⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit hears Christine Shaw-Callender v. Commissioner of Social Security. Shaw-Callender is a veteran whose mortgage-loan-processing job ended in March 2022. She sought disability insurance benefits, saying post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, migraines, poor sleep, and difficulty handling stress kept her from working. The administrative law judge found those conditions severe and agreed that she could not return to her old job. But the judge's residual functional capacity finding—his estimate of what work she could still do—limited her to noncomplex tasks, no machine-set pace, little contact with other people, and routine changes, and concluded that other jobs remained available. A federal district judge upheld the denial. According to Shaw-Callender, the administrative law judge cherry-picked normal office visits and overlooked bad days and a Veterans Affairs evaluation. The Commissioner says the judge considered the whole record and reasonably relied on treatment improvement and two agency reviewers.

Christine Shaw-Callender v. Commissioner of Social Security (No. 25-1639) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, argued September 17, 2026.