On September 17, during the UE National Convention, delegates demonstrated against the Bush administration’s "no-match" policy of ordering employers to fire workers when there are discrepencies in their Social Security records. UE members in Chicago have also joined in protests against the Bush rule and have reached out to unorganized workers who have been threatened by their employers under the policy. Three weeks after the UE Convention – on October 10 – a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the Bush policy is illegal, and ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt it immediately.
Judge Charles R. Breyer’s decision also bars the Social Security Administration (SSA) from sending out 141,000 no-match letters to employers, covering more than eight million employees. The letters would have included information explaining the new rule to employers. The judge said the government had failed to follow proper procedures in issuing the new rule, which would have "massive ramifications."
The Bush policy halted by Judge Breyer would have made employers liable based on SSA "no-match" letters, even though SSA errors are caused by many innocent factors such as typographical errors and name changes due to marriage or divorce, and the use of multiple surnames, which is common in many parts of the world. According to the Office of the Inspector General for SSA, 12.7 million of the 17.8 million discrepancies in SSA’s database – more than 70 percent – belong to native-born U.S. citizens. Under the DHS rule, employers might be required to fire employees whose erroneous SSA records are not fixed within 90 days after the "no-match" letter is sent.
If allowed to go forward, the new rule could cause the firing of many thousands of workers who are legal residents, causing, in the judge’s words, "irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers." Even when workers are legal, the judge wrote, "There is a strong likelihood that employers may simply fire employees who are unable to resolve the discrepancy within 90 days."
Judge Breyer’s ruling prevents the Bush rule from taking effect until the court makes a final decision, which could take many months. The judge made it clear that he was skeptical of the government’s arguments.