Barnhart v. Walton

Cleveland Walton (plaintiff) sought disability benefits after his mental illness cost him his teaching job, but the Social Security Administration (defendant) found he became able to work again as a cashier just eleven months later, and denied his claim because the Act requires an inability to work lasting at least twelve continuous months. The agency's longstanding interpretation applied that twelve-month requirement to the inability to work, not merely to the underlying impairment itself; the Third Circuit sided with Walton, reading the statute's duration requirement as modifying "impairment" rather than "inability."