The Role of the Courts in Securing Welfare Rights and ...

Welfare Law CenterMaryland’s maximum family grant. In Maryland, families of 5 or fewer people were paid 100%of the state’s standard of need for welfare benefits. Larger families got the flat maximum grant of$250, even though the standard of need for larger families was much higher. The court said thestate had a rational basis for denying larger families full benefits: the state wanted to keep welfarebenefits below what a full time worker would earn at the minimum wage. It did not matter thatthese families did not have any member who could be a full time worker. The Court went togreat lengths in its opinion to make clear that it was unlikely to overturn any differentialtreatment under the rational basis test, quoting an earlier case saying “A statutory discriminationwill not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it.” And theSupreme Court and lower courts have gotten much more conservative since 1970.There has been one victory in a rational basis welfare case in the Supreme Court sinceDandridge. In 1971 Congress voted to deny food stamps to households where not everyone wasrelated. They did this so “communes” could not get food stamps. In fact, desperately poorhouseholds where different families were living together, or where a family had taken in a childfrom another family, were cut off. The Supreme Court held in United States Department ofAgriculture v. Moreno 76 that this discrimination violated the Equal Protection Clause under therational basis test. It is clear from the opinion that the Court was influenced by the fact thatCongress adopted the provision without any careful consideration, the provision did not hurt itstarget since communes could get around it. Instead, totally “innocent” and “deserving” peoplewere hurt. Even so, Justice Rehnquist, now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, dissentedfrom the decision. It is hard to be optimistic about the Court applying this decision to strikedown a federal or state law today.There have also been instances in which a case is settled. For example, a Californiacounty time-limited general relief benefits to disabled persons. After a case was filed raisingclaims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses,as well as state law, the County settled. 77Here are some of the defeats:May 1999⋅ 30 ⋅