How to Appeal a Notice of “Overpayment”
(for Cabrillo College Associate Faculty)

If you receive a notice of overpayment from the California Employment Development Department (EDD) that claims you were actually working when you were not, and tries to claw back the unemployment benefits money ("overpayment") already paid to you, you will need to file an appeal to stop the EDD from trying to get the money back.

We've seen an uptick in this kind of denial, which occurs after you have already been paid benefits. It works like this: EDD sends out a notice that they overpaid benefits, listing many weeks that benefits were supposedly incorrectly paid, and that the money needs to be paid back. And sometimes they've gone as far back as several years of payments. The weeks in question may be almost all during a summer or winter when you did not even have an assignment and obviously could not have been working. But now you have to file an appeal to stop EDD from trying to get the money back.

Apparently what is causing this mess is that the EDD is looking at past quarterly income, and then dividing that by the number of weeks of the quarter, and then saying that you made X dollars for those weeks and were therefore overpaid benefits for those weeks. Of course this makes no sense, but this is essentially what some judges think is going on. The good news is that some of these judges understand that this doesn't make sense.

For the weeks that fall outside the semester terms (which usually is most of the weeks in question) it's pretty easy to refute by showing the calendar schedules of the district. For the weeks in question that the campus was in session, you need to somehow document that the you did not in fact work, or that you properly listed that income when you filed the biweekly claim forms, or that you never filed a claim form for those weeks. And, of course, if you can get an official letter from your district's Human Resources department stating that you were not working during the dates in question, that's ideal.

It may be helpful to log in to your EDD benefits acount and retrieve the records of the payments made to you for the weeks in question (You should also look through your EDD mailbox for any communications that may be relevant.)

The notice from EDD will list every week that you were purportedly overpaid. To prepare for your hearing, make a list every one of these weeks, and for each week state the reason tht you were not incorrecctly paid (usually the reason is that the weeks in question were not even during a period when you had an assignmrnt, so you could not possibly have been working then!).

If you receive a notice of overpayment which is incorrect:

Set up an online myAppeal account

Once you have filed an appeal with the EDD, the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board (CUIAB) will send an "Appeal Acknowledgement and Welcome Letter," which notifies parties that the CUIAB has received the appeal and provides information necessary (a case number) to create and register for a "myAppeal" account. Note that a myAppeal account is in addition to, and separate from, your online account with the EDD that you use to file for unemployment.

(The ability to use the online CUIAB website has not yet been rolled out in all areas of California. If your appeals court is not yet using the CUIAB site, you will need to submit documents to the court via fax (yes, fax) or postal mail, although if you ask they might allow you to submit documents via email.)

See How to Register and Create a CUIAB myAppeal Account and set up your account as soon as possible. When you create your account, you will also be able to designate an official representative, such as someone from your union (or an attorney), who can assist you in the appeals process. To do this, you will need their name, email address, phone number, and street address. Your representative will then receive an email letting them know how to log in to your case.

You should also be able to add a representative later if you do not have their information when you set up your account.

Once you have a myAppeal account, you — and your representative — will be able to easily see all relevant documents, including case status, important dates and deadlines, documents submitted by the district (or the district's representative), documents submitted by you, notes from phone interviews, audio recordings of previous appeals hearings (if any), all correspondence relating to your case, and the exact reasons for the denial. In other words, you and your rep will now see everything that the judge will see when conducting the hearing. And your rep will be able to join you in your telephone hearing.

You and your representative will now be able to upload documents directly, which eliminates the need for you to fax them or postal mail them to the court!

After your account is created you can log in at:
https://cuiab.ca.gov/myappeal/

Statute of limitations

According to the EDD's own regulations (Code § 1376) , they are supposed to mail out any notice of overpayment "Not later than one year after the close of the benefit year in which the overpayment was made." For example, if you filed a new claim (not a reopener) on May 20, 2021, the claim ends on May 20, 2022 (the close of the benefits year). So if the date of the notice is after May 20, 2023 (one year after the close of the benefits year), you should be able to argue that the statute of limitations applies and that they cannot ask for the money back (assuming there is no fraud, misrepresentation, or willful nondisclosure). Be sure to cite Precedent Benefit Decision P-M-345.

If the statute of limittions applies to your notice, you will not need to refute the specifics of the weeks in question. Assuming there is no fraud, misrepresentation, or willful nondisclosure, simply citing the regulation and case listed above should be enough to win the appeal.

Documents that you should submit to the court

Here are the documents that you should submit to the court in advance of the hearing, by uploding them to the CUIAB site:

What to expect at your hearing

At the time of the hearing, you (and your representative, if you have one) will be asked to call in to the court 15 minutes before the scheduled time. The hearing will essentially be a phone conference call.

It's helpful to be logged in to the case at CUIAB website, as the judge will start by listing each document related to the case that has been uploaded to the site, and will ask you to confirm that these are the complete set of documents.

The judge may ask you to speak first, or ask your representative (if you have one) to speak first, or may ask which you prefer. At any point the judge may ask general or specific questions.

When asked for your statement, keep it focused and brief. Simply explain, for each week in question, why you were not incorrectly paid benefits.

The hearing itself will probably last 15-30 minutes or so. You will be notified later of the decision, usually within a few weeks. (Shortly after your hearing, the audio recording of the hearing will be accessible through the CUIAB site.)

You will probably win and have their denial reversed, but if for some reason you do not win, immediately contact our local union, CCFT, for further assistance. You may decide to file a second appeal.

For the most current version of this document, see:
https://contingentworld.com/unemployment/overpayment_cabrillo.php