ALAN N. BLOCH, District Judge.
AND NOW, this 29th day of March, 2019, upon consideration of the parties' cross-motions for summary judgment, the Court, upon review of the Commissioner of Social Security's final decision denying Plaintiff's claim for Disability Insurance Benefits ("DIB") under Subchapter II of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 401,
Therefore, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment (document No. 9) is DENIED and that Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment (document No. 11) is GRANTED.
Preliminarily, the Court notes that, as the parties are aware, Plaintiff's insured period for DIB ended on December 31, 2013. Accordingly, she has to establish that she was disabled as of that time to warrant an award of benefits. The record contains a significant amount of medical records from after that date — some from very shortly after and some from much later. Plaintiff argues that the records — some from as shortly after the end of her insured period as January of 2014 — should be considered in determining whether she was disabled by that date. The Court agrees that the records from very shortly after December 31, 2013 have potential relevance, and, indeed, the ALJ did expressly consider the records from Plaintiff's January 2014 seizures, as well as treatment records from Dr. Janet Waters in April of 2014. (R. 29-30). The Court agrees with the ALJ that the later records do not in any way relate to the relevant time period.
With that in mind, the Court finds that the ALJ properly evaluated Plaintiff's physical impairments in finding her not to be disabled. As to Plaintiff's claim that the ALJ improperly found that her epilepsy failed to meet or medically equal Listing 11.02, 20 C.F.R. Part 404, Subpart P, Appendix 1, at Step Three of the sequential analysis, the Court notes that the ALJ thoroughly analyzed this listing in finding that it did not apply. Plaintiff does not attempt to demonstrate how she does meet this listing and, in fact, seems to acknowledge that the evidence does not establish that she does. (Doc. No. 10 at 12). It is important to remember that to meet a listing, a claimant must "present medical findings equal in severity to
Plaintiff further asserts that the ALJ did not properly assess her chronic headaches/migraines in rendering her decision. The ALJ did, of course, find Plaintiff's headaches to constitute a severe impairment at Step Two, but Plaintiff argues that she did not properly account for this impairment in determining the appropriate RFC. However, Plaintiff does not suggest specifically what additional functional limitations should have been included in the RFC to account for her headaches that were not already included. The issue is not whether Plaintiff did, in fact, suffer from these headaches during the relevant time (and, again, the ALJ found that she did), but whether that condition "caused functional limitations that precluded [her] from engaging in any substantial gainful activity."
In regard to her mental conditions, Plaintiff argues that the ALJ erred in not finding her mental health impairments to even constitute severe impairments at Step Two of the sequential analysis. However, the Step Two determination as to whether a claimant is suffering from a severe impairment is a threshold analysis requiring the showing of only one severe impairment.
Of course, even if an impairment is non-severe, it may still affect a claimant's RFC. In assessing a claimant's RFC, the ALJ "must consider limitations and restrictions imposed by all of an individual's impairments, even those that are not `severe.'" SSR 96-8p, 1996 WL 374184 (S.S.A.), at *5 (July 2, 1996).
Plaintiff also contends that she could not perform all of the job duties for the positions identified by the vocational expert at Step Five — church janitor, housekeeper/cleaner, and election clerk. (R. 32, 52). However, this is largely based on her claim that she was more restricted than her RFC reflected. The ALJ, though, did not include these greater limitations in Plaintiff's RFC, and, as discussed herein, substantial evidence supports her finding. Although a hypothetical question to a vocational expert must accurately portray the claimant's physical and mental impairments, it need reflect only those impairments that are supported by the record.
Accordingly, for all of the reasons stated herin, the Court finds that substantial evidence supports the ALJ's decision, and it hereby affirms.