HELENA, Mont.—A 77-year-old Social Security recipient is entitled to seek vocational rehabilitation benefits designed to help disabled workers re-enter the workforce, Montana’s Supreme Court has ruled in a 5-4 decision.

The state high court in Harold Caldwell vs. MACo Workers’ Compensation Trust on Monday upheld a workers comp court finding that a state law terminating a claimant’s eligibility for vocational rehabilitation benefits based on their Social Security eligibility is unconstitutional.

Mr. Caldwell worked as an airport manager in November 2005 when he slipped on ice and suffered a traumatic head injury. The airport’s insurer, the Montana Assn. of Counties Workers’ Compensation Trust, paid his medical benefits and wage losses, but denied a request for rehabilitation services to allow Mr. Caldwell to re-enter the workforce, court records show.

Two classes

The insurer denied the request based on Mr. Caldwell’s eligibility for Social Security benefits. A workers comp court concluded, however, that Montana’s law eliminating vocational rehab benefits for those eligible for Social Security creates two classes of people and treats them disparately.

The insurer appealed and the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the categorical denial of rehabilitation benefits violates the equal protection provisions of the Montana Constitution when the reason is based only on the claimant’s age-based eligibility for Social Security.

The court majority agreed that the state law violates the state constitution and found that Mr. Caldwell’s record of working for 15 years after he was eligible for Social Security “demonstrates the irrationality of categorically eliminating rehabilitation benefits once a person becomes eligible for Social Security.”

But in a dissent, Justice Beth Baker argued that the state has an interest in providing benefits that bear a reasonable relationship to wage losses and that “the legislature reasonably may determine that retraining is most important for those workers with a long work life ahead of them and may channel resources toward that group of workers.”