WASHINGTON − Derek Bateman, who independently harvests shrimp in Alabama, was unable to sell his seafood during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading him to apply for unemployment assistance.

After his application was turned down, Bateman spent several months attempting to appeal the decision, as detailed in a legal filing. Eventually, nearly two years later, he received some benefits he was owed after enduring significant loss and struggling to avoid hunger.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will evaluate whether Bateman and other Alabamians in similar situations must exhaust the unemployment system’s appeals process before they can take legal action against the state seeking better response times.

The residents maintain that they would not have pursued legal action if the appeals process had functioned properly from the start.

However, the state argues that the system was inundated during the pandemic and that it is not a valid reason to skip the usual administrative steps. They contend that this would be akin to allowing a plaintiff to leap straight to an appeals court without the trial court’s assessment.

In March 2021, when Bateman first managed to connect with someone at the unemployment office, the average wait time for an appeal was reported to be 263 days, based on federal data analyzed by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

This was the second-longest wait time in the United States, surpassed only by West Virginia, which had a 317-day wait.

Nonetheless, all states faced significant challenges due to the surge of applications amid the pandemic, and unemployment systems are still in the process of recovery, according to Michele Evermore from the foundation, who noted the massive damage caused by the pandemic is hard to quantify.

When the pandemic struck, state funding for unemployment programs was at a 50-year low, while they faced an unprecedented influx of claims and new benefit requirements mandated by Congress to address the crisis effectively.

Alabama, for example, was processing more than five times its usual number of claims, as reported by the state.

States continue to work through their pandemic backlog while also dealing with fraud issues and the need for technological updates, Evermore explained.

Labor departments are expected to issue 87% of initial payments within two to three weeks; Alabama’s best monthly performance this year managed only around 50%. Additionally, it ranks among the worst for timely processing of appeals.

If a state consistently underperforms, the federal government has the authority to withdraw grants that are allocated to assist states in operating their programs.

“However, since that will never result in improved performance, states are unlikely to lose their administrative funding,” Evermore remarked, noting her experience working in the U.S. Labor Department. “There are no real penalties for the government.”

Legal Services Alabama, a legal support organization, has filed a lawsuit against Alabama on behalf of Bateman and other residents, invoking a federal civil rights law, Section 1983. They aim to compel the state to make unemployment benefit decisions in a timely manner and schedule hearings within a 90-day limit.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that state law requires challengers to first navigate the state labor department’s administrative appeals process before they can take legal action.

Nevertheless, Legal Services Alabama asserts that their lawsuit is justified based on previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings, even if those rulings pertained to federal courts instead of state courts.

It’s “positively Kafkaesque” to require residents to first exhaust administrative appeals, the aid group informed the Supreme Court. They noted that Alabama has prevented residents from contesting the state’s failure to address their benefits claims in a timely matter “until that very same untimely process has been completed.”

This case is referred to as Williams v. Washington.