When people are intimidated by legal wranglings with the government, it's often because the law seems too complicated for a layperson to understand. That's sometimes the case. But other times, it might simply be the case that the law is easy to understand, but the relevant agency is simply doing the opposite of what the written law says in plain English. And even if they're breaking the law, there's no practical way for the average person to fight them on it.

I was recently laid off from a software job before finding another one. In between jobs, like most tech workers, I filed for unemployment benefits for each week before finding another job. The Washington state unemployment law states in WAC 192-170-010 that, among other requirements, in order to be eligible for unemployment benefits in a given week, you have to be: "physically present in your normal labor market area, unless you are actively seeking and willing to accept work outside your normal labor market."

Since I was applying for work outside of the physical area where I lived (applying for jobs in California, among other places), that meant I was "actively seeking and willing to accept work outside my normal labor market", so I filed benefits for those weeks as well.

A few weeks after one of my claims, I got a letter from the Washington State unemployment claims agency, saying that my claim for that week had been denied because I had traveled outside of my "normal labor market area".

I sent them a reply through their website quoting the exact text of the law: that you must be "physically present in your normal labor market area unless you are actively seeking and willing to accept work outside your normal labor market." As I pointed out, the "unless" part of that sentence did apply to me because I was applying for work outside my labor market area.

So, taking the rule literally, I should have been eligible for benefits that week.

I don't know if my letter was read by anyone at the agency, but I got another automatic notification by email that my request had been rejected. Their automatic email referred me to the text of the law — but that, of course, was the exact same law that I had quoted to them in the message that I sent them, saying that under the literal wording of the law, I should be eligible for benefits since I was applying for jobs in non-local areas like California.

At the moment I'm awaiting another round of appeals. I formally filed my appeal back in October and am still (as of January 2018) waiting for a response.

I'm sure the agency is understaffed to deal with the number of inquiries they get (hold times on their public phone number are often over one hour). But how many of those phone calls are caused because the agency is publishing one set of rules, which people try to follow, and then the agency enforces a different set of rules from the ones that are published -- not to mention, different from what the actual law requires?