Loper Bright Does Not Revive the Treating-Physician Rule: Harner Remains Controlling in Social Security Disability Appeals

1. Introduction

Richard Edmond Rigsbee sought disability insurance benefits based initially on severe emphysema, a lung nodule, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. His application, filed in April 2021, alleged disability beginning April 15, 2021. After administrative denials, an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) concluded that his impairments did not prevent all qualifying work. The Appeals Council declined review, and the Northern District of Alabama upheld the administrative determination.

Rigsbee’s appeal presented three principal questions:

1. Whether Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo undermined circuit precedent validating the regulation that abolished the treating-physician rule for newer claims.
2. Whether substantial evidence supported the ALJ’s assessment of his respiratory limitations and the persuasiveness of medical opinions.
3. Whether the Appeals Council improperly declined to consider additional opinions from Drs. Mohammed Shubair and Janie Teschner.

The court rejected each argument. Its analysis distinguishes judicial deference to an agency’s statutory interpretation from administrative evaluation of medical evidence, while emphasizing the continuing force of precedent after a major change in interpretive methodology.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The administrative findings

The ALJ found that Rigsbee had not engaged in substantial gainful activity since his alleged onset date. His severe impairments included COPD, panic disorder with agoraphobia, and reactive depression. Mild obstructive sleep apnea was considered non-severe. None of his impairments, individually or together, met or medically equaled a listed impairment.

The ALJ then assessed Rigsbee’s residual functional capacity (RFC), finding that he could perform a restricted range of light work. The restrictions included:

• Occasionally lifting or carrying twenty pounds.
• Standing or walking for six hours and sitting for six hours in an eight-hour workday, with customary breaks.
• Only occasional performance of specified climbing and postural activities.
• Avoidance of all exposure to polluted environments or respiratory irritants.
• Occasional interaction and cooperation with coworkers and supervisors.
• Maintaining concentration, persistence, or pace in two-hour intervals throughout the workday.

The ALJ acknowledged Rigsbee’s reported fatigue, breathlessness, sensitivity to ordinary smells, and anxiety around groups. Although his impairments could reasonably produce symptoms, the ALJ found that his descriptions of their intensity and limiting effects were not entirely consistent with the record.

The ALJ concluded that Rigsbee could perform his former occupation as a mail handler as generally described in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, although not as he had actually performed it. Vocational testimony also identified other available occupations, including small parts assembler, dowel inspector, table worker, and nut sorter.

The opinion’s introductory account repeats “past relevant work” when describing the fifth step. The operative distinction is that step four concerns past relevant work, while step five concerns other work existing in the national economy. The administrative decision contained findings addressing both.

The appellate disposition

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed because:

1. Harner v. Soc. Sec. Admin. remained binding despite Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo.
2. The medical evidence adequately supported the ALJ’s functional assessment and evaluation of competing opinions.
3. The additional evidence submitted to the Appeals Council failed the materiality or chronological-relevance requirements applied by the court.

3. Analysis: Precedents Cited

A. Judicial review of disability determinations

Raper v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec., 89 F.4th 1261 (11th Cir. 2024)

Raper supplied the framework for appellate review. When the Appeals Council denies review, the ALJ’s decision is reviewed as the Commissioner’s final decision. Factual determinations receive substantial-evidence review, while the governing legal principles are reviewed independently.

This distinction structured the result: the validity and continuing force of governing legal rules were legal questions, but the assessment of respiratory evidence was not an invitation to decide disability anew.

Viverette v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec., 13 F.4th 1309 (11th Cir. 2021)

Viverette supplied the definition of substantial evidence: relevant evidence, greater than a scintilla but less than a preponderance, that a reasonable person would accept as adequate to support a conclusion.

This standard permits affirmance even when the record contains evidence supporting the claimant. The question is whether the administrative conclusion has adequate support, not whether the reviewing court would have weighed every item identically.

B. Treating physicians, agency authority, and surviving precedent

Phillips v. Barnhart, 357 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. 2004)

Phillips described the former treating-physician rule: a treating physician’s opinion ordinarily received substantial or considerable weight unless good cause justified a different treatment. The court cited it to explain the historical regime that the newer regulation displaced.

Its role was explanatory rather than controlling. Rigsbee filed his claim after the effective date of the replacement framework, so the former presumption did not govern his application.

Harner v. Soc. Sec. Admin., 38 F.4th 892 (11th Cir. 2022)

Harner was the decisive circuit precedent. It upheld 20 C.F.R. § 404.1520c as a lawful exercise of the Commissioner’s authority to adopt reasonable and proper rules for adjudicating disability claims. That regulation eliminated automatic deference or particular evidentiary weight based on a source’s treating relationship for claims filed on or after March 27, 2017.

Under Harner, medical opinions are assessed for persuasiveness rather than assigned special weight because of the physician’s status. Since Rigsbee applied in April 2021, this framework governed his claim.

Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984)

Chevron supplied the former administrative-law framework under which courts sometimes deferred to permissible agency interpretations of statutes they administer. Because Harner had relied on that framework when sustaining the regulation, Rigsbee argued that overruling Chevron removed the foundation of Harner.

The court rejected the proposition that abandoning an interpretive framework automatically invalidates every earlier judgment reached using it.

Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024)

Loper Bright overruled Chevron, but expressly preserved the ordinary operation of statutory stare decisis for earlier decisions holding particular agency actions lawful. Reliance on Chevron alone was not a sufficient reason to unsettle those holdings.

That qualification defeated Rigsbee’s challenge. The court treated Harner as an existing holding sustaining a specific regulation, not as a proposition automatically erased by the change in judicial methodology.

The reasoning is limited: it does not declare every earlier agency-law decision immune from reconsideration. It establishes that Loper Bright, standing alone, did not authorize this panel to disregard Harner.

United States v. Archer, 531 F.3d 1347 (11th Cir. 2008)

Archer supplied the prior-panel-precedent rule. An earlier panel’s holding binds later panels unless the Supreme Court or the Eleventh Circuit sitting en banc overrules it or undermines it to the point of abrogation.

Read together, Archer and Loper Bright resolved the institutional question. The panel could not replace Harner with its own fresh assessment merely because the Supreme Court had changed the general approach to agency deference.

C. Preservation of appellate arguments

Crawford v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec., 363 F.3d 1155 (11th Cir. 2004)

Crawford supported the court’s refusal to entertain an argument not first raised in the district court. Rigsbee had not preserved his contention concerning the GOLD standards for evaluating COPD.

The opinion nevertheless addressed the substance of that contention, explaining that the applicable regulations did not require the ALJ to use those standards. The preservation ruling therefore provided an additional ground for rejecting the argument.

D. Additional evidence before the Appeals Council

Hargress v. Soc. Sec. Admin., Comm'r, 883 F.3d 1302 (11th Cir. 2018)

Hargress provided the principal framework for evaluating additional evidence: under the test applied in this opinion, the evidence had to be new, material, and chronologically relevant. The court described materiality as a reasonable possibility of changing the administrative result and chronological relevance as a relationship to the period on or before the ALJ’s decision.

The court also relied on Hargress in assessing whether a later medical opinion genuinely evaluated the claimant’s earlier condition. The absence of an indication that Dr. Teschner reviewed the earlier medical records weighed against chronological relevance.

Washington v. Soc. Sec. Admin., Comm'r, 806 F.3d 1317 (11th Cir. 2015)

Washington established that whether additional evidence satisfies the relevant requirements is a legal question reviewed de novo. An erroneous refusal to consider qualifying evidence requires remand.

It also supported considering relevant factors beyond those expressly identified by the Appeals Council. Here, independent review produced affirmance because the court concluded that the additional opinions did not satisfy the necessary requirements.

4. Analysis: Legal Reasoning

A. Two different forms of “deference”

The central argument involved two distinct concepts. Chevron concerned judicial deference to agency interpretations of statutes. The former treating-physician rule concerned administrative weight given to medical opinions. Ending the first did not automatically restore the second.

The necessary intermediate question was whether the circuit decision validating the replacement medical-opinion regulation remained binding. Because Loper Bright preserved prior holdings concerning specific agency actions, the answer was yes. The panel therefore applied Harner rather than conducting a new statutory analysis unconstrained by precedent.

B. Persuasiveness replaces preferential weight, not reasoned evaluation

Section 404.1520c identifies five considerations: supportability, consistency, the source’s relationship with the claimant, specialization, and other relevant factors. Supportability and consistency are the most important, and the ALJ must explain their consideration.

Supportability concerns the medical evidence and explanations supporting the source’s own opinion. Consistency concerns how well the opinion fits the other evidence. A treatment relationship remains relevant, but it does not itself create entitlement to controlling or preferential weight.

Accordingly, the decision does not authorize unexplained rejection of treating physicians. It permits rejection of their proposed limitations when the regulatory analysis and record adequately support that conclusion.

C. The respiratory evidence supported the assessed limitations

Rigsbee argued that the ALJ placed excessive weight on spirometry and insufficient weight on evidence of severe emphysema. He invoked GOLD standards encouraging further testing when symptoms and spirometry conflict.

The court found no regulatory requirement to apply those standards as the governing legal test. Instead, the ALJ had to evaluate the available medical evidence under the applicable disability regulations.

The supporting record included generally normal breath sounds, consistently good oxygen saturation, favorable follow-up examinations, essentially normal pulmonary function testing with some mildly decreased diffusion capacity, and no COPD hospitalization during the relevant period. State agency physicians also concluded that Rigsbee retained capacity for a range of light work.

Against that evidence, the ALJ considered more restrictive opinions, including Dr. Shubair’s assessment that Rigsbee was a candidate for long-term disability and CRNP Angela Foster’s description of substantial limitations. The court found that the ALJ reasonably identified tensions between those assessments and the clinical findings.

The reasoning turns on functional capacity rather than diagnosis alone. A serious diagnostic label does not conclusively establish the extent of work-related restrictions. Equally, normal results on particular tests do not create a categorical rule against disability. The court upheld this assessment on this record, including an RFC that expressly restricted respiratory exposure.

D. The additional opinions did not warrant reconsideration

Dr. Shubair’s additional statements, dated August 2021 and April 2022, described severe emphysema on a CT scan and a restriction against lifting more than ten pounds. The court characterized them as less restrictive than his opinion already presented to the ALJ and inconsistent with other evidence. It therefore found no reasonable possibility that they would change the administrative result.

This does not mean a ten-pound lifting restriction is equivalent to the ALJ’s twenty-pound allowance. Rather, the court concluded that the additional statements did not materially alter the evidentiary picture already assessed.

For Dr. Teschner, the opinion acknowledged a connection to evidence from the relevant period but emphasized that neither her form nor accompanying documents indicated that she had evaluated Rigsbee’s earlier medical records when forming her opinion. It also found her proposed limitations inconsistent with contemporaneous evidence and therefore immaterial.

These were independent obstacles. Even if chronological relevance were established, the court’s separate materiality finding would remain. Conversely, the reasoning should not be expanded into a categorical prohibition on retrospective medical opinions: the issue is whether the particular opinion meaningfully addresses the earlier period and could affect the outcome.

5. Potential Impact

• Post-Chevron challenges require more than a change in methodology. Litigants cannot assume that citing Loper Bright eliminates an existing circuit holding upholding an agency regulation.
• Treating-source status remains insufficient by itself. For claims governed by § 404.1520c, persuasive evidence should connect proposed limitations to medical findings and explain consistency with the broader record.
• Clinical guidance and disability standards remain distinct. Medical standards may inform the evidence, but they do not automatically replace the governing regulatory framework. The opinion does not authorize disregarding relevant clinical evidence.
• Issue preservation matters. Arguments concerning the proper medical framework should be developed in the district court rather than introduced for the first time on appeal.
• Additional opinions need a clear evidentiary purpose. A useful retrospective opinion should explain its temporal connection, identify the supporting records, and show why its conclusions could change the result.

Because the decision is unpublished, these implications are principally persuasive and practical. The binding doctrinal foundations remain the published decisions it applies.

6. Complex Concepts Simplified

Residual functional capacity

The most a claimant can still do physically and mentally despite medically supported limitations.

The Listings

Regulatory descriptions of sufficiently severe impairments. Meeting or medically equaling one establishes disability at that stage; failing to do so does not end the claim.

Substantial evidence

Enough relevant evidence for a reasonable person to accept the conclusion. It does not require that the evidence overwhelmingly favor the agency.

De novo review

Independent judicial consideration of a legal question without deferring to the earlier legal conclusion.

Stare decisis and prior-panel precedent

Rules preserving earlier holdings. A circuit panel generally must follow an earlier panel unless controlling higher authority or the full circuit court displaces it.

Material and chronologically relevant evidence

Evidence capable of affecting the administrative outcome under the test applied by the court, and evidence that addresses the period covered by the ALJ’s decision.

Spirometry, diffusion testing, and CT imaging

Different ways of assessing respiratory health: airflow, gas transfer, and lung structure. Their results contribute to, but do not individually dictate, the legal assessment of work capacity.

7. Conclusion

The court’s central holding is that Loper Bright did not free an Eleventh Circuit panel to disregard Harner or revive the former treating-physician rule. The governing regulation continued to require evaluation of medical opinions principally through supportability and consistency.

The affirmance also illustrates the limited role of substantial-evidence review and the importance of adequately supported, temporally connected additional evidence. Its broader significance is continuity: a major change in administrative-law methodology does not automatically undo settled holdings validating particular agency actions.