Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits eligibility; Self-certification requirements; 15 USC §§ 2102(a)(3)(A)(ii)(I)(dd) & (gg); The Continued Assistance for Unemployed Workers Act (CAA); The Unemployment Insurance Appeals Commission (UIAC); The Department of Labor & Economic Opportunity/Unemployment Insurance Agency (the Agency); Administrative law judge (ALJ)

Holding that the claimant never qualified for PUA benefits under federal law, the court reversed the trial court’s order that affirmed the UIAC’s decision that she was eligible, and remanded. Appellant-Agency contended that “the trial court erred in ruling claimant was eligible for PUA benefits because [she] did not present documentation of prepandemic employment.” The court agreed that “the trial court erred, but for different reasons.” It determined that the “trial court did not apply the correct legal analysis when it affirmed the UIAC’s ruling that claimant was eligible for PUA benefits. [It] erred in affirming the UIAC’s decision, just as the UIAC erred in ruling ‘[t]he ALJ properly applied the law’ to the facts in this matter. The trial court stated the standard of review ‘gives great deference to the agency[.]’ However, . . . ‘substantially less deference, if any, is accorded to the circuit court’s determinations on matters of law[]’ than to [its] review of agency fact-finding.” Reviewing the claimant’s testimony, the court concluded that had she “been offered a position as an esthetician, and the spa shuttered because of the pandemic, she would have qualified under § (gg). And had claimant started working, but had to leave her job because her children’s school closed and she needed to stay home with them, [she] would have qualified under § (dd). But the evidence claimant provided is insufficient under the plain language of the statute to prove eligibility for PUA benefits.” The court held that her “testimony, even if it showed she planned to begin employment, would not qualify as the documentation required by the CAA, which is ‘proof of recent attachment to the labor force.’” Yet the ALJ ruled that she “was eligible for benefits because but for the pandemic, she could have received a job offer. This ruling was contrary to law, and was clear error.”