The SSDI eligibility ban in Wisconsin is no more. On July 14th, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction to the Department to stop enforcing the SSDI eligibility ban effective July 20th.
Note: The Wisconsin Examiner and Fox6 have stories on this court order.
This order should mean that, as of July 20th, any kind of unemployment claim (initial claim or weekly certification) or any initial determination or appeal tribunal hearing or decision (and any Commission decision over an appeal of an appeal tribunal decision) relating to the SSDI eligibility ban can no longer be enforced.
On its own initiative, however, the Department is limiting this court order only to initial claims filed after July 20th and to weekly certifications filed after July 26th for the week ending 07/26/2025. None of these limitations are in the court order, but the Department is applying these limitations regardless.
Furthermore, current SSDI recipients are starting to receive confusing notices from the Department about this court order.
Here is — looking at each sentence of this notice — why this notice is confusing and misleading.
A determination dated 10/24/24 denied benefits while the claimant was receiving Social Security disability payments.
The document is here referring to the prior initial determination for this particular claimant that denied eligibility for regular unemployment benefits because of the SSDI eligibility ban. Somehow the Department thinks this claimant will remember this prior determination based on this reference to 10/24/2024. As most people do not center their lives on their unemployment claim-filing, this reference is meaningless.
As of the week ending 07/26/25, the claimant may receive unemployment insurance benefits while receiving Social Security disability payments.
This sentence is the Department’s effort to follow the court order. The Department, however, is limiting the court order to weekly certifications despite the court order itself not including such a limitation.
Moreover, the Department is not providing any explanation about why there is now eligibility for unemployment benefits for SSDI recipients. Nor is the Department explaining why there is eligibility for this week particular, and there is only a limited indication here that there will be eligibility for weeks after the week ending 07/26/2025 (claimants have to presume that the eligibility will extend to additional weeks).
Effect
Benefits are allowed with respect to this issue only.
The Department is signaling here that it will likely still find other reasons to deny you unemployment benefits. There are countless other reasons for why a person may not be eligible for unemployment benefits. The Department has applied the SSDI eligibility ban to deny unemployment benefits BEFORE dealing with any other issue for which it can deny benefits. Now, those other reasons for denying unemployment benefits will be examined. Note: to see what those other reasons are, review the unemployment primer. Also understand that you need to have established monetary eligibility (aka, a benefit year) that includes the week ending 07/26/2025.
This determination applies only to benefits potentially payable as of the week ending 07/26/25 if an unemployment insurance claim was filed.
What the Department is not explaining here is that you need to file a weekly certification for the week ending 07/26/2025 (and any other week you want to be paid unemployment benefits) and that all the claim-filing criteria in those weekly certifications are satisfied (including FIVE work search actions and job center of Wisconsin registration) in order to be paid any unemployment benefits for that week.
Furthermore, that weekly certification cannot have been filed yet when this determination was issued (07/23/2025). Weekly certifications for a week can ONLY be filed after that week is over. So, the weekly certification for the week ending 07/26/2025 can only be filed after July 26th. The weekly certification for the week ending 08/02/2025 can only be filed after August 2nd. And so on.
If you have not been filing weekly certifications of late, you will first need to file an initial claim BEFORE filing any weekly certifications. Again, see the discussion of initial claims and weekly certifications in the unemployment primer
This determination may be issued even if you are not currently filing for benefits. If you are unemployed or partially unemployed, apply for unemployment benefits at my.unemployment.wisconsin.gov.
The first sentence here makes no sense, as the determination HAS been issued. What this sentence tells me is that the Department is sending this kind of notice to everyone it has on file who was denied unemployment benefits because of the SSDI eligibility ban whether or not they are currently filing weekly certifications. For someone who is not currently filing weekly certifications, this kind of notice is VERY misleading.
The second sentence is telling these folks to apply for unemployment benefits without explaining any of the general criteria that applies to all unemployment claims still applies (such as that the person has a non-disqualifying job loss, can establish Their monetary eligibility, and that the person can then file weekly certifications for each week they want to receive unemployment benefits and that those weekly certification have no additional reasons to disqualify these individuals). So an SSDI recipient receiving this notice will likely think that They will now receive unemployment benefits without understanding at all the entire unemployment claim-filing process will now be apply to them.
One final warning about what is going on here is needed. In place of the SSDI eligibility ban, the Department is proposing an everlasting, 100% SSDI offset that will, in all practical terms, lead to the same result as an SSDI eligibility ban. The labor caucus of the Advisory Council has already endorsed this new kind of discrimination against disabled workers. As no state currently has any kind of SSDI offset, there is no valid reason for Wisconsin to implement this kind of offset now other than to replicate the discrimination from the SSDI eligibility ban.