Are awards rank specific, such as the Meritorious Service Medal?

In theory and by regulation - no. In reality - yes. Its rare for an E-3 to get an ARCOM. MSM's almost never go to someone below an E-6 and they are relatively rare for E-6's. Legions of Merit are unheard of below E-8 and usually go to E-9s.

The justification is that higher ranking soldiers carry more responsibility and that is recognized by higher awards. As a result, some awards only go to soldiers of a particular rank or higher.

As many have said how the award is written is very important. You can’t just say so and so walks on water and is bulletproof you need specifics. When I was an S1 we put out examples of bullet comment for various awards but the rule of thumb is a specific action on a specific date and how that action affected the unit and as many have said here a soldier doing the job of a soldier 2 or 3 grades above their grade and accomplishing the mission is a very important thing to mention

I received MSM as a retirement award as a SSG.

Here's the answer to your question
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritorious_Service_Medal_(United_States)

I feel your pain. As a PFC I was put in for a MSM and the NCO that put in the award had the justified bullets: Volunteered at the location to work while I was going through a MEB, discovered network vulnerabilities that were the same ones that caused USB storage to be disabled across the DoD, rebuilt and entire training area and locked it down because of those vulnerabilities, wrote scripts to streamline the resetting of passwords. 864 CAC waivered student accounts, including scripts that would unlock any locked accounts and reset their passwords that kicked off when I recieved an email after hours with a certain email subject. All in all I had 7 bullets. He was told to resubmit it as an arcom, that they would not approve MSM for a PFC. I guess it depends on the corps you're in.

Guess I have the last laugh now. I've seen those same people on LinkedIn as an apple care tech or some other dead end job. Even had a few senior NCOs that didnt have my back when I was in contact me about a job later on. I laughed.

SSG Janell Lord, this is a case of it is what it is. I am not disagreeing with you on this point, and I believe you have a valid argument. The higher level chain of command has their priorities and they usually award the higher medals to higher ranking personnel. They likely never consider that anyone of lower rank is out there doing the same thing as a higher ranking individual.

There is no justification. Its a sad reality for SMs such as yourself that put in work, but its recognised based upon your rank. If you ask me, its poor leadership due to lack of guidance from those that should be giving it. Just my humble opinion.

No you are correct, but did you already have an ARCOM? What did the E7's Award recommendation say that yours didn't? Just because you did the same job doesn't mean you did the same thing.

Technically no, but far too many commands do skew their system.

I think that the question shows the fact that the appearance of there is a minimum rank for an award