Unemployment Benefits ID Checks

At the height of the pandemic, clients were calling us every day in absolute desperation. They didn’t have money to pay rent, buy food, or get their kids school supplies and clothes. Unemployment benefits, including some special benefits started specifically for the pandemic, were a key lifeline.

Yet, in late 2020, the state suddenly stopped paying thousands of people who were already receiving benefits and stopped processing applications for thousands more people who would later be determined eligible. The desperate calls intensified.

When my Legal Aid of Arkanas colleagues Trevor Hawkins, Nikki Clark, Jaden Atkins, and Victoria Frasier investigated, they learned that the state started using an identity verification algorithm that was flagging tens of thousands of claims as suspicious. Our clients ended up giving the state proof of their identities multiple times but did not get their benefits. So, my colleagues used Arkansas’s freedom of information laws to ask the state for more information about how the algorithm worked to see whether the claims were actually fraudulent or were wrongly getting caught up in the algorithmic system. The state refused to provide the information sought, asserting that any information about how the algorithm worked was needed for law enforcement purposes.

My colleagues then sued to get the information. After the judge ruled in our favor, the state appealed. The Arkansas Supreme Court held in a 5-2 decision that the state’s justification for withholding the information was bogus and that the state had to turn over the requested information immediately. This was one of the first cases about access to government algorithms that reached any state supreme court.