Cross-state comparison — unemployment insurance benefit appeals

States covered: TX, CA, NY, FL, PA, OH, IL, MI, WA, NJ, NC, VA, MA, AZ, MN, MO, WI, MD, CT (19 of 50). Built: 2026-08-08, wake 6. Updated: 2026-08-11, wake 23 (added Connecticut). Source: distilled entirely from units/TX.md, units/CA.md, units/NY.md, units/FL.md, units/PA.md, units/OH.md, units/IL.md, units/MI.md, units/WA.md, units/NJ.md, units/NC.md, units/VA.md, units/MA.md, units/AZ.md, units/MN.md, units/MO.md, units/WI.md, units/MD.md, units/CT.md. No new research; every cell traces to a unit, and each unit carries the primary-source quote and citation. Where this table and a unit disagree, the unit wins — the unit has the quoted statutory text, this page has only a summary of it.

This is a reference for orientation, not legal advice, and not a substitute for reading the notice you actually received. Deadlines here are the statutory numbers; every state covered so far but one extends a deadline that lands on a weekend or holiday — the exception is Maryland, whose general extension reaches "a Sunday or legal holiday" and not Saturday (note 52) — though Connecticut gets there by a mechanism that never mentions the calendar at all: its only extension applies when the last day falls on a day the agency's offices "are not open for business," which reaches Saturdays and holidays because the offices are shut on them, not because of what day it is (note 55) — though New York's extension comes from a general statute rather than a UI-specific rule — as does Minnesota's, whose unemployment chapter never cross-references that general rule at all, so units/MN.md B2 records the application as an inference — Michigan's is confirmed only for filings with the hearing system, not for the initial protest to the agency (units/MI.md B2), and New Jersey's appears only on the agency's own web pages — no statute states it and the governing rules could not be read (units/NJ.md B2) — and the event that starts the clock is usually mailing, not receipt, which is the single most common way a real appeal is lost.

The table

Notes the table cannot hold

1. Texas stacks two 14-day clocks. A Commission decision becomes final 14 days after mailing (§ 212.153), and suit must be filed within 14 days after that (§ 212.201(a)) — so the window to sue opens on roughly day 15 and closes on roughly day 28. It is not a single 14-day period from mailing. TWC describes it this way itself.
2. Texas has two different "good cause" questions and only one of them has an answer you want. There is no good cause for filing a late appeal (40 TAC § 815.32(i)(8)), but there is good cause for missing a scheduled hearing after a timely appeal (§ 815.16(5)(B)). Two clocks that read almost identically. See units/TX.md.
3. New York's trigger date has an internal tension. The statute runs the 30 days from mailing (Labor Law § 620(1)(a)); the regulation deems a request timely if postmarked within 30 days of receipt, with receipt presumed within 5 business days of mailing. The statutory number is the safe one to plan around; the regulation is the fallback argument. Flagged as an inference in units/NY.md.
4. Exhaustion. Texas answers it in the text — a motion for rehearing is not required (§ 212.203(b)). California and Florida do not: both units record "NOT FOUND IN PRIMARY SOURCE" for whether a rehearing/reconsideration step is a prerequisite to judicial review. That is a recorded absence after searching, not a "no." Ohio's unit infers no request-for-review requirement from the finality mechanics of § 4141.281(C)(3) — labeled an inference, not a found sentence. Illinois runs the opposite way: units/IL.md infers that a Board of Review appeal is required before judicial review, because 820 ILCS 405/1100 makes only Board decisions reviewable — also an inference from finality mechanics, not a found sentence. Washington answers it in the text like Texas: "The filing of a petition for reconsideration is not a prerequisite for filing a petition for judicial review" (WAC 192-04-190(4), echoing RCW 34.05.470(5)). Minnesota, added later, is the first covered state to answer the question the other way, and it does so structurally rather than by a sentence saying so: § 268.105, subd. 7(a) gives the Court of Appeals a decision "on reconsideration" to review and nothing else, and subd. 2(f) makes that decision the final one "unless judicial review is sought." A party who skips reconsideration has no reviewable decision and no clock to file against. The chapter uses the word "exhaust" once, in a narrower place — a party who failed to participate in the hearing "is considered to have failed to exhaust available administrative remedies" unless they seek reconsideration and show good cause (subd. 1a(b)). Missouri, added a wake later, is the first covered state to answer the question in a plain sentence rather than by structure or inference: "Judicial review of any decision of the commission shall be permitted only after the party claiming to be aggrieved thereby has exhausted the administrative remedies as provided by this law and the rules and regulations of the division" (§ 288.200.2). What must be exhausted is the filing of the application for review, not a successful rehearing — a denial is enough to open the courthouse (note 41). Wisconsin, added a wake after Missouri, is the second state to answer in an express sentence — and the first to answer it differently depending on who is asking: "Any party that is not the department may commence an action for the judicial review of a decision of the commission under this chapter after exhausting the remedies provided under this section," while "the department ... is not required to have been a party to the proceedings before the commission or to have exhausted the remedies provided under this section" (§ 108.09(7)(a)). The same paragraph attaches a consequence the other express-sentence state does not: a plaintiff who fails to name the department or the commission as defendants and serve the commission gets the action dismissed. What must be exhausted is the hearing and the petition for commission review; no rehearing motion is required, and none is provided for a party to file (note 44). Connecticut, added a wake after Maryland, is the third express-sentence state, and it says it in very nearly Missouri's words: "Judicial review of any decision shall be permitted only after a party aggrieved thereby has exhausted his or her remedies before the board, as provided in this chapter" (§ 31-249a(c)). It shares Missouri's shape as well as its phrasing — what must be exhausted is reaching the board, not winning there and not first moving to reopen, because § 31-249b lets a party appeal to the Superior Court "[a]t any time before the board's decision has become final," which is the same clock a reopening motion runs on. The two are alternatives, not steps. Connecticut is also the only covered state to label the distinction in a rule heading: Regs. § 31-237g-34 is titled "Decision of the Referee; final date; motion and appeal distinguished." So of nineteen covered states, two say reconsideration is not required in terms, one says it is by structure (Minnesota, note 38), three say it is in an express sentence (Missouri; Wisconsin, which exempts the agency from its own rule; Connecticut), and the rest either infer an answer or record its absence.
5. Standing to appeal is not uniform. New York conditions further appeal on having appeared at the level below (§§ 621(1), 624) — a party who skips the hearing can lose the right to appeal at all, independent of any deadline.
6. "Recoupment" and "liability" may not be the same thing in Florida. The without-fault waiver in § 443.151(6)(d) bars recoupment from future benefits, while (6)(e) separately authorizes collection by civil action. Whether a without-fault claimant stays exposed to a civil suit is genuinely unresolved in the statutory text. units/FL.md records it as an open question; it is not resolved here.
7. The "benefits keep flowing" cells rest on very unequal footing. Florida, California, and Ohio say it in statutory text — Ohio the most directly of any state covered (§ 4141.28(I) states both the pay-pending and withhold-pending halves in one sentence). Texas is the general operative-determination rule applied to the employer-appeal case; New York is an inference from the absence of a contrary provision plus an agency practice page; Pennsylvania has no law on the question at all — its governing section was repealed in 1978 and never replaced, so the answer is agency practice standing alone. Same practical answer in all six states, six different levels of evidence. (Washington, added later, rests on yet another footing: a payment-baseline statute — RCW 50.20.170, benefits paid "in accordance with such initial determination" — plus an express no-stay proviso that reaches only the judicial-review stage; the administrative-pendency application is an inference flagged in units/WA.md. And Massachusetts, added later still, is the thinnest footing yet: nothing in c. 151A addresses a pending administrative appeal at all, only a clause repeated at each level that benefits follow whichever decision is currently in force — the chapter's single express pay-pending sentence governs the appeal from the district court, one step past the last administrative stage. units/MA.md E1.)
8. Pennsylvania's reconsideration window is a trap. A party has 15 days to ask the Board to reconsider (34 Pa. Code § 101.111) and 30 days to appeal to Commonwealth Court — and the rule says in terms that requesting reconsideration "will not extend the appeal period." Waiting for a reconsideration ruling can forfeit the court appeal.
9. Pennsylvania's own agency hosts a stale copy of its own statute. Act 30 of 2021 raised the appeal deadline from 15 days to 21. An older compiled edition of the UC Law, still on L&I's domain and not marked superseded, shows 15. units/PA.md records both URLs and which one is current. A citation is only as good as the edition it was read from.
10. Ohio inserts a director step before any hearing. An appeal of the initial determination goes first to the director, who has 21 days to either issue a redetermination (which restarts the same 21-day appeal clock) or transfer the case to a UCRC hearing officer. The first adjudicative hearing is therefore one layer deeper than in the other five states covered at the time, even though the total chain looks similar on paper. Ohio no longer stands alone: Michigan inserts a comparable — and stricter — pre-hearing step (note 14).
11. Ohio's non-receipt escape hatch is unique among the six so far — and it reaches the courthouse. R.C. § 4141.281(D)(9) restarts the appeal clock on proof (which "may consist of testimony from the interested party") that the determination or decision was not actually received in time — and a fourth sentence extends the same relief to the 30-day judicial-review deadline, with the court of common pleas as fact-finder on timeliness. The other covered states key their ordinary claimant deadlines to mailing/sending and offer no receipt-based statutory reset. (Michigan, added later, comes closest without matching it: its good-cause rule lists failure to receive a timely notice as a ground for excusing lateness — an excuse to be argued, not a reset of the clock, and by rule, not statute. R 421.270(1)(e), units/MI.md B4. New Jersey, added later still, does something categorically different: its employer clock affirmatively starts at "confirmed receipt" — an ordinary receipt trigger, not a non-receipt escape hatch — while its claimant clock still runs from mailing. Note 18.)
12. Illinois writes down no late-appeal excuse whatsoever — which is not the same as Texas' "no." Texas' rule says affirmatively that there is no good-cause exception (with seven narrow carve-outs); Illinois' statute and rules are simply silent — a full-text search found no excuse standard at all. What Illinois does provide is procedural: an appeal that looks late is dismissed without a hearing unless the appeal letter itself raises a timeliness dispute, in which case the Referee hears the question of whether the filing was actually timely (56 Ill. Adm. Code 2720.207). The argument available is "I was not actually late," never "I was late for a good reason." Whether case law adds anything on top was not researched.
13. Illinois puts an enforceable clock on second-level inaction — and Massachusetts, added later, puts a much faster one running the opposite way (note 30). The Board of Review must decide within 120 days (extendable 30 for good cause). After that, a party may demand a "Notice of Right to Sue"; the Board then has 14 days to issue its decision or the Notice, any decision issued after that window "shall be null and void," and the Referee's decision becomes the final administrative decision by operation of law — opening the 35-day judicial-review window (820 ILCS 405/803; 56 Ill. Adm. Code 2720.345(d)). Massachusetts reaches a superficially similar place by the opposite route: its board has 21 days to grant or deny review and silence is a denial, not a forced decision (note 30). Illinois' clock protects the appeal; Massachusetts' clock ends it. In the other eleven covered states, a stalled second-level appeal simply waits.
14. Michigan requires two appeals before anyone hears evidence. A determination cannot be appealed to a judge at all: a protest to the agency must first produce a redetermination (MCL 421.32a), and only the redetermination is appealable to an ALJ — each step on its own 30-day clock running from mailing or personal service. This is Ohio's director-step structure (note 10) in a stricter form: Ohio's director may either redetermine or transfer the appeal straight to a hearing officer, while Michigan's agency issues a redetermination in the ordinary course — direct transfer to an ALJ happens only if the agency chooses it or both parties agree (§ 32a(4)). A Michigan claimant therefore faces two consecutive filing deadlines before reaching a hearing, and missing either one forfeits the chain.
15. Michigan's second-level timeliness rule points two ways at once. The good-cause rule (R 421.270) says on its face that it reaches the § 34 second-level deadline — but the hearing-system rule R 792.11418(3) declares the commission "without jurisdiction to consider the merits of any appeal received after the 30-day appeal period." The recourse the latter rule offers is indirect: ask the ALJ to reopen within 1 year of the decision's mailing, then appeal the reopening ruling. units/MI.md B4 records both texts without resolving the tension; neither rule cites the other.
16. Michigan's freshly amended statute names an abolished tribunal. 2024 PA 238 — effective July 17, 2026, three weeks before this page's last update — still directs second-level appeals to the "Michigan compensation appellate commission," a body abolished by Executive Reorganization Order 2019-3 (compiled at MCL 125.1998), which transferred its functions to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Commission. The rules are staler: the hearing rules (last amended 2015) still say MCAC throughout, and the good-cause rule (last amended 2001) still says "board of review" — two renamings out of date. This is a different failure than Pennsylvania's (note 9): there, the agency hosts a superseded edition of a current statute; here, the current text itself was out of date the day it took effect. Filings go to the UIAC in practice.
17. Washington's appeal chain leaves the agency and comes back. The first-level "appeal tribunal" is an administrative law judge of the Office of Administrative Hearings — an agency RCW 34.12.010 makes "independent of state administrative agencies" — while the second level, the Commissioner's Review Office, sits back inside ESD (WAC 192-04-020 defines both terms in one rule). Michigan is the nearest analog among covered states — its ALJs also sit in an outside hearing system (MOAHR) — but Washington's round trip, out to an independent agency and back into the department for review, is so far its own shape. ESD's rule adopts OAH's model rules of procedure (ch. 10-08 WAC) as gap-filler, so hearing mechanics like the remote-by-default format rule are OAH's, not ESD's.
18. New Jersey splits the first-level deadline by party — different lengths and different trigger events. R.S. 43:21-6(b)(1) (as amended through L.2022, c.120) gives an employer seven calendar days from "a confirmed receipt of notification" while a claimant gets 21 calendar days from mailing (or from electronic delivery the claimant opted into). No other covered state varies the first-level deadline by party, and the employer's seven days is the shortest first-level window anywhere in this table — half of Texas' 14. Two wrinkles recorded in units/NJ.md B1: the Division's own employer-facing page describes the same seven-day clock as running from mailing — a different trigger event than the statute's "confirmed receipt," unresolved there — and the receipt trigger makes the employer window unlike every other ordinary deadline covered (note 11).
19. New Jersey's Board of Review is of right only sometimes — Ohio no longer stands alone. R.S. 43:21-6(e) says the Board "may permit any of the parties... to initiate further appeals before it," and "shall permit" a further appeal only where the tribunal decision "is not unanimous" or "has been overruled or modified" an earlier determination. Outside those two categories the text leaves permission to the Board — structurally like Ohio's discretionary "review level" (note 10's body), though with a difference: Ohio's disallowance is itself a final, court-appealable decision, while New Jersey's statute does not say what a refusal to permit an appeal would be. The Division's public pages describe further appeal to the Board without qualification; whether the Board declines timely appeals in practice was not determined (units/NJ.md F1).
20. New Jersey's courthouse door is entirely practice-sourced. R.S. 43:21-6(h) grants "judicial review" of a Board of Review decision — and then stops. No court is named, no filing deadline, no standard of review; a full-text sweep of the chapter finds "Superior Court" only in tax-collection contexts. The Appellate Division venue and the 45-day window appear only on the Board of Review's own web page (the New Jersey Court Rules that presumably supply them were not read for the unit). Contrast Pennsylvania, where the record-review standard sits in statute (2 Pa.C.S. § 704): two no-trial-court states, one with the door written into law, one with it posted on a web page.

21. New Jersey pays a partially-disqualified claimant during the claimant's own appeal. Where the appealed denial is a time-limited R.S. 43:21-5 disqualification, R.S. 43:21-6(b)(1) withholds benefits "only for the period of disqualification" — the weeks after that period are paid while the appeal is still pending, and if the claimant wins, the withheld weeks are paid retroactively (conditioned on weekly certifications). In every other covered state, a denied claimant is paid nothing until a decision reverses the denial. This is a different object than the pay-pending rules in the table's last row, which concern a claimant who has won below.

22. North Carolina's monetary protest is a separate, shorter clock in front of the main one. The 30-day appeal in the table runs from the Adjudicator's determination on a contested issue. The wage-calculation ("monetary") determination has its own 10-day protest window (G.S. 96-15(b)(1)) — and the same subsection gives the Division a one-year power to reconsider a determination on its own initiative for computation or identity errors, newly available wages, or nondisclosure. A determination is not necessarily settled just because the appeal window closed. units/NC.md B1, B5.

23. North Carolina's second level is the tightest squeeze in the table. The window drops from 30 days to 10 as you climb — the sharpest tightening of any covered state (New York goes 30→20, New Jersey 21→20). The cushion is borrowed from general civil procedure: G.S. 96-15(c2) applies Rule 6(e) to add 3 days when notice came by mail — the only covered state whose UI statute reaches into the civil-procedure rules for its mail allowance. units/NC.md F1. (Amended when Minnesota was added.) Minnesota adds days for mailing too — three of them, on the certiorari petition alone (§ 268.105, subd. 7(a)) — but writes the allowance into its own unemployment statute rather than borrowing one, so North Carolina keeps the distinction as stated. Two states, one mechanism, two different sources of authority.

24. Two states name a late-appeal excuse they never define — a fourth answer-shape, and it is not a one-off. Texas says "no" affirmatively; Illinois says nothing at all; Pennsylvania supplies a procedure but no standard, leaving the content to case law. North Carolina's rules use the phrase "good cause for filing a late appeal or protest" (04 NCAC 24A .0106(c)) and define good cause as "a legally sufficient reason" — but the phrase is followed only by postmark machinery for establishing when a document was mailed, and the sole concrete excuse standard anywhere in the rules is the Texas-style misleading-information waiver. Virginia, added a wake later, has the same shape from the other direction: the statute grants the extension ("For good cause shown, the 30-day period may be extended," § 60.2-619 D) and the rules build a procedure on top of it — 16VAC5-80-20 makes "whether the appeal was timely filed or whether there exists good cause for extending the appeal period" the first issue at the hearing — while neither ever says what good cause is. Both states also have a defined good cause sitting nearby for a different question: Virginia's rules define it for postponing a scheduled hearing ("a likelihood of material and substantial harm"), which is Texas' two-clocks trap (note 2) reappearing in a state that does allow late appeals. When this reference covered one such state the shape looked like an oversight; at two, with different statute-versus-rule divisions of labor, it looks like a category. units/NC.md B4, units/VA.md B4. Massachusetts, added a wake later, marks the far end of the same axis: twelve enumerated good-cause examples in 430 CMR 4.14 (note 29). The written answers to this one question now run from an affirmative "no," through silence, through a named but contentless phrase, to an itemised list — and none of it tracks how long the underlying deadline is. Missouri, added a wake later, closes the shape from the same direction North Carolina and Virginia leave open. Its statute grants the extension exactly as Virginia's does — the thirty-day period "may, for good cause, be extended" (§ 288.070.10) — and its rule then does the thing neither North Carolina's nor Virginia's does: it defines the term, and defines it against the statute by name. 8 CSR 10-5.010(2)(C) supplies good cause "[f]or the purposes of sections 288.070.10 and 288.130.5, RSMo" as those circumstances in which "the party acted in good faith and reasonably under all the circumstances." That is a fifth point on this axis and the one that shows the other two are drafting gaps rather than a deliberate style: the same statute-plus-rule division of labor that leaves Virginia's standard empty fills Missouri's (note 40).

25. Virginia's code renamed its own appeal body and only half-finished. Acts 2024, cc. 562, 603 repealed § 60.2-621 outright and rewrote the surrounding sections to route a first-level appeal to "the Commission's Administrative Law Division's Office of First Level Appeals," replacing a named "appeal tribunal." But § 60.2-622 — amended by the same act — still describes the decision under review as one made by an "appeals examiner," and § 60.2-626, untouched since 1986, still empowers "the chairman of an appeal tribunal" to issue subpoenas. Three vintages of institutional name are live in one chapter. Compare Michigan (note 16), where the freshly amended statute names a tribunal that no longer exists: Michigan's problem is a statute out of step with the world, Virginia's is a statute out of step with itself. units/VA.md front matter. Separately, Virginia's electronic-delivery trigger is the third distinct treatment of electronic notice in this table: New Jersey's claimant clock can run from electronic delivery the claimant opted into (note 18), Washington's and North Carolina's "earlier of notification or mailing" lets an electronic notice start the clock by default — and Virginia's opt-in electronic branch is the only one that conditions the trigger on "confirmation of receipt" written into the statute itself.

26. Virginia states two different finality clocks for the same decision and reconciles neither. § 60.2-625(A) gives an aggrieved party 30 days after the Commission's decision is mailed to commence an action in circuit court; § 60.2-622(B)(1) says the decision "shall become final 10 days after the date of notification or mailing." Texas has two clocks too (note 1), but Texas' stack — the decision becomes final on day 14, and suit is filed in the 14 days after that — so the two numbers describe consecutive phases. Virginia's overlap, and nothing read says whether the 10-day finality closes anything, opens the review window, or merely fixes the date from which the 30 days is measured. units/VA.md records it unresolved rather than guessing; anyone relying on the longer number should read both sections.

27. Virginia's overpayment waiver is mandatory and then carves out the case this row is about. § 60.2-633 says the Commission "shall waive" repayment where the overpayment was without fault and repayment would be "contrary to equity and good conscience," and — unusually for this table — defines both halves: without-fault expressly includes administrative error and employer inducement, and equity-and-good-conscience is met if repayment "would deprive the individual of the income required to provide for basic necessities, including shelter, food, medicine, child care, or any other essential living expense." Then the same subsection states that an overpayment is not without fault if it "was the result of (a) a reversal in the appeals process, unless the employer failed to respond timely or adequately" to a request for information. So the ordinary employer-wins-on-appeal overpayment — the exact exposure the last table row measures — falls outside Virginia's mandatory waiver unless the employer's own non-response caused it. A mandatory waiver and a discretionary one are not ranked the way their labels suggest; what each one reaches matters more than how firmly it is worded. (North Carolina's hardship test, note 24's neighbour in the last row, remains the only one in this table with duration thresholds — 180/360 days — but Virginia now matches it for definitional concreteness on the equity phrase itself.) Also recorded in units/VA.md: the "(Effective July 1, 2028)" version of § 60.2-633 in the current compilation drops the waiver language, which a later wake should re-read against the live code rather than trust from here.

28. Massachusetts has the shortest claimant deadline in the table and no name for the body that hears the appeal. Ten days from delivery in hand or mailing (M.G.L. c. 151A § 39(b)) undercuts Texas' 14; only New Jersey's employer window (7 days, note 18) is shorter, and that one does not touch claimants. Amended when Arizona was added: an Arizona claimant whose determination is handed over in person gets 7 calendar days (note 32) — shorter than Massachusetts' 10. Massachusetts remains the shortest unconditional claimant deadline, since Arizona's 7 days applies only on personal delivery and its ordinary mailed case runs 15. The same 10 days binds every "interested party," so unlike New Jersey the two sides share a clock. What Massachusetts does not supply is an appellate body: the statute promises "a fair hearing before an impartial hearing officer designated by the commissioner" and stops, and no section of c. 151A or 430 CMR read for units/MA.md names an office, division, or tribunal — the regulations call the presiding official a "review examiner," a term the statute never uses. Every other covered state names its first-level body in law. (An agency-practice name may exist; the Department's own pages returned HTTP 403 to every request and were not read, so units/MA.md records this as an absence in the primary sources, not as proof no name exists.)

29. Massachusetts writes the most concrete late-appeal standard in the table, an absolute bar on it, and then a regulation that suspends the bar. 430 CMR 4.14 enumerates twelve good-cause examples — postal delay, death or serious illness in the family, inability to find a translator, non-receipt followed by prompt filing, absence from the Commonwealth while job-hunting, employer intimidation, a Division employee's discouragement, illiteracy or psychological disability, domestic violence — expressly "not limited to" the list. That is the opposite pole from note 24's named-but-undefined category (North Carolina, Virginia) and from Illinois' silence. But § 39(b) then says "In no event shall good cause be considered" after 30 days, 430 CMR 4.13(2) restates it, and 430 CMR 4.15 — captioned "Late Appeals Filed Beyond 30 Days" — provides that the 30-day limitation "shall not apply" in four circumstances. Florida also has an absolute outer bar (five years, table row 2), but nothing in Florida's rules contradicts it. This is a fourth distinct failure of written law in this table: not a stale edition (note 9), not a statute out of step with the world (note 16), not a statute out of step with itself (note 25), but a regulation squarely at odds with the statute it implements.

(Amended when Connecticut was added.) Massachusetts keeps the label, but only just, and for a reason worth naming. Connecticut's rule enumerates eleven items to Massachusetts' twelve — but they are not the same kind of item. Massachusetts lists examples of what qualifies (postal delay, death in the family, employer intimidation); Connecticut lists factors to weigh (whether the party was represented, the party's familiarity with Appeals Division procedure, prejudice to an adverse party), under a threshold standard supplied first: good cause exists "if a reasonably prudent individual under the same or similar circumstances would have been prevented from filing a timely appeal" (Regs. § 31-237g-15(b)). An example list tells a claimant whether their reason counts; a factor list tells the adjudicator what to think about. So Connecticut is a sixth shape on note 24's axis rather than a second Massachusetts — a standard plus an open factor list, where Missouri supplies a bare standard and no factors, and Massachusetts supplies examples and no standard. Connecticut also has one thing no other covered state has: the definition exists because the legislature ordered it into being by a date certain. Section 31-249h told the Board to adopt a good-cause definition "[o]n or before January 1, 1988" for three named sections. Everywhere else in this table a defined standard is something the agency happened to write or happened not to; in Connecticut it was a statutory deadline the agency had to meet. And Connecticut sets no outer bar of any kind, so it does not reproduce Massachusetts' contradiction — there is no absolute limit for a regulation to suspend. 30. Massachusetts' second level can end without anyone deciding anything. Under § 41(a) the board of review grants or denies review "in its discretion," must do so "no later than twenty-one days after an appeal is filed," and if it does not, the application "shall be deemed to be denied upon the twenty-first day." Ohio's commission may disallow a request and New Jersey's board "may permit" further appeal (notes 10, 19) — but both act; Massachusetts converts inaction itself into a disposition. The design is not a trap: § 41(c) makes the denial (actual or deemed) turn the first-level decision into the board's own decision for judicial-review purposes, and § 42 supplies a separate start date for the 30-day court clock when the denial was silence rather than a mailed order — which is also the one gap in the mechanism, since § 41(c) measures that clock from "the date of mailing of the notice of the order of the board denying the application" and a deemed denial produces no order to mail. Washington has a 20-day deemed denial too, but only for a reconsideration petition after the second level, not for the appeal itself (units/WA.md F2). Missouri, added a wake later, runs the same conversion mechanism and closes the gap Massachusetts leaves. Its commission also "may allow or deny an application for review," and a denial likewise makes the tribunal's decision "the decision of the commission for the purpose of judicial review" — but Missouri's denial is an actual order, and the statute dates the court clock from "the date of notice of the order of the commission denying the application for review" (§ 288.200.1). Massachusetts' deemed denial produces no order to mail and therefore no date; Missouri's produces both. Same design, one with the last step written in (note 41). 31. Three covered states charge the claimant interest on an overpayment, and they price three different things. (Written when Massachusetts was the only one; amended when Arizona was added, and again for Minnesota — whose interest, like Massachusetts', attaches only to a conduct finding: § 268.18, subd. 2b assesses one percent per month on benefits obtained by misrepresentation and on the 40% penalty that accompanies them, starting 30 days after the penalty determination, and nothing at all on an ordinary reversal-driven overpayment. Minnesota is nonetheless the harshest of the three on the misrepresentation track and the mildest on the ordinary one: the 40% penalty is the largest in this table, while the ordinary overpayment carries no interest, caps any offset at 50% of a payment, and is cancelled by operation of law after six years — the only automatic extinguishment of an overpayment debt in this table. What Minnesota does not have at any point is a waiver: § 268.18, subd. 6(a) says the commissioner "may not compromise the amount of any overpaid unemployment benefits.") A.R.S. § 23-787(G) says interest "on all benefit overpayment debts, including those reduced to judgment, shall accrue at ten percent a year" — every overpayment, fault or not, including the ordinary employer-wins-on-appeal reversal. A.A.C. R6-3-1812(A) softens the timing rather than the scope: a no-fault overpayment accrues nothing until the sixth calendar month after it is established, and accrual stays postponed while the claimant honors a repayment agreement; waived amounts carry no further interest (§ 23-787(H)). The waiver side is asymmetric in the direction you would not guess — interest on a fraud debt may be waived only up to 25%, while § 23-787(G) states no ceiling at all on waiving a non-fraud debt's interest. Massachusetts reaches much less far: M.G.L. c. 151A § 69(a) attaches interest to the knowing-nondisclosure subset of overpayments at the § 15(a) rate — 12% per annum or the c. 62C § 32 rate for the year, whichever is greater — capped at 50% of the amount owed, accruing from the day after the overpayment becomes final and not stayed by a pending waiver request (430 CMR 4.24). Illinois is the only other covered state whose units mention interest at all, and there it runs the other way: against a representative who overcharged (units/IL.md D2). So the two interest states are not variations on one design: Massachusetts prices a finding about the claimant's conduct, Arizona prices the debt. Separately, the ordinary appeal-reversal overpayment — no fault finding — appears to carry no interest at all on this text, since both § 69(a) and 430 CMR 4.22 are worded around "failure knowingly to furnish accurate information"; units/MA.md records that as an inference from scope language, not a found sentence.

1. Arizona splits its first-level deadline by how the notice was served — a third way to write one deadline as two numbers. A.R.S. § 23-773(B) gives "seven calendar days after the delivery of notification, or... fifteen calendar days after notification was mailed." New Jersey splits by party (7 days for the employer, 21 for the claimant, note 18); Washington, North Carolina, and New Jersey's claimant branch stack two possible trigger events and take the earlier or the elected one (note 25's closing paragraph). Arizona does something different again: one party, one event type, but the length of the window depends on the delivery method the agency chose. units/AZ.md reads the pairing against A.A.C. R6-3-1404(C) — which says a document is served on the mailing date "if not served in person" — to conclude that 7 days goes with personal delivery and 15 with mailing, and marks that as an inference, since § 23-773(B) never cross-references the rule. Two consequences worth stating: a personally-served Arizona claimant faces the shortest window in this table (note 28), and the state has no answer written down for a determination served electronically under § 23-682 — neither the statute nor the rule says which of the two clocks such a notice starts, even though R6-3-1503(A) now lets the appeal itself be filed by fax or Internet.
2. Arizona states its second-level deadline twice, at 30 days and at 15 — and the shorter number is the one that appears twice. § 23-671(D) gives thirty days to petition the appeals board; A.A.C. R6-3-1503(C) and R6-3-1504(A)(2) each say fifteen calendar days. This is note 29's failure mode — a regulation squarely at odds with the statute it implements — with the roles of the two texts reversed: in Massachusetts the regulation was the generous one (430 CMR 4.15 suspending the statute's absolute 30-day bar), while in Arizona the regulation is the stricter one, so a party who trusts the rule files early and a party who trusts the statute may file too late. The editions are recorded in units/AZ.md F1 rather than used to pick a winner: the statutory text came from the Legislative Council compilation dated 2025-09-20, R6-3-1504 was last amended effective December 20, 1995, and R6-3-1503 carries a 2013 rulemaking whose affected subsections the history note does not identify. Age is evidence, not an answer.
3. Arizona is the only covered state where a court can decline to hear the appeal at all. Everywhere else in this table, judicial review is a filing: meet the deadline and the court takes the case, however narrow the standard. A.R.S. § 41-1993(B) makes it an application for appeal — filed with the clerk of the appeals board, not the court — and "[t]he court of appeals shall thereafter grant or deny the application for appeal. If the application is denied, the decision of the appeals board shall be deemed final, and further appeal may not be taken." Discretionary review at the second administrative level already exists in this table (Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts — notes 10, 19, 30); Arizona extends the same structure one level higher, to the courthouse. Two related features of the same subsection: the appeal is confined to the record, and "[a]n issue may not be raised on appeal that has not been raised in the petition for review before the appeals board" — an issue-preservation rule that does the work an exhaustion requirement would do, in a chapter that never states one (note 4). New York's appearance requirement (note 5) is the nearest thing in this table, and it conditions the administrative appeal, not the judicial one. Arizona also asks for no bond and no docket fee, and states no standard of review anywhere.
4. Arizona is the first covered state to put a flat dollar cap on a representative's fee in the statute itself — and Minnesota, added a wake later, shows the opposite mechanism. (Amended when Minnesota was added.) Minnesota does not cap a non-attorney's fee; it forbids it. "Except for services provided by an attorney-at-law, no person may charge an applicant a fee of any kind for advising, assisting, or representing an applicant" at the hearing, on reconsideration, or in court (§ 268.105, subd. 6(a), echoed in Minn. R. 3310.2916) — while attaching no figure, no percentage, and no approval step to what an attorney may charge. So the written answers now run: a flat statutory dollar cap (Arizona), a percentage-or-hourly cap by rule (Illinois), a percentage cap by rule with a separate interim sub-cap (Virginia), the same percentage cap written into the statute and the rule (Wisconsin), approval without a published figure (California, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan and others), and a categorical bar on the unregulated class with the regulated class left unpriced (Minnesota). Maryland, added a wake later, is the first covered state to run both mechanisms at once: a non-lawyer agent "may not charge or accept compensation for representing a claimant" at either level (§§ 8-507(c), 8-5A-08(b)) — Minnesota's categorical bar — while a lawyer is capped by rule at "200 percent of the claimant's weekly benefit amount per case," with more available on an itemized request judged for "the complexity of the case and the reasonableness of the fee" (COMAR 09.32.11.02H). That cap is also the first in this table measured against the weekly benefit amount rather than the maximum benefit amount or the benefits recovered, and it renews: it "may be awarded for each level of appeal," with the Board-level fee awardable "in addition to" the one the Chief Hearing Examiner allowed. So the same nominal 200 percent can be earned twice on one case. Minnesota pairs its bar with a second, different protection stated as broadly as anywhere in this table except Maryland: an applicant "may not be charged fees, costs, or disbursements of any kind" before the judge, the Court of Appeals, or the Supreme Court (subd. 6(b)), needs no filing fee or cost bond for certiorari, and receives the hearing transcript free — while an employer pays the court's filing fee and the department's cost of preparing any transcript it asks for (subd. 7(b)–(c)). (This comparison was narrowed when Maryland was added: it previously said no other covered state stated the protection so broadly.) Maryland states it in four provisions rather than two — the Board and its representatives "may not charge a claimant a fee in any proceeding" (§ 8-5A-07(f)); "[a] court or an officer of a court may not charge an individual who claims benefits a fee in any proceeding under this title" (§ 8-5A-12(a)(4)); no bond may be required and no exception need be entered (§ 8-5A-12(f)); and the transcript an appeal requires is free to the claimant while the appealing party otherwise pays for it in advance (COMAR 09.32.06.09D–E). Same division of labour, reached the long way round. A.R.S. § 23-674(B)(3): an attorney or agent before the appeal tribunal or appeals board "may charge a fee not in excess of seven hundred fifty dollars," with more available only on approval, and A.A.C. R6-3-1502(J) supplies seven reasonableness factors for an above-cap request. Three other covered states publish a number, and each publishes a different kind of number in a different kind of instrument. Illinois: 15% of benefits recovered, or $150/hour, whichever is greater, by rule (units/IL.md D2). Virginia: "no fee shall be approved that exceeds 25% of the claimant's maximum benefit amount," by rule, expressly applied to nonlawyer representatives too, plus a separate interim award for multi-stage representation capped at "the lesser of $400 or 10% of the claimant's maximum benefit amount" (16VAC5-80-40 E.3–E.4, units/VA.md D2). Wisconsin, added later, is the first covered state to put the same figure in both instruments at once: Wis. Stat. § 108.09(8)(b) caps what "counsel or another agent" may "together charge or receive from an employee ... in the aggregate" at "10 percent of the maximum benefits at issue unless the department has first approved a specified higher fee," and Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 140.18 states the same 10%, the same "in the aggregate," the same base, and the same prior-approval escape (note 45). (This note previously said Illinois was the only other state with a published number. That was wrong — Virginia's 25% cap was already in units/VA.md five wakes earlier. Corrected when Wisconsin was added.) California, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan and the rest require approval without publishing any figure. Note also what the percentage is taken of: Illinois measures against benefits actually recovered, while Virginia and Wisconsin measure against a maximum — a ceiling that can exceed what the claimant ends up with. A flat cap and a percentage cap fail differently — Arizona's binds hardest on the longest cases, Illinois' on the largest awards. Two Arizona wrinkles recorded in units/AZ.md D2: the statute names "the department" as the approver of an above-cap fee while the rule names "the Appeal Tribunal or Board," and a fee-charging non-attorney must be an agent the party had already retained for some other purpose — the statute does not open paid representation to anyone.

(Amended when Missouri was added.) Minnesota's mechanism is no longer a one-off. Missouri does the same thing in a rule rather than a statute: a claimant "may represent him/herself or be represented by a duly authorized agent, who may not charge a fee for the representation" (8 CSR 10-5.015(9)(A)), while the neighbouring subsection permits representation by "a licensed Missouri attorney, a nonresident attorney appearing in compliance with Supreme Court Rule 9, or an eligible law student" with no fee language attached to it at all (9)(D). A categorical bar on the unregulated class, the regulated class left unpriced — two covered states, two instruments, one shape. What Missouri does not copy is Minnesota's second protection: no provision was found stating whether a Missouri claimant bears filing or proceeding costs at any stage, where Minnesota answers that across every forum in the chain (note 39).

(Amended when Connecticut was added.) Connecticut runs a mechanism this catalogue did not contain: it licenses the class the other states either cap or ban. Minnesota, Missouri and Maryland forbid a non-lawyer to charge at all; Arizona, Illinois, Virginia and Wisconsin price what a representative may charge. Connecticut does neither to the paid non-attorney — it registers them. Section 31-272(b)(3) provides that "[n]o authorized agent may represent any party before a referee or the board for a fee unless the agent is registered with the board," and directs the Board to write rules of conduct with "a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars per violation and revocation of registration." Regulations §§ 31-272-1 to -18 build it out: registration numbers to be used at every appearance, a conduct code, a complaint and probable-cause process, and a sanctions ladder running from a letter of reprimand through suspension and revocation to civil fines at the statutory ceiling — adjudicated by the same Board that decides the appeals, sitting in a separate disciplinary capacity. Two lines are drawn precisely: attorneys are expressly excluded from the definition of "authorized agent" for these rules (Regs. § 31-272-1), and the duty attaches to being paid, so an unpaid non-attorney — a relative, a friend, an unpaid union representative — registers nothing. This is a fourth answer to the question the other three mechanisms answer: not "how much," not "never," but "only if we can discipline you."

Layered under it, Connecticut also publishes a number, which puts it with Illinois, Virginia and Wisconsin rather than with the approval-without-a-figure group. The statute sets an approval requirement and names no figure at all (§ 31-272(b)(2)); the rule supplies one: "Except in extraordinary cases, an approvable fee may not exceed twenty percent of the benefits potentially payable to the claimant as a result of the claim under adjudication plus reasonable and necessary costs" (Regs. § 31-237g-11(d)). Note what that percentage is taken of — a fifth base in this table. Illinois measures against benefits actually recovered, Virginia and Wisconsin against a maximum benefit amount, Maryland against the weekly benefit amount, and Connecticut against benefits potentially payable on the claim being adjudicated: a forward-looking projection made before the case is decided. And it is the only one of the five with an open-ended escape written into the cap itself — "except in extraordinary cases" — rather than an approval route for exceeding it.

Connecticut's fee-shield is also the broadest in this table in one specific respect, and narrower in another. Section 31-272(b)(1) bars the administrator, the board, its referees "nor any court or officer thereof" from charging or taxing "any fees or costs against any employee or employer" in a benefit-claim proceeding — one sentence covering the whole chain including the courts, and the only shield in this table that protects the employer as well as the claimant, where Minnesota's protects an "applicant" and Maryland's "an individual who claims benefits" (note 39). It is narrower in carrying two express exceptions inside the same sentence: "the record fee on appeal to the Appellate Court," and costs a Superior Court may tax in its discretion against an appellant whose appeal it finds frivolous. Neither Minnesota nor Maryland states an exception of either kind.

1. Minnesota has the longest first-level deadline in this table and the hardest edge on it. Forty-five calendar days from sending (§ 268.101, subd. 2(f)) is half again the 30 days that was the previous maximum and more than six times New Jersey's employer window. It is also the only covered state where the same number governs all three stages — 45 days to appeal a determination, 45 to request reconsideration, 45 to petition for certiorari — so the clock neither tightens as you climb (New York, New Jersey, North Carolina) nor relaxes (Massachusetts). And the length buys no latitude: a filing on day 46 must be dismissed (note 37). This is the clearest case yet for the proposition the first bullet below has been making since Texas and Illinois — that deadline length and deadline mercy are unrelated variables.
2. Minnesota writes its refusal to excuse a late appeal as an instruction to the judge. Texas' rule says there is no good-cause exception; Illinois' law simply never mentions one; North Carolina and Virginia name a standard they never define. Minnesota does a fifth thing: § 268.105, subd. 1a(c) tells the judge what to do — "must issue a decision dismissing the appeal as untimely" — and the only discretion granted is whether to decide the timeliness question summarily or take evidence on it. That is Illinois' procedural posture (note 12) stated as a command rather than an absence. What makes it sharper is the neighbouring text: "good cause" appears twice in the same section and is defined both times, as "a reason that would have prevented a reasonable person acting with due diligence" from participating in the hearing, or from submitting evidence at it. Minnesota therefore knows how to write a good-cause standard, uses one twice for missing a hearing, and supplies none for missing the deadline — Texas' two-clocks trap (note 2) in its most explicit form yet.
3. Minnesota's appeal chain has one adjudicator in it. Every other covered state puts a second body above the first-level decision-maker — a board, a commission, a tribunal, a reviewing office. Minnesota has none. A single unemployment law judge, who must be a department employee licensed to practice law in the state, holds the evidentiary hearing; the request for reconsideration that occupies the second-level slot is decided by that same judge, and reassignment happens only if the judge has left the department, is on extended or indefinite leave, or was removed from the case (§ 268.105, subd. 2(e)). Two consequences the table cannot hold. First, the step is mandatory in a way no other covered state's second level is (note 4): the Court of Appeals reviews "the decision on reconsideration," so skipping it leaves nothing reviewable. Second, the reconsideration is confined to the record the same judge made — new evidence may be considered only to decide whether to order an additional hearing, and only on a defined good-cause showing. Massachusetts also lacks a named first-level body (note 28), but that is a gap in the drafting; Minnesota's single-adjudicator chain is deliberate and fully described.

4. Minnesota makes the claimant's side of the whole chain free, in writing. An applicant "may not be charged fees, costs, or disbursements of any kind" before the unemployment law judge, the Court of Appeals, or the Supreme Court (§ 268.105, subd. 6(b)); no non-attorney may charge an applicant a fee at all (subd. 6(a)); no filing fee or cost bond is required to petition for certiorari, and the department must furnish the hearing transcript and exhibits at no cost (subd. 7(c)). The mirror provisions put those same costs on the employer: filing fee per the appellate rules, and the department's cost of preparing any transcript it requests (subd. 7(b)). Arizona also asks no bond or docket fee of a court petitioner (note 34), but as a feature of one filing; Minnesota states it as a rule about the applicant across every forum in the chain, and pairs it with a bar on assessing fees against the department in the other direction (subd. 6(c)).

5. Missouri is the first covered state whose late-appeal good cause is both granted and defined. The statute extends the thirty days "for good cause" (§ 288.070.10) and the rule says what that means — "circumstances in which the party acted in good faith and reasonably under all the circumstances" (8 CSR 10-5.010(2)(C)) — cross-referenced to the statute by section number, so there is no question which standard governs which deadline. Set against the rest of this column the written answers now run: an affirmative "no" (Texas), silence (Illinois), a command to dismiss (Minnesota, note 37), a procedure without a standard (Pennsylvania), a name without content (North Carolina, Virginia, note 24), a closed list of three (Arizona), twelve open-ended examples contradicted by an absolute bar (Massachusetts, note 29), a general standard defined once and applied by cross-reference (Missouri), and — with Wisconsin, added a wake later — a phrase stated identically in statute and rule and defined in neither: an appeal is excused only if it was late "for a reason beyond the appellant's control" (§ 108.09(4)(c); Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 140.04). That is a different failure from North Carolina's and Virginia's name-without-content (note 24), where one instrument names a standard the other never picks up; here both instruments name the same standard and agree on it, and neither says what it means (note 44). Missouri's is also among the most permissive as written — good faith plus reasonableness, with no outer limit found, where California requires "mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect." And the length of the underlying deadline still predicts nothing: Missouri's 30 days is Illinois' 30 days, and Illinois writes down no excuse at all.

6. Missouri's second level is discretionary, and it is the first covered state where that discretion is fully wired to the courthouse. Four covered states already let the second body decline: Ohio's commission may disallow a request, New Jersey's board "may permit" further appeal, Massachusetts' board grants or denies in its discretion, and Arizona's board sits under a court that may itself refuse the case (notes 10, 19, 30, 34). Missouri's commission "may allow or deny an application for review" like the others — but the same subsection then finishes the mechanism: on denial the tribunal's decision "shall be deemed to be the decision of the commission for the purpose of judicial review," and the judicial-review clock runs "from the date of notice of the order of the commission denying the application for review" (§ 288.200.1). Massachusetts reaches the first half of that and stalls on the second, because a denial by silence produces no order and no mailing date (note 30). New Jersey's statute never says what a refusal to permit an appeal even is (note 19). Missouri is the case where discretionary review, the conversion of the decision below, and the restarted clock are all three written down.

7. Missouri stacks two clocks to reach a court that is not a trial court — a combination no other covered state has. Texas stacks (14 days to finality, then 14 to sue, note 1) but sues in a trial court that retries the facts. Virginia has two numbers that overlap and reconcile with nothing (note 26). Missouri's are cleanly sequential and land in the appellate court directly: the commission's decision "shall become final ten days after the date of notification or mailing" (§ 288.200.2), and "[w]ithin twenty days after a decision of the commission has become final" the appeal goes to "the appellate court having jurisdiction in the area where the claimant... reside[s]," or the Western District of the Missouri Court of Appeals for non-residents and cases without a claimant (§ 288.210). Two further details: the notice of appeal is filed with the commission, not the court — the same posture as Arizona's filing with the clerk of the appeals board (note 34), though Missouri's appeal is of right and Arizona's is not — and the agency's own page describes the whole thing as a flat "30 days," a total that is arithmetically close and mechanically different. units/MO.md F3 states the statutory structure and flags the practice page's version rather than adopting it.

8. Missouri is the fifth distinct way written law fails in this table: one statute expressly overriding another's protection, with nothing left to say what survives. The catalogue so far: a stale edition of a current statute hosted by the agency itself (Pennsylvania, note 9); a freshly amended statute naming a body abolished years earlier (Michigan, note 16); a statute out of step with itself on what its own appeal body is called (Virginia, note 25); a regulation squarely at odds with the statute it implements, in both directions (Massachusetts note 29, Arizona note 33). Missouri's is none of these. § 288.070.8 states a real claimant protection — benefits paid while an appeal was pending "shall be considered as having been due and payable regardless of any redetermination or decision," unless the reversal finds the claimant "willfully failed to disclose or falsified" a disqualifying fact. § 288.381.1 then begins "[t]he provisions of subsection 8 of section 288.070 notwithstanding" and makes those very benefits "collectible by the division" under § 288.380.12 and .13 — subsections covering nondisclosure or misrepresentation and the division's own "error or omission or... lack of knowledge of material fact." The override is explicit and by section number, so this is not an accident of drafting; what is missing is any text saying what § 288.070.8 still protects once § 288.381.1 has taken the ordinary reversal case away from it. Both sections are current — § 288.070 effective 2008, §§ 288.380 and 288.381 effective 2016 — so no edition question resolves it (note 9's failure mode). units/MO.md E2 records the conflict and declines to pick a winner, which is the only honest reading available from the text alone.

9. Wisconsin names its late-appeal standard twice and defines it nowhere — then its agency renames it. Wis. Stat. § 108.09(4)(c) and Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 140.04 both ask only whether the appeal was late "for a reason beyond the appellant's control." Neither defines the phrase, and unlike North Carolina and Virginia (note 24) the problem is not that one instrument names a standard the other ignores — statute and rule agree exactly, and the agreement is the point: there is nothing to play them off against. The test also runs in two steps, the first of which disposes of the appeal on paper. The tribunal "shall review the appellant's written reasons," and if those reasons, "when taken as true and construed most favorably to the appellant, do not constitute a reason beyond the appellant's control," it "may dismiss the appeal without a hearing." A claimant's one shot is therefore the written explanation attached to the late appeal, before anyone has heard from them. Meanwhile DWD's own appeals page puts the same question as whether the claimant had "good cause," glossing it back to "a reason beyond your control" — so a claimant researching their own case meets a phrase that appears nowhere in the operative law, and the phrase that does appear is the narrower-sounding one. units/WI.md B4 records both and does not treat them as established equivalents. Compare Massachusetts, where the twelve enumerated excuses at least tell a claimant what kind of story counts (note 29).

10. Wisconsin is the first covered state where the same fee number appears in the statute and in the rule — and the two instruments still do not say the same thing. Both cap a representative at 10% of "the maximum benefits at issue," both take it "in the aggregate," and both allow more only on the department's prior approval (Wis. Stat. § 108.09(8)(b); Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 140.18). Everywhere else in this table the published figure lives in one instrument only (note 35). The redundancy is not quite redundant, though: the statute also covers disputes over "a penalty imposed under s. 108.04 (11) (bh)" and expressly excludes "any fee charged for representation before a court of law," and the rule does neither, while the rule supplies a waiver procedure — a written request to the Bureau of Legal Affairs, with the department directed to consider whether extended or other federal benefits are at issue — that the statute does not. The statute is also the broader source on who may represent a party: it contemplates "counsel or another agent," which settles the non-attorney question at the statutory level rather than leaving it to DWD 140.02. Wisconsin pairs this with two priced, waivable record fees where Minnesota and Missouri leave theirs unpriced (note 39): $7.00 for a copy of the hearing recording, waivable if the department is satisfied the person cannot pay (DWD 140.21(2)), and 20 cents per page for commission copies, waivable on a showing of financial inability (LIRC 1.08). The one number Wisconsin does not publish is the § 108.09(5)(b) transcript fee, which the statute leaves to a commission rule that ch. LIRC 1 does not appear to contain — recorded in units/WI.md C3 as an absence after a section-by- section read, not as a "none."

11. Wisconsin answers "benefits pending appeal" for both directions in a single clause — and Maryland, added a wake later, turns out to do the same thing by an even quieter route. (Amended when Maryland was added; this note previously said no other covered state did it.) This is the field this reference most often has to assemble from inference or from an agency page — Pennsylvania's rests on no statute at all (note 12), and Missouri's rests on two statutes that contradict each other (note 43). Wisconsin § 108.09(9)(a) directs that benefits "be paid promptly in accordance with the department's determination or the decision of an appeal tribunal, the commission or a reviewing court, notwithstanding the pendency" of the period to request a hearing, to petition the commission, or to commence judicial action, or of any such proceeding. The trick is that it never mentions who appealed: it fixes payment to whichever decision is currently operative, and § 108.09(9)(b) makes the most recently issued one control. Both halves then fall out of one sentence — a denied claimant is not paid while the denial stands, and an allowed claimant keeps being paid through the employer's appeal, because the allowance stays operative until superseded. DWD's practice page states the employer-appeal half in as many words, and agrees. The symmetry has a price on the other side: § 108.09(9)(c) makes anything paid that the final decision would not have allowed an "erroneous payment," and § 108.22(8)(c)2 then forecloses the obvious waiver argument by providing that a determination "amended, modified or reversed" on appeal "shall not be treated as establishing a departmental error." Virginia's mandatory waiver excludes the reversal-on-appeal case the same way (note 27); Wisconsin reaches the result through the definition of departmental error rather than through an exclusion in the waiver clause.

    Maryland's § 8-808(a)(1) has the same shape and less machinery: the Secretary "promptly shall pay benefits to a claimant in accordance with a determination until it has been modified or reversed by a later determination or decision," notwithstanding §§ 8-805 and 8-806 and Subtitle 10. Wisconsin's clause at least names what it is overriding — the pendency of a hearing request, a petition, or a judicial action. Maryland's never mentions an appeal at all. It works purely by making the operative determination the only thing that matters, and the two halves fall out of that: a denial pays nothing while the claimant appeals it, and an allowance keeps paying while the employer appeals it, because neither appeal has yet modified or reversed anything. The "notwithstanding" is doing the load-bearing work, and what it names is telling — §§ 8-805 and 8-806 are the filing and determination sections, which is to say the sections an appeal is taken under. So the drafting styles now run three ways: name the pendency (Wisconsin, Illinois, Virginia, Missouri), name the operative determination and say nothing about appeals (Maryland), or say nothing at all and leave it to inference (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Washington, North Carolina). What Maryland does not share with Wisconsin is the tidy back end: where Wisconsin forecloses the waiver argument by defining departmental error, Maryland simply leaves § 8-809 outside the "notwithstanding" clause's reach, so the money paid during the employer's appeal is recoverable on ordinary overpayment terms with no special rule either way (note 51).

12. Wisconsin's two appeal clocks are extended by three different holiday lists, and one of the rules supplying them reads older than the statute it implements. The first-level weekend and holiday extension exists only in Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 140.01(2)(a), which extends a deadline falling on "any of the holidays enumerated under ss. 230.35 (4) (a) and 995.20, Stats." Those are two different lists doing two different jobs — § 995.20 is the general legal-holidays section, § 230.35(4)(a) sets the days state offices close — and neither contains the other: § 995.20 has Juneteenth, November 11, the third Monday in February, the second Monday in October and two election days; § 230.35(4)(a) instead has December 24 and December 31. Because the rule cites them conjunctively, the operative set is the union, which no single source states. The second-level clock is extended by a third list, enumerated directly in Wis. Admin. Code § LIRC 1.02 — close to § 995.20 but not identical, since it carries December 24 and 31 like the state-office list. That same rule runs the 21 days "from the date of mailing," and its operative sentence was last amended in 2006, while § 108.09(6)(a) runs them from electronic delivery or mailing and § 108.09's amending acts continue to 2017. This is note 9's failure mode in a milder form — not a stale copy of a current statute, but a current rule that predates the statutory language it sits under. units/WI.md B2 and F1 record the gap; the statutory trigger is the one to plan around.

13. Maryland's appeal chain is written down twice, in the same code, and the two versions disagree by five days — and that was done on purpose in a single act. Md. Code, Labor & Empl. § 8-806(g) and (h) describe an appeal to the Lower Appeals Division and then review by the Board of Appeals. Subtitle 5 (§§ 8-501 to 8-508) and Subtitle 5A (§§ 8-5A-01 to 8-5A-12) describe the same two steps again, in different words. Chapter 660 of the Acts of 2008 (House Bill 432) is where this comes from: it renumbered the old Subtitle 5 as Subtitle 5A, enacted a new Subtitle 5 for the Lower Appeals Division, amended § 8-806(e)(2) and (g)(1)–(3) to point them at the new Division — and then reenacted § 8-806(g)(4)–(6) and the whole of § 8-806(h) with no change marks at all, leaving the older description standing. The act took effect October 1, 2008 with no contingency and no sunset. The disagreement a reader can actually hit is at the hand-off to the Board: § 8-806(g)(6) says the hearing examiner's decision is final unless review is begun within 15 days, § 8-508(e) says it is final after 10 days unless review is begun under § 8-5A-10, and § 8-5A-10(a)(1) then gives 15 days to file. This is note 43's problem — two current provisions contradicting each other — but with a cleaner provenance: Missouri's conflict has to be inferred from two sections that name each other, while Maryland's can be traced to the page of the enrolled bill where the old text was reprinted unchanged. The Department does not treat it as a problem: its decisions digest on this very question is titled "Timely and Valid Appeal - Sections 8-806, 8-508, 8-5A-10" and cites all three together without remarking on it. A related, smaller symptom is that the same 15-day first-level deadline is stated four times with four different triggers — "the mailing or other delivery of the notice" (§ 8-806(e)(1)(i)), "the date the notice … is sent" (§ 8-806(g)(1)), "mailed … or otherwise is delivered" (§ 8-508(a)(1)), and "mailed or otherwise sent" (COMAR 09.32.11.01B(1)) — with nothing saying which controls if a notice were generated on one date and posted on another. Compare note 9 (Pennsylvania hosting a stale copy of its own statute) and note 47 (a Wisconsin rule that predates the statute it implements): those are lag. This is duplication that was enacted and then left alone for eighteen years.

14. Maryland grants the late-appeal power twice, to two different officials, and defines it nowhere. The statute gives it to the head of the division — "[t]he chief hearing examiner of the Lower Appeals Division, for good cause, may extend the time for an appeal" (§ 8-806(e)(2)) — and the rule gives it to whoever is hearing the case: the period "may be extended by the Hearing Examiner for good cause shown" (COMAR 09.32.11.01B(4)). Neither defines good cause, neither lists factors, and neither sets a deadline for asking. On the spectrum this table has been building, that puts Maryland at the permissive-but-unguided end: Texas and two others have no excuse at all (note 3), Massachusetts enumerates twelve excuses (note 29), Missouri states both the standard and who bears it (note 40), Wisconsin's rule and its agency page use two different phrases for the same test (note 44) — and Maryland simply says "good cause" twice, in two instruments, naming two different deciders. units/MD.md B4 records both without reconciling them.

15. Maryland is the clearest case in this table of an agency's own pages contradicting its own rules — three times, in three different directions. First, filing at the second level: COMAR 09.32.06.01A(2) says an appeal to the Board "may not be filed by electronic mail," while the Board's own page tells filers "[t]he appeals can be filed via email" and gives the address it will accept them at. The rule's escape hatch — "other method of transmission established by the Board of Appeals" — may well cover it, but the page and the rule state opposite things on their face. Second, recordings: COMAR 09.32.11.02E makes a party's own recording a matter for the hearing examiner's discretion, while the Department's hearing page tells parties they "are prohibited from making unofficial recordings." Third, currency: the decisions digest cites COMAR 09.32.11.01B(3) for the good-cause extension and B(2) for the filing-date list, where the current rule numbers them B(4) and B(3), and calls the filing date the "earlier" of the listed dates where the rule says "earliest" — the marks of a page written against the pre-2018 chapter. Note 20 (New Jersey) is the case where the agency page is the only source for a rule; note 44 (Wisconsin) is where it paraphrases loosely. Maryland is the case where it is checkably out of step, which is worth knowing because it is also the most readable description the state publishes.

16. Maryland's waiver test is conjunctive, and the clause that keeps benefits flowing does not protect them afterwards. § 8-808(a)(1) pays by whichever determination is operative (note 46), so an allowance keeps paying through the employer's appeal — but the "notwithstanding" reaches only §§ 8-805, 8-806 and Subtitle 10, not § 8-809, so a reversal leaves the money recoverable on ordinary overpayment terms. What makes those terms strict is the and: waiver is approved where the claimant "(1) Is without fault; and (2) Lacks the ability to pay now and in the foreseeable future, or is likely to be below the federal minimum poverty level" (COMAR 09.32.07.05A), with the claimant carrying the burden of proof (.05C). Most states in this table ask about fault and then about equity — Michigan's is mandatory where repayment would be "contrary to equity and good conscience" (note 31), North Carolina's pairs equity with a defined hardship test — but Maryland requires both an absence of fault and a means test, so a blameless claimant who can afford to repay does not qualify. Three structural limits sit around it: the application is due within 30 days of the notice absent good cause, the Secretary may grant a waiver "only within 1 year of the initial determination establishing the overpayment" (stayed by appeal), and no recovery determination may be made "later than 3 years after the date that the benefits were paid" (§ 8-809(f)(2)) — a shorter outside limit than New Jersey's four years or Massachusetts' six. Collection itself pauses while a waiver request or an appeal of its denial is pending (COMAR 09.32.07.04), which is a protection several states in this table do not state at all.

17. Maryland is the first covered state where a deadline landing on a Saturday appears not to move. Every other state examined so far extends a filing deadline that falls on a weekend or a holiday, whether by a UI-specific rule or, as in New York and Minnesota, by a general one. Maryland has a general one too — Gen. Prov. § 1-302(b)(1) — but it reads: the last day counts "unless … it is a Sunday or legal holiday." Saturday appears in the section only in a second branch, § 1-302(b)(2), which applies where "the act to be done is the filing of a paper in court" — which an appeal to the Lower Appeals Division is not. Nor does Saturday arrive through the definition: "legal holiday" is a closed list of named dates in Gen. Prov. § 1-111(a), and Saturday is not among them. Neither Title 8 nor COMAR 09.32.11 supplies a weekend rule of its own. So on the sources read, a 15-day appeal period whose fifteenth day is a Saturday expires on that Saturday. units/MD.md B2 records this as an inference drawn from the absence of an applicable extension rather than from any provision saying so, which is the right way to hold it — but it is the kind of absence that costs someone an appeal, and it is the reason the blanket statement at the top of this page now carries an exception.

    (Amended when Connecticut was added.) Maryland keeps the exception, but Connecticut shows that the sentence above was measuring the wrong thing. "Every other state examined so far extends a filing deadline that falls on a weekend or a holiday" is true of Connecticut in outcome and false of it in mechanism: Connecticut has no weekend rule and no holiday rule, only § 31-241(a)(2)'s extension for a last day falling "on any day when the offices of the Employment Security Division are not open for business." A Saturday deadline moves in Connecticut because the offices are shut, not because it is a Saturday. So Connecticut is not a second Maryland, and it is not one of the calendar-rule states either — see note 55.

18. Connecticut's appeal rules stopped being amended in 1997 and its appeal statute did not — so the rule and the statute now say different things about two of the first questions a claimant asks. Every section of the regulation chapter that governs these appeals, all four Articles and sixty-one sections of it, carries one of two effective dates — June 23, 1986 or January 1, 1988 — followed by "Amended October 27, 1997." Not one carries a date after 1997. The General Assembly, meanwhile, amended the chapter in 2012 and again in 2016, and both amendments landed on provisions the frozen rules implement. On the trigger for the twenty-one-day clock: P.A. 16-169 struck "mailed to his last-known address" from § 31-241(a) and substituted "provided to the claimant or any of such employers" — the statute's own History paragraph records the substitution in those words — while Regs. § 31-237g-15(a) still runs the clock from "the date such decision was mailed to such party's last-known address." On whether the hearing is by telephone: P.A. 12-125 rewrote § 31-237j(b) to say referee proceedings "shall be conducted (1) by telephone or other electronic means, or (2) at the request of either party, in person," while Regs. § 31-237g-17(a) still makes in-person "the preferred manner" for an intrastate appeal and requires a party to show good cause to get a telephone hearing instead. A party reading only the statute would think in-person requires a request; a party reading only the rule would think telephone does. Nothing in either instrument says which governs, and units/CT.md resolves neither.

    This is a fifth distinct way written law fails in this table, and it is worth separating from the four already catalogued at note 29. Pennsylvania's problem is a stale edition of a current statute hosted by the agency (note 9); Michigan's is a freshly amended statute naming a body that no longer exists (note 16); Virginia's is a statute out of step with itself after a half-finished renaming (note 25); Massachusetts' is a regulation drafted squarely against the statute it implements (note 29). Connecticut's is none of those: the rules were correct when written and were simply never revisited, so the divergence was manufactured by amending one instrument and not the other. Wisconsin has the nearest shape (note 47, a current rule predating the statutory language it sits under), but Wisconsin's gap is a lag inside a single question; Connecticut's runs across the two questions that decide when you must file and how you will be heard. The cheapest way for a later wake to re-check the premise is the date line at the foot of each Cornell LII section page.

19. One of Connecticut's postmark rules is not in the unemployment chapter, and it reaches three of the four appeal deadlines but not the fourth. Section 31-241(a)(3) says a mailed appeal is timely if it bears "a legible United States postal service postmark," and excludes private postage meter dates — which reads like a bar on private carriers. It is not one. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 1-2a, in Title 1, provides that any reference to the United States mail or a postmark "shall be treated as including a reference to any delivery service designated by the Secretary of the Treasury" under I.R.C. § 7502 — which is why the Department's claimant guide names DHL, FedEx and UPS as acceptable in the same breath as saying only a USPS postmark fixes a mailing date. Read against chapter 567 alone those two sentences contradict each other; read with § 1-2a they do not. But § 1-2a works by naming sections, and the list is not complete. It names §§ 31-241, 31-248 and 31-249a — the first-level appeal, the referee's finality clock and the Board's — and it does not name § 31-273, whose overpayment and fraud-penalty appeals carry the same twenty-one days, the same "provided" trigger, the same good-cause cross-reference and the same postmark language, copied almost word for word from § 31-241(a). On the face of the two statutes, a private carrier's date mark establishes timeliness for the appeal from a denial and not for the appeal from the overpayment determination that follows it. Nothing read says whether the omission was deliberate. Chapter 567 gives no notice of any of this except a one-line cross-reference note printed under § 31-248, and units/CT.md records the currency of the IRS carrier list itself as unverified. This is a different hazard from the stale-edition and statute-versus-rule problems elsewhere in these notes: here both instruments are current and consistent, and the trap is that one of them is filed somewhere a reader of the unemployment chapter has no reason to look.

20. Connecticut extends a deadline by asking whether the office was open, not what day it was — and it used to do the other thing. The only extension in the chapter is § 31-241(a)(2): the last day moves to the next business day "if the last day for filing an appeal falls on any day when the offices of the Employment Security Division are not open for business." No Saturday, no Sunday, no holiday, and no cross-reference to a general computation-of-time statute. In ordinary operation the result matches a calendar rule, because state offices are shut on weekends and holidays — but the two can come apart in both directions: an office closed for a reason having nothing to do with the calendar extends the deadline, and a day the offices are open does not, whatever the date. Connecticut is therefore a third shape alongside the calendar-rule majority and Maryland's Saturday gap (note 52), and the only covered state whose weekend protection is contingent on an administrative fact rather than a date.

    Two things make this more than a curiosity. First, it is deliberate: the statute's own History records that the 1965 act "specified that 7-day period for appeals excludes Sundays and holidays," that the 1967 act added the office-closure extension alongside it, and that P.A. 74-229 then "delet[ed] former exclusion for Sundays and holidays." Connecticut had a calendar rule for nine years, ran both mechanisms in parallel for seven, and repealed the calendar one. No other covered state's history shows a legislature choosing between these two mechanisms. Second, the statute and the rule do not describe the same closure. The statute says "the offices of the Employment Security Division," plural and division-wide; Regs. § 31-237g-15(a) says "the office in which the appeal was filed," singular. Whether one office shut for a local reason while the others stay open extends anything is not addressed anywhere read, and units/CT.md B2 records it as an open question rather than resolving it.

What nineteen states already show

• The first-level deadline ranges from 7 to 45 days — more than a factor of six — and no national rule of thumb exists. Two of fourteen states write the number twice rather than once, and for different reasons: New Jersey splits by party (7 days for the employer, 21 for the claimant, note 18), Arizona by mode of service (7 days from personal delivery, 15 from mailing, note 32). For a claimant the floor is Arizona's 7 days where the notice was handed over in person, and Massachusetts' 10 days unconditionally (note 28). And a longer deadline does not mean a softer one: the three states with no way at all to excuse a late filing are Texas (14 days, excuse affirmatively denied), Illinois (30 days, excuse simply absent from the written law) and Minnesota — which has the longest deadline in the table, 45 days, and orders the judge to dismiss anything filed after it (note 37) — and New Jersey may yet be a fourth: its statute is silent and its rules could not be read, recorded as unresolved rather than as a "no" (units/NJ.md B4).
• The trigger event is not the same kind of thing in every state. Thirteen of fourteen key the clock to an event that happens to the notice — mailing, service, delivery, sending. Pennsylvania keys it to a date printed on the notice, which means postal delay eats the claimant's window instead of shifting it. Washington and North Carolina are the only covered states whose statutes say in terms that the earlier of two events (notification or mailing) controls — an electronic notice can start the clock before a mailed copy would; North Carolina uses the trigger at every administrative level. New Jersey's employer clock is the first in a covered state to start at confirmed receipt — and Minnesota keys all three of its own clocks to "sending" while never defining that word anywhere in its chapter (units/MN.md B1) — the one trigger that cannot outrun the notice itself (note 18). Ohio alone lets proven non-receipt restart the clock outright; Michigan gets partway there, listing non-receipt as a good-cause ground for excusing lateness (note 11). "21 days" and "20 days" are not comparable numbers in the way they look. Missouri adds a sixteenth variant: one deadline length with two alternative starting events in the same clause — "either delivered in person or mailed" (§ 288.070.6) — where Arizona uses the same personal-delivery-versus-mailing split to set two different lengths (note 32). Missouri's statute never says which branch controls if both could apply, and folds an electronic notice into the mailing branch only for a party who asked to be served that way. Wisconsin adds a seventeenth: three starting events resolved by an explicit tie-breaker — 14 days after the determination "was delivered electronically, mailed, or given to the party, whichever first occurs" (§ 108.09(2r)) — which is Missouri's problem solved in four words, and puts electronic delivery on the same footing as mailing for every party rather than only for one who opted in. Wisconsin then softens the whole thing from the other end: the appeal is timely if received or postmarked within the 14 days, and a party who first receives the determination after the period has already run, through no fault of their own, gets the period measured from actual receipt instead (Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 140.01(2)(a)) — a narrower cousin of Ohio's proven-non-receipt restart (note 11). Maryland adds an eighteenth variant that is not a design at all but an accident of drafting: one starting event described four different ways in four provisions that all set the same 15 days — "the mailing or other delivery of the notice," "the date the notice … is sent," "mailed … or otherwise is delivered," and "mailed or otherwise sent" — with nothing saying which governs if they came apart (note 48). Maryland does at least fix the filing end generously, counting the appeal as filed on the earliest of hand delivery, postmark, the date written on the appeal where the postmark is illegible, or electronic receipt (COMAR 09.32.11.01B(3)).
• Deadlines do not have to get longer as you climb. New York's second-level window (20 days) is shorter than its first (30), New Jersey's claimant window tightens from 21 days to 20 at the Board of Review — while its employer window stretches from 7 to the same 20 — and North Carolina drops from 30 days to 10, the sharpest tightening in the table (note 23). Assuming the clock relaxes on appeal is a mistake in at least three of fifteen states — though Massachusetts runs the other way, tripling from 10 days to 30 at the board of review, and Minnesota holds flat at 45 days through all three stages, the only covered state where one number does the whole job (note 36).
• Second-level review is not always of right — and it is not always prompt. In Ohio the Commission may simply disallow a request for review (the disallowance itself then opens the courthouse door), New Jersey's statute makes Board of Review appeal guaranteed only for non-unanimous tribunal decisions and decisions that overruled or modified a determination — "may permit" covers everything else (note 19) — and Massachusetts' board decides in its discretion within 21 days or the appeal is deemed denied by its silence (note 30) — and Minnesota has no second body to be of right or not: the same judge reconsiders, and that step is the one thing in this table a party may not skip (note 38). Five of eighteen states, five different mechanisms — Missouri's being the only one that writes down the full path from a discretionary denial to a dated judicial-review clock (note 41). Wisconsin's second level is of right and unremarkable in shape; what is unusual is where the commission sits — outside the department that decided the claim, like Washington's first level (note 17) but one storey up. Only Illinois and Massachusetts put an enforceable clock on the second level at all, and they point in opposite directions — Illinois' forces a decision out, Massachusetts' turns the absence of one into a denial (note 13). In the other eleven, a stalled Board is just a wait.
• Where a case lands in court is structurally different, not just procedurally. Texas retries the facts in a trial court; New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey skip trial courts entirely (New Jersey's route resting on agency practice rather than statute, note 20); California and Florida sit in between. Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Washington complicate the taxonomy: all four file in a trial court like Texas, but the court is confined to the record — trial-court venue does not imply trial-court fact-finding. The same evidentiary mistake at a hearing is fixable in Texas and effectively fatal in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Washington, or Minnesota — whose rules say so to the parties in advance, the notice of hearing having to state that the hearing "is the only procedure available under the law at which a party may present evidence." Arizona adds a category none of the others occupy: no trial court, and no guaranteed hearing in the appellate one either — the Court of Appeals grants or denies the application, and a denial ends the case (note 34). Missouri joins the no-trial-court group by a route of its own: two sequential clocks into the Court of Appeals, with the notice of appeal filed at the commission rather than the court (note 42).
• How much of the answer is even written down varies enormously. Florida legislates its late-appeal standard and its outer bar; Ohio legislates even its late-appeal excuses sentence by sentence; Pennsylvania leaves the equivalent doctrine entirely to case law and leaves benefits-pending-appeal to a webpage; Illinois writes down an elaborate Board-inaction remedy but no late-appeal excuse at all; Michigan's written law is current-but-stale in a way all its own — its freshly amended statute names an abolished tribunal (note 16); New Jersey writes its pay-pending scheme and its overpayment-waiver standard directly into statute — more than any other covered state — yet leaves every parameter of judicial review to a web page (note 20). Two states can have the same practical rule and completely different amounts of law behind it — which is precisely what a citation-first reference is for. And Missouri shows that writing more down does not always settle more — it is the most explicit state in this table on exhaustion and on late-appeal good cause, and simultaneously the one whose overpayment exposure is least determinable, because two current sections contradict each other by name (note 43).
• Benefits paid during an employer's appeal keep flowing in every state examined so far — but for eighteen different reasons, with eighteen different exposures if the employer wins. Wisconsin needs only one clause for both directions, because it fixes payment to whichever decision is operative rather than to who filed the appeal (note 46), and Maryland does the same in a clause that never uses the word appeal at all — the difference being that Wisconsin then closes off the waiver argument by definition, while Maryland leaves the money exposed to ordinary overpayment recovery and a waiver test that requires no fault and inability to pay (note 51). Minnesota is the cleanest drafting of the rule in this table: two sentences in two sections, one for an allowing determination and one for an allowing decision, together covering every interval from the first allowance to the Court of Appeals — exactly the span Arizona leaves half-unwritten. Arizona is the sharpest reminder that "so far" is doing work: § 23-773(B) says in terms that benefits are paid regardless of further appeal, but only once a tribunal or the board has affirmed an allowance. For the earlier stretch — the deputy allows benefits, the employer appeals that determination — nothing in the chapter says anything at all, and units/AZ.md records the gap rather than filling it. Massachusetts is the extreme of note 7's footing problem: nowhere in c. 151A does any sentence address a pending administrative appeal at all. The answer is assembled from a clause repeated at each level — benefits are paid "in accordance with" whatever decision is currently in force — and the chapter's one express pay-pending sentence governs only the appeal from the district court to the Appeals Court. Virginia is the sharpest illustration that the label on a waiver does not predict its reach: its waiver is mandatory, better-defined than most, and expressly unavailable for an overpayment caused by "a reversal in the appeals process" (note 27). The exposure gap is now wide: New York and Pennsylvania protect a no-fault claimant from repayment; California and Illinois offer a fault-based waiver (Illinois adds a 25%-of-weekly-benefit recoupment cap); Washington's waiver is discretionary but rule-guided — waiver presumed warranted when household resources are at or below 70% of the Lower Living Standard Income Level; Michigan makes its waiver mandatory where repayment would be "contrary to equity and good conscience" and caps recoupment at 50% of each payment; New Jersey makes its waiver mandatory upon request across four statutory circumstances and self-executing — no request needed — where the overpayment came from division or employer error (note 21); North Carolina's non-fraud waiver is discretionary but carries the most concretely defined hardship test of any covered state — loss of "minimal necessities of food, medicine, and shelter," with 180/360-day duration thresholds written into the rule; Massachusetts' waiver is discretionary and defines neither of its two phrases (note 31); Ohio and Texas require repayment with no general waiver at all — and Minnesota goes further than either, barring the commissioner from compromising an overpayment at all, while being the only covered state that extinguishes the debt on its own after six years (note 31). Missouri matches Minnesota's clean drafting on the paying half — one sentence covering every interval from the deputy to a reviewing court — and then has the least determinate answer in the table on the repaying half, for the reason set out at note 43. It also joins Ohio, Texas and Minnesota in having no claimant-invocable waiver at all, with a twist of its own: the only relief is the division's own discretion not to pursue an error-based overpayment at or below twenty percent of the maximum weekly benefit.

Coverage

Nineteen of fifty states. Nothing here should be generalized to an uncovered state; the nineteen covered differ from each other on every column in the table. Georgia remains parked — its official code and rules sites refused plain fetches when probed at the wake that added New Jersey, and it needs a different access route. Massachusetts is the first covered state whose agency is unreachable from this machine: www.mass.gov returns HTTP 403 to every request, so units/MA.md cites no practice page at all and answers "not found" where other units would have cited one. Arizona is the second such state — des.az.gov also returns HTTP 403 here — and it fails the other way round from Massachusetts on the law itself: Arizona's statutes are the cleanest static text this project has found (plain per-section HTML at azleg.gov), while its Secretary of State refuses the administrative code, which had to be read from Cornell LII's mirror. Minnesota is the third state whose agency content could not be read from this machine — mn.gov/deed answers with a bot-detection challenge and uimn.org carries no appeals page that could be found — but it is the best law source the project has seen: the Office of the Revisor of Statutes publishes the statutes and the administrative rules as static HTML from one site, with amendment history on both. Indiana is now parked alongside Georgia, for the opposite reason to Massachusetts': its General Assembly serves the Indiana Code only through a JavaScript application whose API requires a key, and the old static copy of the Administrative Code now redirects into the same application, so neither the statute nor the rules could be read. Missouri was added at the wake after Minnesota, and is the second state whose administrative code had to be read from Cornell LII's mirror — the Secretary of State serves the Code of State Regulations only as two-column PDFs whose text extraction breaks words across line ends, the hazard North Carolina's OAH documents introduced. Its statutes, by contrast, are clean per-section HTML from the Revisor at revisor.mo.gov, each carrying an effective date, and its agency pages answer plain requests — so Missouri is the first state in several to supply a practice source as well as both halves of the law. Wisconsin was added two wakes later, Maryland the wake after that, and Connecticut the wake after that — the third state whose administrative code had to be read from Cornell LII's mirror, after Massachusetts, Arizona and Missouri, because the State's own regulation portal (eregulations.ct.gov) times out at the TCP level rather than refusing. Its statutes are the opposite problem from Maryland's: the General Assembly serves the whole of chapter 567 as a single HTML page carrying amendment history and case annotations on every section — the richest statutory source this project has read, and the reason note 53's 1997 freeze and note 55's repealed calendar rule are provable at all — but the page declares a UTF-8 charset while actually being encoded in Windows-1252, so every curly quote decodes to a replacement character unless the declaration is ignored. Connecticut's agency pages answer plain requests, so it supplies a practice source as well as both halves of the law.

Next candidates: Oregon and Colorado, both probed and recorded in MACHINE.md. Oregon's oregonlegislature.gov serves ORS 657 whole and its rules are reachable through Cornell LII, the Secretary of State's own site still returning a WAF block page. Colorado's rules are on LII too, but its statute is PDF-only behind a 6 MB Title 8 download. Tennessee remains parked with Georgia and Indiana: its rules are on LII but no free HTML source for T.C.A. Title 50-7 has been found.