USCA11 Case: 21-11702 Date Filed: 01/26/2022 Page: 1 of 8

[DO NOT PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 21-11702 Non-Argument Calendar ____________________

KIMBERLY MEDDERS, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, COMMISSIONER,

Defendant-Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama D.C. Docket No. 4:19-cv-01394-SGC ____________________ USCA11 Case: 21-11702 Date Filed: 01/26/2022 Page: 2 of 8

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Before WILSON, ROSENBAUM, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Kimberly Medders appeals the district court’s order affirm- ing the Commissioner of Social Security’s denial of her claim for disability benefits and denying her motion to remand. Medders contends the Appeals Council erred by failing to consider her new and material evidence of disability, and the district court erred by failing to remand to the agency to consider a subsequent favorable disability decision. After careful review, we affirm. I. Medders applied for disability benefits in March 2017 based on a mix of physical and mental ailments and later requested a hear- ing before an administrative law judge (“ALJ”). At the time of the March 2019 hearing, the treatment rec- ords before the agency spanned from 2015 to 2018 and covered, among other things, the diagnosis and treatment of Medders’s var- ious physical conditions, including chronic and occasionally severe lower back and neck pain, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, neuropathy, and complications from a prior ankle fracture. The records in- cluded the results of a CT scan of Medders’s ankle and MRI scans of the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar regions of her spine. The lum- bar MRI found degenerative changes at multiple levels and a small disc protrusion at L5-S1, the lumbrosacral joint. In addition, Medders testified at the hearing about her impairments. USCA11 Case: 21-11702 Date Filed: 01/26/2022 Page: 3 of 8

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After the hearing, the ALJ denied benefits on the ground that Medders retained the residual functional capacity to perform light work with certain limitations from September 9, 2016, the alleged disability-onset date, through March 22, 2019, the date of the ALJ’s decision. The ALJ found that Medders suffered from a variety of severe impairments, including fibromyalgia, chronic back pain, neuropathy, “status post left ankle surgery,” cervical disc degener- ation, and osteoarthritis, but it reasoned that these musculoskeletal and neurological conditions were being conservatively managed with medications and had not required more invasive treatment, apart from lumbar epidural injections. Medders requested review of the ALJ’s decision by the Ap- peals Council and submitted new evidence of treatment records from five other providers dated between September 2015 and April 2016. This evidence showed the following: (1) treatment of low back pain, including lumbar epidural injections, from September 2015 and December 2015; (2) the results of conduction velocity and electromyography tests in March 2016, which showed compres- sion neuropathy in Medders’s lower extremities; (3) diagnoses of moderate cervical arthritis, cervicalgia, chronic pain syndrome, lumbago with sciatica, and carpal tunnel syndrome; (4) an April 2016 MRI scan indicating degenerative changes at multiple levels and a small disc protrusion at L5-S1; and (5) treatment of posttrau- matic arthrosis of her left ankle. Notably, it appears the MRI scan described in point (4) above was already part of the agency record. USCA11 Case: 21-11702 Date Filed: 01/26/2022 Page: 4 of 8

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The Appeals Council denied review, briefly describing the treatment records Medders had submitted and finding that the new evidence “[did] not show a reasonable probability that it would change the outcome of the decision.” Medders sought federal dis- trict-court review, and she moved to remand back to the agency to reconsider its decision in light of the new evidence as well as a fa- vorable Social Security decision in August 2020 determining that she was disabled starting on May 1, 2019. See 42 U.S.C. § 405(g). The district court affirmed the Appeals Council and denied re- mand, and Medders appeals. II. With a few exceptions, a Social Security claimant is allowed to present new evidence at each stage of the administrative process, including before the Appeals Council. Washington v. Soc. Sec. Ad- min., Comm’r, 806 F.3d 1317, 1320 (11th Cir. 2015); see also Pupo v. Comm’r, Soc. Sec. Admin., 17 F.4th 1054, 1063 (11th Cir. 2021). The Appeals Council will review a case if it “receives additional ev- idence that is new, material, and relates to the period on or before the date of the hearing decision, and there is a reasonable probabil- ity that the additional evidence would change the outcome of the decision.” 20 C.F.R. § 416.1470(a)(5). “[W]hen a claimant properly presents new evidence to the Appeals Council, a reviewing court must consider whether that new evidence renders the denial of benefits erroneous.” Ingram v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec. Admin., 496 F.3d 1253, 1262 (11th Cir. 2007). USCA11 Case: 21-11702 Date Filed: 01/26/2022 Page: 5 of 8

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The Appeals Council must consider new and material evi- dence submitted by a claimant and may not “perfunctorily adhere” to an ALJ’s decision. Mitchell v. Comm’r, Soc. Sec. Admin., 771 F.3d 780, 783–84 (11th Cir. 2014). But it need not “give a detailed rationale for why each piece of new evidence submitted to it does not change the ALJ’s decision.” Id. at 784. When the Appeals Council states that it has considered a claimant’s new evidence but found it would not affect the result, we will not “second-guess that assertion” absent some “affirmative basis” for concluding that it failed to evaluate the new evidence. Id. at 783. For example, if the claimant submits new evidence “related to an entirely new condi- tion which could have caused the claimant’s back pain,” we would expect the Appeals Council “to satisfactorily explain that new evi- dence.” Id. But no further explanation is necessary where the claimant presents “additional evidence” related to a medical condi- tion that was already considered by the ALJ. See id. at 783–85. Here, the record does not support Medders’s claim that the Appeals Council failed to consider her new evidence. The Appeals Council explicitly noted each of the medical records Medders sub- mitted and found that the new evidence did not show a reasonable probability of a different result. It was not required to give a de- tailed rationale for why each piece of new evidence submitted did not change the ALJ’s denial of benefits. See Mitchell, 771 F.3d at 784. Nor has Medders identified an “affirmative basis” to question the Appeals Council’s statement, such as evidence of a new or worsened impairment. See id. at 783. Rather, it appears that the USCA11 Case: 21-11702 Date Filed: 01/26/2022 Page: 6 of 8

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treatment records covered medical conditions that were already before the ALJ. See id. Under Mitchell, therefore, the Appeals Council’s brief explanation was adequate to show it considered Medders’s new evidence. Moreover, the new evidence Medders submitted did not render the Commissioner’s denial of benefits erroneous. See In- gram, 496 F.3d at 1262. To start, the new treatment records pre- date the alleged disability onset date of September 9, 2016, and so do not speak directly to the relevant time period. Moreover, the new records relate to medical conditions that were either already documented in the existing record, such as the disc protrusion at L5-S1, or were addressed in Medders’s testimony to the ALJ. And the ALJ’s decision reflects that he considered the impairments re- flected in the new treatment records, including lower back and leg pain, osteoarthritis, complications from a prior ankle fracture, and neuropathy. Apart from broadly asserting that the new records “add sub- stantially” to her claim, Medders does not identify any specific in- formation that undermines the ALJ’s assessment of her conditions during the relevant period. And she does not otherwise present an argument that the ALJ’s decision is not supported by substantial evidence. Accordingly, we affirm the Appeals Council’s decision to deny review. 1

1 For the same reasons, we affirm the district court’s denial of Medders’s mo- tion to remand under “sentence four” of 42 U.S.C. § 405(g). See Ingram v. USCA11 Case: 21-11702 Date Filed: 01/26/2022 Page: 7 of 8

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III. Medders also claims that the district court should have re- manded her disability claim to the agency to consider a subsequent favorable decision in August 2020 determining that she was disa- bled starting on May 1, 2019. Reviewing de novo, we disagree. See Jackson v. Chater, 99 F.3d 1086, 1092 (11th Cir. 1996). Under “sentence six” of 42 U.S.C. § 405(g), the district court may “remand to the Commissioner to consider new evidence pre- sented for the first time in the district court.” Ingram, 496 F.3d at 1267. To warrant remand, the claimant must establish that the ev- idence is new and material and that good cause exists for the failure to submit the evidence previously. Id. In this Circuit, a subsequent favorable disability decision is not newly discovered evidence. Hunter v. Soc. Sec. Admin., Comm’r, 808 F.3d 818, 821 (11th Cir. 2015) (“A decision is not evi- dence any more than evidence is a decision.”). While noting a cir- cuit split on the issue, we explained that there was no inconsistency in finding that two successive ALJ decisions were supported by sub- stantial evidence—a deferential standard—even when those deci- sions reached opposing conclusions. Id. at 822. Nonetheless, the

Comm’r of Soc. Sec. Admin, 496 F.3d 1253, 1266–68 (11th Cir. 2007) (explain- ing that sentence four of § 405(g) permits remand where the decision to deny benefits was not supported by substantial evidence in the record as a whole based on the evidence that the Appeals Council did not adequately consider). USCA11 Case: 21-11702 Date Filed: 01/26/2022 Page: 8 of 8

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evidence supporting a subsequent favorable decision may consti- tute new and material evidence under § 405(g). See id. at 821–22. Here, as in Hunter, “the only ‘new evidence’ [Medders] cites in support of her request for remand is the later favorable deci- sion.” Id. at 822. But “that decision is not evidence for purposes of § 405(g).” Id. While Medders also points to the new treatment rec- ords from 2015 and 2016, those records were presented to and con- sidered by the Appeals Council, as discussed above, and so do not present grounds for a sentence-six remand. See Ingram, 496 F.3d at 1266–68. Despite Medders’s belief that Hunter picked the wrong side of the circuit split, we as a panel are bound by that decision. See United States v. Archer, 531 F.3d 1347, 1352 (11th Cir. 2008) (“[A] prior panel’s holding is binding on all subsequent panels unless and until it is overruled or undermined to the point of abrogation by the Supreme Court or by this court sitting en banc.”). Accordingly, the district court properly denied remand under sentence six based on the subsequent favorable disability decision. IV. In sum, and for the reasons stated above, we affirm the dis- trict court’s decision to affirm the Commissioner’s denial of disa- bility benefits and to deny Medders’s request for remand. AFFIRMED.