Social Security Reverses Course, Will Allow Parents to Register Newborns in Maine Hospitals

The acting head of the agency issued an apology over the issue, saying it ‘created an undue burden’ for residents.

In this photo illustration, a Social Security card sits alongside checks from the U.S. Treasury in Washington, DC on Oct. 14, 2021. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The director of the Social Security Administration (SSA) said Friday that it reversed a policy for Maine that would have mandated parents to register their newborns for Social Security numbers at a federal office rather than at the hospital.

Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek said he recently ordered the agency to end its Enumeration at Birth contract for Maine but said Friday that it was a mistake. The contract for Maine was immediately reinstated, he said.

“I recently directed Social Security employees to end two contracts which affected the good people of the state of Maine,” he said in a statement. “The two contracts are Enumeration at Birth ..., which helps new parents quickly request a Social Security number and card for their newborn before leaving the hospital, and Electronic Death Registry ... which shares recorded deaths with Social Security.”

Dudek said that ending the contracts had “created an undue burden on the people of Maine, which was not the intent.”

The Electronic Death Registry and Enumeration at Birth were not impacted in the other 49 states. Dudek and the SSA did not provide details about what caused the cancellations.

Nancy Altman, executive director of the Social Security Works advocacy group said despite the agency’s reversal, “the damage has been done.”

“Without those contracts, SSA did not automatically know who was born in Maine—or who died,” Altman said. “This will create huge headaches for families, as well as Social Security’s rapidly shrinking workforce, to fix.”

Dudek’s apology statement comes as the agency said earlier this week that it has identified some $800 million in cost savings in payroll, technology, contracts, and more “through new, common-sense approaches to printing, travel, and purchase card policies.”

The agency in February said that it terminated the Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity as well as the Office of Transportation to save money and for what Dudek said is an attempt to make the agency more efficient.

At the same time, the SSA said it will lay off significant numbers of employees, and some workers will be offered incentives worth as much as $25,000 to voluntarily leave as part of a restructuring effort.

“Through these massive reorganizations, offices that perform functions not mandated by statute may be prioritized for reduction-in-force actions that could include abolishment of organizations and positions, directed reassignments, and reductions in staffing,” the agency said on Feb. 27.

The statement further said that it “may reassign employees from non-mission critical positions to mission critical direct service positions” and that “reassignments may be involuntary and may require retraining for new workloads.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.