Plaintiffs Oppose Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss their Class Action Lawsuit on the Early Cancellation of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance

National – On March 15, 2022, Plaintiffs filed their Amended Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss their class action lawsuit concerning PUA benefits. The lawsuit, filed in November 2021, seeks to hold the U.S. Government responsible for paying Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits to individuals who reside in states that cancelled the program early.  

The PUA program originated in the CARES Act, which was signed into law at the start of the pandemic in March 2020. PUA provided emergency unemployment assistance to workers who didn’t qualify for regular state UI or who exhausted their benefits. The federally funded emergency program was set to expire on September 4, 2021, but 25 states ceased their participation early and cut off benefits, causing millions of Americans, including plaintiffs, to face eviction, food insecurity, inability to pay bills, and other extreme hardships.  

While the U.S. government argues that the CARES Act didn’t allow them to pay out PUA funds directly to individuals who resided in states that stopped participating in the program, Plaintiffs argue that the language of the law, in which Congress directed that the U.S. Secretary of Labor “shall” provide the PUA benefits and “may” do so through agreements with the states, clearly requires the federal government to pay out the benefits to covered individuals even where states did not agree to cooperate. Plaintiffs ask the Court to require the government to pay out the unpaid benefits.