Source: https://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/443/76/case.php
Timestamp: 2020-08-14 10:08:53
Document Index: 590565250

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 407', '§ 607', '§ 407', '§ 407', '§ 407', '§ 407']

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1. The gender classification of § 407 is not substantially related to the attainment of any important and valid statutory goals; it is, rather, chanrobles.com-red
BLACKMUN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, WHITE, MARSHALL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. POWELL, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which BURGER, C.J.,and STEWART and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined, post, p. 443 U. S. 93. chanrobles.com-red
Section 407 of the Social Security Act, 75 Stat. 75, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 607, part of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, provides benefits to families whose dependent children have been deprived of parental support because of the unemployment of the father, but does not provide such benefits when the mother becomes unemployed. The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts held that this distinction violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and ordered that benefits be paid to families deprived of support because of the unemployment of the mother to the same extent they are paid to families deprived of support because of the unemployment of the father. 460 F. Supp 737 (1978). In these appeals, the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), in No. 78-437, challenges the holding on the constitutionality of 407, but does not question the relief ordered by the District Court; the Commissioner of the Massachusetts chanrobles.com-red
In 1968, as part of a general revision of the Social Security Act, Congress made this extension permanent. In so doing, however, it added a gender qualification to the statute. The chanrobles.com-red
Susan and John Westwood are also married and have an chanrobles.com-red
The District Court certified the case as a class action, [Footnote 3] and granted appellees' motion for summary judgment. 460 F.Supp. 737 (1978). The court found that the gender qualification of § 407 was not substantially related to the achievement of any important governmental interests. 460 F.Supp. at 748-751. It was, rather, the product of an "archaic and overbroad generalization" -- that "mothers in two-parent families chanrobles.com-red
App. to Juris.Statement in No. 78-689, p. 3a (emphasis added). [Footnote 4] This chanrobles.com-red
The Secretary readily concedes that § 407 entails a gender distinction. Brief for Appellant in No. 78-437, p. 36. He submits, however, that the Act does not award AFDC benefits to a father where it denies them to a mother. Rather, the grant or denial of aid based on the father's unemployment chanrobles.com-red
The distinction between employment-related benefits and other forms of government largesse may be relevant to equal chanrobles.com-red
First and most obviously, the statute was intended to provide aid for children deprived of basic sustenance because of a parent's unemployment. H.R.Rep. No. 28, 87th Cong. 1st Sess., 2 (1961). As then HEW Secretary Ribicoff put it in chanrobles.com-red
We perceive, however, at least two flaws in this argument. Although it is relatively clear that Congress was concerned about the problem of parental desertion, see S.Rep. No. 744, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 160 (1967); H.R.Rep. No. 28, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1961), there is no evidence that the gender distinction was designed to address this problem. See Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. at 420 U. S. 649. Both the original AFDC program and the temporary versions of the AFDC-UF chanrobles.com-red
S.Rep. No 744, at 160. See also H.R.Rep. No 554, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 108 (1967). This suggests that the gender qualification was part of the general objective of the 1968 amendments to tighten standards for eligibility and reduce program costs. [Footnote 6] Congress was concerned that certain States were making AFDC-UF assistance available to families where the mother was out of work, but the father remained fully employed and able to support chanrobles.com-red
Even if the actual purpose of the gender qualification was to deal with the problem of paternal desertion, it does not appear that the classification is substantially related to the achievement of that goal. The Secretary argues there is "[s]olid statistical evidence" that fathers are more susceptible to pressure to desert than mothers, and thus that Congress was justified in excluding families headed by unemployed mothers from the AFDC-UF program. Brief for Appellant in No. 7437, p. 33. We may assume, for purposes of discussion, that Congress could legitimately view paternal desertion as a problem separate and distinct from maternal desertion. Even so, the gender qualification of § 407 is not substantially related to the stated purpose. There is no evidence, in the legislative history or elsewhere, that a father has less incentive to desert in a family where the mother is the breadwinner and becomes unemployed, than in a family where the father is the breadwinner and becomes unemployed. In either case, the family's need will be equally great, and the father will be equally subject to pressure to leave the home to make the chanrobles.com-red
Welsh v. United States, 398 U. S. 333, 398 U. S. 361 (1970) (concurring in result). In previous cases involving equal protection challenges to underinclusive federal benefits statutes, this Court has suggested that extension, rather than nullification, is the proper course. See, e.g., Jimenez v. Weinberger, 417 U. S. 628, 417 U. S. 637-638 (1974); Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. at 411 U. S. 691 and n. 25 (plurality opinion). Indeed, chanrobles.com-red
There is no need, however, to elaborate here the conditions under which invalidation, rather than extension, of an underinclusive federal benefits statute should be ordered, for no party has presented that issue for review. All parties before the District Court agreed that extension was the appropriate remedy. Juris.Statement in No. 78-689, p. 6; Motion to Affirm 5; Juris.Statement in No. 78-437, p. 6 n. 5. Appellees chanrobles.com-red
The narrower question presented by the Commissioner's appeal concerns not the merits of extension versus nullification, but rather the form that extension should take. The District. Court ordered that benefits be paid to families in which either the mother or the father is unemployed within the meaning of the Act. The Commissioner agrees that either the mother's or the father's unemployment should be able to qualify a needy family for benefits, but proposes to award them only if the parent in question can show that he or she is both unemployed and the family's "principal wage-earner." Citing the legislative history of the AFDC-UF program, the Commissioner argues that his proposed remedy comports with Congress' intent to aid families made needy by their breadwinner's unemployment. This argument, as the preceding portions of this opinion show, is not without force. We may assume arguendo that, if Congress knew in 1968 what it knows now, it might well have adopted the "principal wage-earner" chanrobles.com-red
Second, the Commissioner's proposed remedy would involve a restructuring of the Act that a court should not undertake lightly. Whenever a court extends a benefits program to redress unconstitutional underinclusiveness, it risks infringing legislative prerogatives. The extension ordered by the District Court possesses at least the virtue of simplicity: by ordering that "father" be replaced by its gender-neutral equivalent, the court avoided disruption of the AFDC-UF program, for benefits simply will be paid to families with an unemployed parent on the same terms that benefits have long been paid to families with an unemployed father. The "principal wage-earner" solution, by contrast, would introduce a term novel in the AFDC scheme, [Footnote 9] and would pose definitional and policy questions best suited to legislative or administrative elaboration. The Commissioner, with his "principal wage-earner" gloss on parental unemployment, in essence asks this Court to redefine "unemployment" within the meaning of the chanrobles.com-red
I agree with the Court that § 407 violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment. In my view, however, chanrobles.com-red
Ante at 443 U. S. 88. Yet the result of the Court's decision affirming the District chanrobles.com-red
We cannot predict what Congress will think to be in the best interest of its total welfare program. The extension of AFDC benefits to families suffering only from unemployment was a relatively recent development in the history of the program, a development that Congress made permanent only on the understanding that payments could be limited to cases where the principal wage earner was out of work. We cannot assume that Congress, in 1968, would have approved this extension chanrobles.com-red