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WCRIB attorney tells Supreme Judicial Court commissioner offered no reasoned explanation for 14.6% workers'comp rate cut
Summary
At oral argument, Tony Allison, representing the Workers Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau of Massachusetts, said the commissioner of insurance "gave no reasoned explanation" for imposing a 14.6% reduction in workers' compensation rates and urged the court to clarify the standard of review and remand for explanation; the assistant attorney general defended the decision as supported in the record.
Tony Allison, counsel for the Workers Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau of Massachusetts, told the Supreme Judicial Court that the commissioner of insurance provided "no reasoned explanation" for imposing a 14.6% decrease in workers' compensation rates in the 2024 decision and then maintaining that figure in 2025. Allison told the justices the 2024 decision addressed the decrease in a single concluding sentence and that the 2025 order merely held that unexplained figure in place.
The issue matters, Allison said, because the statute requires a reviewing official to evaluate proposed prospective rates under the statutory standard of review rather than "set rates" from the bench. He urged the court not only to remand for a mathematic explanation of the 14.6% figure but also to decide whether the commissioner misapplied the applicable standard of review, a legal error that Allison argued taints both the 2024 and 2025 decisions.
During argument the justices parsed the case as a two-step inquiry: first whether the commissioner permissibly…
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