Ross v. Commissioner of Social Security

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
PATRICIA R.,
Plaintiff,
v.
COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL
SECURITY,
Defendant.
___________________________________/
Case No. 1:25-cv-607
Hon. Hala Y. Jarbou
ORDER ADOPTING REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
Before 	the 	Court 	is 	the 	magistrate 	judge’s 	report 	and 	recommendation 	that 	the
Commissioner of Social Security’s denial of plaintiff Patricia R.’s claim for Supplemental Security
Income be affirmed. 	(R&R, ECF No. 19.) 	Plaintiff’s complaint alleges that the administrative
law judge (ALJ) who adjudicated her claim failed to explain why the assessment of a psychologist
who found Plaintiff to have a serious cognitive deficit was unsupported. Plaintiff now objects that
the magistrate judge compounded the ALJ’s error by treating the ALJ’s comparative assessment
of the psychologist’s opinion as if it were an analysis of the opinion’s intrinsic soundness. (Obj.
2, ECF No. 20.) Under Rule 72 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,
the district judge must determine de novo any part of the magistrate judge’s
disposition that has been properly objected to. The district judge may accept, reject,
or modify the recommended disposition; receive further evidence; or return the
matter to the magistrate judge with instructions.
Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(3). 	The Court is persuaded that the ALJ did not explain why the
psychologist’s opinion was unsupported, but it concludes that the error was harmless. The Court
will therefore adopt the R&R in part and affirm the Commissioner’s decision.
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“[R]eview of an ALJ’s decision as to whether the claimant is disabled is ‘limited to whether
the ALJ applied the correct legal standards and whether the findings of the ALJ are supported by
substantial evidence.’” 	Beery v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 819 F. App’x 405, 408 (6th Cir. 2020)
(quoting Blakley v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 581 F.3d 399, 405 (6th Cir. 2009)). Plaintiff argues the
ALJ failed to adhere to the Social Security Administration’s regulations on the weighing of
medical opinions. 	Under 20 C.F.R. § 404.1520c (2025), ALJs must expressly consider two
characteristics of a medical opinion when evaluating its persuasiveness: the “supportability” of the
opinion relative to the “objective medical evidence and supporting explanations” on which the
opinion is based, id. § 404.1520c(c)(1), and the “consistency” of the opinion “with the evidence
from other medical” and nonmedical sources, id. § 404.1520c(c)(2). The regulation says that the
Administration “will explain how we considered the supportability and consistency factors for a
medical source’s medical opinions” in articulating its decision on a benefits claim. 	Id.
§ 404.1520c(b)(2).
According to Plaintiff, the ALJ did not address the support for the opinion of Paul Kitchen,
a psychologist who examined Plaintiff on behalf of the Michigan Department of Health and
Human Services in March 2023. 	(See ECF No. 5-8, PageID.346–355.) 	The ALJ accurately
summarized Dr. Kitchen’s opinion (ECF No. 5-2, PageID.46), but when it came time to evaluate
the opinion’s persuasiveness, the ALJ did not assess the strength of the “objective medical
evidence and supporting explanations” set out in Dr. Kitchen’s report (id., PageID.48). 	For
instance, although the ALJ recognized that Dr. Kitchen believed Plaintiff “was likely to have
moderate to marked problems understanding, remembering, or applying information” and
“considered her overall prognosis . . . poor” (id., PageID.46), the ALJ did not explain whether
those conclusions were justified by Plaintiff’s responses to Dr. Kitchen’s questions, or by the
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results of Plaintiff’s IQ test, which indicated that she falls into the first percentile of adults ranked
by cognitive capacity. The ALJ’s analysis was limited to noting that Dr. Kitchen’s opinion was
inconsistent with other evidence of Plaintiff’s mental health, such as her treatment records and her
prior work history, and to mentioning that the state agency psychological examiner who reviewed
Dr. Kitchen’s report found it unpersuasive.
This was error. Ascertaining the degree to which a medical opinion is supported requires
an evaluation of the relationship between the medical provider’s observations and the conclusions
derived from those observations. 	It is not an assessment of the extent to which the opinion is
contradicted by evidence the opinion does not purport to rely on. See Turner v. Comm’r of Soc.
Sec. 	Admin., 	No. 	3:24-cv-182, 	2025 	WL 	2759571, 	at 	*4 	(E.D. 	Tenn. 	Sep. 	29, 	2025)
(“[S]upportability is a consideration of whether or not a medical source has explained—or
sufficiently justified—his or her own opinion.” (cleaned up)). The regulation obligated the ALJ
to explain the degree to which Dr. Kitchen’s opinion about Plaintiff’s mental faculties was
substantiated by her responses to his diagnostic questions and her performance on the IQ test. By
failing to do so, the ALJ did not discharge her duty to explain how the support (or lack thereof)
for Dr. Kitchen’s opinion influenced her conclusion about the opinion’s persuasiveness.
This error does not, however, mandate reversing the ALJ’s decision. The harmless-error
rule has long had a place in American administrative law. See Hickman & Pierce, Administrative
Law Treatise § 12.1, VitalLaw (database updated Nov. 2025). In the social-security context, the
Sixth Circuit has held that a deficiency in an ALJ’s explanation of the weight afforded to a medical
opinion may be excused if the “opinion is so patently deficient that the Commissioner could not
possibly credit it,” or “the Commissioner made findings consistent with . . . the opinion,” or “the
purposes of notice and ability for meaningful review have been satisfied.” Hargett v. Comm’r of
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Soc. Sec., 964 F.3d 546, 554 (6th Cir. 2020) (cleaned up). 	Although the Sixth Circuit has not
applied the harmless-error rule to the Administration’s current regulations, which no longer direct
the Commissioner to give controlling weight to the opinions of treating physicians, the
circumstances identified in Hargett may arise under the current regulations too. 	See Hardy v.
Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 554 F. Supp. 3d 900, 908 (E.D. Mich. 2021).1 So long as the path of the
ALJ’s reasoning can be roughly traced, and that reasoning is supported by substantial evidence,
the regulation’s aims of explaining decisions to claimants and of laying down a basis for judicial
review are satisfied. See Hubbert v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., No. 1:24-cv-423, 2025 WL 1478674, at
*1 (W.D. Mich. May 23, 2025).
That is the case here. 	The ALJ adequately explained why Dr. Kitchen’s opinion was
ultimately unpersuasive: it contradicted other evidence of Plaintiff’s mental capacity, and it was
rejected by the state agency psychological examiner when they initially denied Plaintiff’s claim.
The examiner expressly found Dr. Kitchen’s opinion unsupported because of its overreliance on
Plaintiff’s subjective reports and its overestimation of Plaintiff’s functional limitations. 	(ECF
No. 5-3, PageID.84.) In endorsing the examiner’s assessment of Dr. Kitchen’s opinion, the ALJ
provided an adequate, if not direct, explanation for why the ALJ regarded the opinion as
unsupported. That, combined with the explicit finding that the opinion was inconsistent with the
entire record, suffices as an explanation of why the ALJ regarded Dr. Kitchen’s diagnosis as
1 Hardy suggests that “the importance of cogent explanations is perhaps even more important” now that the
Administration no longer affords controlling weight to the opinions of treating physicians. 554 F. Supp. 3d at 908.
But it was the “central and important role” that the opinion of a treating physician played “in a claimant’s application
for social security benefits” that justified requiring the Commissioner to precisely explain the weight afforded to that
opinion. 	Rabbers v. Comm’r Soc. Sec. Admin., 582 F.3d 647, 656 (6th Cir. 2009). 	It is not evident that the
“circumscribed form of harmless error review” engineered to enforce compliance with the treating-physician rule
should be extended to decisions made under the current regulations. Id.
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unpersuasive. 	The Court concludes that the ALJ’s failure to fully articulate why Dr. Kitchen’s
opinion was unsupported was harmless. Reversal of the ALJ’s decision is therefore unwarranted.
IT IS ORDERED that the R&R (ECF No. 19) is ADOPTED in part as the opinion of the
Court.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiff’s objection (ECF No. 20) is SUSTAINED in
part.
A judgment shall issue in accordance with this Order.
Dated: May 29, 2026 	/s/ Hala Y. Jarbou
HALA Y. JARBOU
CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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