I Doubt This Is More Than A Localized Or Even An Individual Problem

     From a local television station that prefers to hide its call letters:

A local veteran, fighting for disability benefits, says he should have an answer in his case by now. In fact, he's already waited the three months they told him it would take. ... 

Alvie Roach says he has been working for just shy of seven years to file and appeal his disability claims. ...

He had his last hearing in early January, well before COVID-19 closures were put into place. His decision expected within three months. ...

But now were hitting almost four months of waiting, and still no word on that decision. Alvie says when he tried to investigate with the his lawyer's help, he found the judge actually filed a decision the day after his hearing. So, why won't anyone tell him what happened. ...

      I have not seen or heard of increased delays in getting out decisions after hearings so I expect this is at most a localized problem. Decision writing is the part of the process that's least likely to be delayed because of working at home. 

     I don't think the judge "filed" the decision the day after the hearing. More likely the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) put it in a decision writing queue and there's some delay there. While the ALJ may have made up his or her mind, nothing is cast in stone until the final sign off. Sometimes, perhaps not often enough, a decision writer gets back to the ALJ basically to ask "Are you sure about this?" Sometimes the ALJ changes his or her mind. Some delay on this account isn't necessarily a bad thing. My experience is that a little unexpected delay is a bad sign. The claimant is likely to be denied. A lot of unexpected delay, on the other hand, is either a neutral sign or perhaps even a favorable sign. I hold my breath in these cases.

     Also, the seven years part is unusual. The most common explanation when that happens is that the claimant failed to appeal an unfavorable decision and then let years elapse before filing a new claim. There are very few cases which are aggressively pursued for seven years. I've had some but not many.