Four D.C. area workers are suing D.C.’s Department of Employment Services, accusing the agency of denying or seizing their unemployment benefits with little to no explanation, leaving them financially strapped and without answers during the pandemic.

The complaint, filed in D.C. Superior Court today by the Legal Aid Society of D.C. and Alston & Bird LLP, names DOES Director Unique Morris-Hughes, Mayor Muriel Bowser, and the D.C. government as defendants. It alleges the city department “systematically” violated D.C. workers’ rights by depriving them of their full benefits without offering an opportunity for claimants to contest or determine why their payments had been denied, reduced, or delayed.

Plaintiffs are seeking back payments for benefits they didn’t receive, plus a permanent injunction that would require the agency to provide a written rationale for benefit denials, terminations, or reductions, and grant claimants an opportunity to appeal those decisions.

Spokespeople for DOES did not immediately return a text message or email seeking comment.

William Perry, a 63-year-old D.C. resident who lays brick for a living, says he filed a claim for unemployment benefits shortly after his employer laid him off due to COVID-19 in June 2020. He heard little from DOES until nine months later, in March 2021, when the agency informed him that his claim had been denied because he hadn’t earned enough money to qualify for benefits. Perry contested the decision, but gave up in September 2021 after the agency told him his claim had been “lost in the system.” To this day, he has not received any payments.

Perry wrote in a declaration filed with the court that the situation has exacted a heavy toll on him.

“My financial situation is strained. I have not been able to afford to pay my utility bills. I have been late on rent payments. I had to ask to borrow money from my family members and friends to get by,” Perry writes. “I feel like the D.C. government has jerked me around, and it weighs on me not knowing whether my unemployment claim will ever be resolved.”

“I want to be able to move on with my life,” Perry added.

Perry is joined by three other workers who detail months of hardship struggling to collect benefits to which they are entitled, or suddenly realizing their payments had stopped or been clawed back for reasons that were unclear to them. Another plaintiff, 58-year-old Yohannes Woube, says DOES’ failure to pay him benefits forced him to leave D.C. and move in with family in Seattle. He had worked as a cab driver in the District for 10 years until the pandemic hit.

The suit is the latest allegation against the troubled agency, which has attracted scorn for its handling of crucial safety net benefits during the pandemic. D.C.’s Office of Inspector General informed DOES in May 2021 that it would launch an audit of the department following months of complaints from D.C. workers — and pressure from lawmakers — surrounding delayed payments and technical glitches that left many residents without income after COVID-19 shut down their workplaces.

In its defense, the Department of Employment Services has said previously that the office was severely overwhelmed during the pandemic, as claims reached historic levels virtually overnight. In 2020, the agency experienced a 372% rise in new claims over an average year, Director Morris-Hughes told the Washington Post.

Last year, the D.C. Council approved a plan to send $500 to residents who were forced to wait at least 60 days to receive benefits. Those funds went out in late 2021, according to a staffer for D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I-At Large).

Problems with the agency have not been limited to delayed or denied benefit payments. Recent reporting by WAMU/DCist revealed that DOES also failed to prevent widespread identity theft by bad actors who stole residents’ personal data to file bogus claims. The agency later admitted that it had received 13,000 reports of fraudulent claims during the pandemic.

DOES is also struggling with its own personnel issues: A former employee sued the agency in October for allegedly failing to pay him overtime for long hours he worked during the health crisis. DOES is responsible for enforcing the city’s wage and hour laws, including overtime rules.

An attorney with D.C. Legal Aid says the organization interviewed close to 500 workers about problems with unemployment benefits between March and December of 2020. In 2021, the count rose to 550 — more than 20 times the number of people who reported problems with DOES before the pandemic, in 2019.

Over the last two years, “a lot of those people were calling with these exact issues, where they never got benefits in the first place, or stopped receiving benefits at some point and didn’t get an explanation,” says Nicole Dooley, a supervising attorney in Legal Aid’s Public Benefits Law unit.

D.C. Legal Aid has escalated more than 700 unemployment cases to DOES in the past 18 months, attorneys say. DOES eventually resolved some of the issues, but systemic problems are still preventing many individuals from receiving back payments or concrete information about what’s happening with their claims, the lawsuit alleges.

It’s likely many more individuals have been affected but haven’t contacted Legal Aid for help.

“Legal Aid is only able to help a subset of individuals,” attorney Marcia Hollingsworth writes in an email to WAMU/DCist. “We are confident there are still likely hundreds, if not more, UI claimants who haven’t received benefits from DOES and do not know why.”