Culbertson v. Berryhill
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal 25% cap on Social Security attorney's fees applies only to fees for representing a client in court, not to the combined total of fees earned for both agency and court work.
The unanimous decision reverses a lower court that had required attorneys to subtract what they'd already been paid for agency work before collecting court fees, giving disability lawyers more certainty that they can be paid separately and fully for each stage of a case.
How it got here: A district court reduced Culbertson's requested court fee because he hadn't subtracted his earlier agency fee; the Eleventh Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court agreed to resolve a circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A Social Security disability applicant hired an attorney, Richard Culbertson, to represent her both before the Social Security Administration and later in federal court after her claim was denied. She eventually won past-due benefits. The agency paid Culbertson a fee for his agency-level work, and he then separately asked the court to award him a fee, capped at 25% of past-due benefits, for his court work.
The question before the Court
When a disabled worker's lawyer gets paid for both fighting the Social Security Administration and later winning in court, does a 25% fee cap apply to the combined total, or just to the court part?
The Court's answer
No — the 25% cap applies only to fees for representing a claimant in court, not to the combined total of agency and court fees. The Court found that the statute's language, which caps fees for "such representation," refers only to representation before the court, since that's the only kind of representation described in that part of the law.
The Court also pointed to the law's structure: agency fees and court fees are handled by separate provisions with separate formulas, and the statute actually authorizes two distinct pools of withheld benefits for paying each type of fee. The fact that the agency currently withholds only one combined pool as a matter of practice doesn't change what the statute itself allows lawyers to be awarded.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Attorneys who represent Social Security disability claimants both before the agency and later in federal court can now seek full payment for each stage of work without having to subtract earlier agency fees from their court fee request. This could mean higher overall fees for lawyers handling both stages, which may affect how willing attorneys are to take on lengthy disability appeals.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the lower courts so Culbertson's court-stage fee request can be recalculated without subtracting his earlier agency-stage fee. Going forward, Social Security disability attorneys nationwide can seek separate fee awards for agency and court work, each subject to its own statutory limits, rather than one combined 25% ceiling across both stages.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court read the text of the statute closely, starting with the word 'such' in the phrase 'a reasonable fee for such representation' in the court-fees provision. Because the only representation described just before that phrase is representation before a court, the word 'such' ties the 25% cap only to court work, not agency work.
- The Court then looked at how the two fee provisions are structured: one section covers agency-stage fees and uses either a fee-agreement cap or a flexible 'reasonable fee' standard, while a separate section covers court-stage fees and applies a flat 25% cap. Because these sections address different stages and use different formulas, reading them as sharing one combined cap didn't fit the structure Congress wrote.
- The Court rejected the argument that a single pool of withheld benefits meant Congress intended one combined 25% limit, pointing out that the statute actually authorizes two separate pools of withheld money — one for agency fees and one for court fees — even though the agency currently chooses to withhold only one pool in practice.
- The Court explained that how much money the agency withholds for direct payment doesn't set an upper limit on how much a lawyer can be awarded in fees overall; a lawyer could always be owed more than what's withheld and have to collect the rest from the client.
- Because nothing in the text or structure supported treating the two fee provisions as sharing one combined 25% ceiling, the Court concluded that the 25% cap governs court fees alone.