Approval rates
Comparing a judge's approval rate to broader benchmarks provides context for your hearing. While the national average approval rate stands at 58%, Judge Mengesha-Brown's latest reporting period shows a 49% approval rate, which is 1 percentage point below the NHC St Louis office average. These figures are derived from a significant docket of 14,302 lifetime decisions, offering a stable view of past performance. Aggregate rates describe past decisions, not predictions for your individual hearing.
Office- and national-level breakdowns of fully favorable vs denial rates aren't currently published by SSA in the per-office disposition data. The judge's own breakdown is the detail we have today.
Approval rate over time
Year-over-year approval rate across Judge Mengesha-Brown's docket. Annual rates fluctuate with the mix of cases SSA assigns; the longer-run pattern is more informative than any single year.
Decision pattern
Over your 8 years on the bench, Judge Mengesha-Brown has navigated varying approval trends. After an initial period of higher approvals, the rate saw a decline to a low of 36% in 2022 before stabilizing and trending upward to 51% in 2025. This recent shift suggests a return to earlier decision patterns. The latest period reflects a continuation of this steady pattern, indicating that case outcomes remain sensitive to the specific evidence you present in your file.
Preparing for an SSDI hearing
The guidance below applies to any SSDI hearing, not specifically to Judge Mengesha-Brown's bench. Judge-specific preparation guidance requires a corpus of public Appeals Council decisions involving each judge, which we haven't built yet.
- Bring a clean treating-physician record. Longitudinal primary-care or specialist notes spanning the disability period, with consistent symptom documentation, are typically the strongest evidence at hearing. A single month's records usually aren't enough.
- Don't rely on consultative exams alone. If your medical evidence is built primarily around a one-time CE finding, expect detailed questioning. Supplement with treating-source statements where possible.
- Prepare for daily-activity questions. Have honest, specific answers about a typical day. Answers that conflict with the medical record (in either direction) tend to hurt credibility.
- Expect transferable-skills probing. A vocational expert will usually testify about jobs available to someone with your limitations. Your representative should be prepared to cross-examine.
About the Fresno hearing office
The NHC St Louis hearing office serves you and other claimants across Missouri and the surrounding region. This office manages a high volume of cases with a bench of 6 judges, maintaining an office-wide latest approval rate of 46%. You can expect a professional environment where thorough documentation of your medical limitations is essential for a favorable outcome. You can see the NHC St Louis Hearing Office page for the full ALJ roster.
Other judges at this hearing office
The Social Security Administration utilizes a workload-balancing algorithm to assign cases, meaning your assignment to a specific judge is essentially random. Within the NHC St Louis hearing office, lifetime approval rates among the 6 judges range from 41% to 70%. Because of this variance, understanding the office-wide environment is as important as looking at an individual judge's history. For preparation purposes, the guidance is the same regardless of which judge you are assigned.
Your odds change dramatically with a lawyer
Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-18-37. The 3× gap is a population-wide average across all judges; individual outcomes vary.