The Legal Aid Society filed this class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 200,000 individuals who were unlawfully denied disability benefits by the Social Security Administration between June 1976 and July 1983. The case uncovered years of internal guidelines in which individuals with certain medical profiles were automatically or near-automatically denied benefits because their disabilities were viewed as not sufficiently “severe” enough, described by a federal trial court as “a systemic and covert misapplication of the disability regulations.” As a result of the litigation, the Court equitably tolled the statute of limitations governing appeals of disability denials, allowing claimants to appeal their denials even if they had failed to bring suit within the 60-day statutory period or to exhaust their administrative remedies. The Second Circuit upheld the trial court’s decision in 1995.