Adriana de la Torre, NOSSCR Sustaining Member

Post v. Bisignano, No. 25-2081 (8th Cir. Aug. 28, 2026), is worth keeping handy the next time a client’s providers have imposed a lifting restriction and the ALJ has gone another way. A panel of Judges Kelly, Grasz, and Kobes affirmed the denial of a roughly five-year closed period, in an opinion by Judge Kobes. The medical history was heavy, but the outcome turned on the standard of review and one number.

The facts

Post stopped working her retail job on June 3, 2016, after Dr. Kleiber operated on her right hand and forearm. He operated on her left hand and forearm that July and her left elbow and wrist in September, but her symptoms persisted. In February 2017 he diagnosed thoracic outlet syndrome and referred her to a vascular surgeon, Dr. Thompson, who performed release surgeries on her left shoulder (March 2017), right shoulder (September 2017), and both shoulders (April 2019). That’s six operations between 2016 and 2019.

Her providers repeatedly imposed five-pound lifting restrictions. Dr. Thompson raised the limit to ten pounds in December 2019, lowered it back to five in February 2020 after muscle spasms, and in August 2021 said she could return to work with a five-pound limit. She started as a cafeteria cashier on August 13, 2021.

She applied for disability insurance benefits about a month after her March 2017 surgery. The ALJ considered a closed period from June 3, 2016 to August 5, 2021 and found an RFC for sedentary work with no climbing and frequent handling, fingering, and reaching. A vocational expert identified a significant number of jobs, and the district court affirmed.

The whole case comes down to one number

Sedentary work means lifting no more than ten pounds at a time. Post’s providers had said five. Dr. Jung, an ophthalmologist who reviewed her records for the agency in August 2017, said she could frequently lift up to ten pounds and had no limitations in reaching, handling, or fingering. Post argued that without Jung’s opinion the evidence limited her to five pounds, which would rule out sedentary work. At oral argument she conceded that if the ALJ properly relied on Jung, she loses. So the appeal was really about one opinion.

What the court held

The court reviewed the district court’s decision de novo, asking whether substantial evidence on the whole record supported the ALJ. The question isn’t whether the court would have decided differently, only whether the ALJ’s decision fell outside the “zone of choice.” Bonham v. Bisignano, 177 F.4th 934, 942 (8th Cir. 2026). Under 20 C.F.R. § 404.1520c, supportability and consistency are the most important factors, and review is limited to whether the ALJ adequately analyzed persuasiveness, not whether the court agrees with her weighing of the record.

Consistency. The ALJ found Jung’s opinion consistent with Post’s reports that she drove, walked her dog, did dishes, helped clean out her nephew’s apartment, and stayed busy with housework, and with records showing normal upper-extremity strength, full range of motion, and normal grip strength. She found the opinions of Dr. Kleiber, Nurse Kolster, Dr. Thompson, and Nurse Practitioner Snyder-Rodgers unpersuasive because they were inconsistent with that same evidence.

Daily activities. Post relied on Hogg v. Shalala, 45 F.3d 276, 278 (8th Cir. 1995), for the point that light housework doesn’t show an ability to do full-time competitive work. The court said Post did more than light housework. She drove, walked her dog, frequently did housework, and threw a nerf football with her son, and it was reasonable for the ALJ to find that this supported Jung’s view that she could lift more than five pounds. The court then added a second ground. Even if her activities weren’t inconsistent with a five-pound restriction, the ALJ could reasonably rely on records showing normal strength and full range of motion.

Later treatment. Post argued that Jung’s opinion predated more surgeries and four more years of treatment. Section 404.1520c(c)(5) lets later evidence make an opinion less persuasive, but the court said that doesn’t necessarily make reliance error. The ALJ acknowledged the limits of Jung’s opinion and relied on it because she found it consistent with the evidence. The court pointed to Post’s recoveries. She had full range of motion and strength by March 2018, and after the April 2019 surgery she recovered to the point that Dr. Thompson raised the restriction to ten pounds. By September 2020 she had full strength and range of motion and no longer needed physical therapy. The court accepted that the later surgeries showed continuing thoracic outlet syndrome, but found the recoveries consistent with Jung’s ten-pound opinion.

A few things I’d sit with

The standard did most of the work here. Three points stood out to me:

• Recoveries versus recurrences. The court treated the recoveries as the story. A claimant would say the recurrences were the story: pain returning in January 2019, spasms in February 2020, and a limit that went from five to ten and back to five. Jung reviewed the file in August 2017, before the right shoulder surgery and everything after. The February 2020 reversal appears in the opinion’s background section, but the analysis relies on the December 2019 increase and doesn’t return to it.
• Specialization. The opinion identifies Jung as an ophthalmologist, and § 404.1520c lists specialization as a factor, but the analysis doesn’t discuss it. I can’t tell from the opinion whether it was argued.
• Activities. Throwing a nerf football isn’t lifting ten pounds. It’s a reasonable inference under deferential review, but it shows how far activities can stretch. Because the court gave an independent ground, though, the football didn’t decide the case.

Takeaways for the claimant side

1. A treating relationship doesn’t buy deference. A restriction has to be supported by and consistent with the record. Dr. Thompson documented full range of motion and normal grip strength at more than one visit while keeping the five-pound limit, and the ALJ found the treating opinions inconsistent with exactly those findings.
2. If exams are normal but the restriction persists, get the provider to explain why. A bare number is easy to discount.
3. Prep your clients for how their records will be read. The ALJ relied on Post’s 2017 function report, her PT records, and her exam records, and the court later pointed to specific activities in the record.
4. Attacking a reviewing opinion that predates later treatment takes evidence of inconsistency, not just more treatment. Here, the later course was found consistent with Jung’s opinion.

Got any questions? Schedule a consultation with us. I’m here to help. It’s a lot to take in, but we’ll get through it together. After all, navigating these waters is always easier when you’ve got someone to chat with.

---

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOSSCR, its leadership, or staff.