day—in what is etched in some of our minds as the unofficial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic—the National Basketball Association announced it was indefinitely suspending the 2019-20 NBA season. And just two days later, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020.

Within days, Woldemdhin came to realize that he could no longer make enough money to offset the cost of renting his vehicle and meter system, and he returned them to UVC on March 23, 2020, and stopped driving his taxi. The next day, on March 24, 2020, the Mayor ordered all non-essential businesses to cease operations. Mayor’s Order 2020-053 at 6 (Mar. 24, 2020) ("the Shutdown Order").¹ Under the Shutdown Order, taxis and ride-sharing companies were considered essential businesses that could continue to operate. A week later, the Mayor issued a Stay-At-Home order that required "all individuals anywhere" in the District "to stay in their residences except to perform essential activities," such as receiving healthcare treatments, shopping, or "engaging] in essential business." Mayor’s Order 2020-054 (Mar. 30, 2020) ("the Stay-At-Home Order").

Meanwhile, Congress passed the CARES Act, which created a system for administering PUA benefits to support people who lost income due to the pandemic. 15 U.S.C. § 9021. To be eligible for PUA benefits, a person must be ineligible for other state unemployment benefits,² id. § 9021(a)(3)(A)(i), and must be "otherwise able to work and available for work" but "unemployed, partially unemployed, or un- able or unavailable to work because" of one of a variety of factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Id. § 9021(a)(3)(A)(ii)(I). One of those factors—listed at id. § 9021(a)(3)(A)(ii)(I)(kk), which we refer to simply as subsection (kk)—specified that a person was eligible for PUA benefits if "the individual meets any additional criteria established by the Secretary [of Labor] for unemployment assistance under this section."

Within weeks, the Secretary of Labor issued a letter providing guidance as to when "certain gig economy workers" are eligible for PUA benefits. Unemployment Insurance Program Letter 16-20, p.2, § 3(b) (April 5, 2020) ("UIPL"). The Secretary then updated that letter several weeks later to make clear that "a driver for a ridesharing service who is forced to significantly limit his or her performance of customary work activities because of the COVID-19 public health emergency" is eligible for PUA benefits under subsection (kk). UIPL 16-20 Change 1, attach. I, p.10-11, § F(42-43) (April 27, 2020) ("Updated UIPL"). However, "an individual who does not go to work due to general concerns about exposure to COVID-19, and who does not meet any of the other COVID-19 related criteria for PUA, is not eligible for PUA." Id. On April 26, 2020, Woldemdhin applied for PUA benefits. He sought those benefits dating back to March, and ultimately through November 2020, when he resumed driving for hire (for Uber).

A claims examiner with the Department of Employment Services, or DOES, initially approved Woldemdhin for PUA benefits. But for reasons that are not clear from the record, DOES later initiated a review of Woldemdhin’s PUA benefits and eventually sent Woldemdhin a letter directing him to repay roughly $15,000 in PUA benefits that he had received but was allegedly not entitled to.

Woldemdhin contested that decision and responded to the DOES letter with evidence that he was eligible for PUA benefits. In his response, he provided (1) a letter from UVC stating he had ended his taxi rental on March 23, 2020, (2) his 2019 and 2020 1099-K forms detailing his monthly earnings in those years, which showed that his March 2020 income was only about a quarter of his March 2019 income, and (3) a statement written on a DOES form that Woldemdhin signed, but which was apparently written for him by a DOES employee (because, as Woldemdhin later testified through a translator, his English was limited). That form listed "Fear of Catching Covid" as the reason he stopped driving his taxi. A claims examiner considered this additional evidence and upheld the earlier determination that Woldemdhin was ineligible for PUA benefits. The examiner reasoned that Woldemdhin was ineligible for PUA benefits—consistent with the Secretary of Labor’s guidance—because he "voluntarily quit due to the fear of contracting COVID-19 from patrons," not because he could no longer make any income driving a taxi.

Woldemdhin appealed that decision to OAH, where he received an evidentiary hearing before an Administrative Law Judge. During the hearing, Woldemdhin testified that fear of catching COVID-19 was not the primary reason that he stopped driving his taxi. He had simply responded in the affirmative when asked by the DOES employee if he had been afraid of catching COVID-19, and she then in turn listed that as the reason he deactivated his taxi when she filled out the form for him. He explained, through a translator:

So the letter … is not the letter that I wrote. It’s the letter that Patricia Jack-son wrote. She was one of the person that was following my case. She told meto write a letter and I told her, I don’t have the skills to write a letter since English is my second language. So she said, I can help you write the letter. And she wrote the letter for me, and she asked me questions like, Were you afraid that you might catch the COVID? And I told her, Yes, I was afraid that … I might catch the COVID.

Woldemdhin confirmed that he was not "able to read the [letter] and understand the document before [he] signed it," and he said that he "just knew that [Jackson] was being kind to write that letter and she was—she did that to help me, so to be honest, I didn’t understand each and every word hundred percent." Woldemdhin then conceded that "it was [his] decision to stop driving for UVC," but explained that he made that decision because he "was sure that [he] wouldn’t make any income even if [he] worked."

After the hearing, the ALJ upheld the decision to deny PUA benefits. Unlike the claims examiner, the ALJ did not place any reliance on the DOES form letter that Jackson drafted which stated that Woldemdhin quit due to a fear of catching COVID-19. The ALJ also rejected an argument made by Woldemdhin’s attorney that he was eligible for benefits because he could not work as a result of the Mayor’s Stay-At-Home order, which by itself would have made him eligible for benefits under a section of the CARES act that is not relevant here. See 15 U.S.C. § 9021(a)(3)(A)(ii)(I)(ee). The ALJ rejected that argument both because Woldemdhin stopped driving several days before that order took effect and because the order exempted taxi drivers. That aspect of the ALJ’s ruling is not challenged now.

The ALJ then considered the critical question before us, which is whether Woldemdhin quit because he "experienced a significant diminution of ...