Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/413/528/
Timestamp: 2020-07-06 18:28:14
Document Index: 40167953

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3', '§ 2012', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 5', '§ 2014', '§ 14', '§ 2023', '§ 3', '§ 3']

United States Dept. of Agriculture v. Moreno :: 413 U.S. 528 (1973) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 413 › United States Dept. of Agriculture v. Moreno
The government cannot exclude households from receiving food stamps based on whether they include a person who is unrelated to any other member of the household.
Food stamps were withheld under the Food Stamp Act of 1964 from a household that contained a person who was unrelated to any other person in the household. Congress passed this law with the stated objective of raising the nutrition levels of poor people and improving the agricultural economy. However, it also was designed in a way that would prevent hippies and hippie communes from getting the benefits of it, as the legislative history revealed. A group of impoverished individuals who lived in households where not all members were related to one another argued that the law was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause, and the lower courts agreed.
The purposes of the law are not furthered by withholding its benefits from this particular type of household. Even rational basis review, the lowest standard of scrutiny, requires some reasonable connection between the means used by the government and a legitimate purpose. Preventing hippies and their communes from gaining access to food stamps cannot be defined as a legitimate purpose because it consists simply of a desire to harm a politically unpopular group. Nor does creating the exception to people eligible for benefits support the government interest in reducing fraud. The government provided no persuasive evidence that this type of household will be more likely to fraudulently exploit the program's benefits, and other provisions in the law guard against fraud.
A rational basis standard of review does not require an analysis of the effects of the classification. Any rational basis should be sufficient to uphold the law, and such a basis may be found here because households may be formed solely to take advantage of the program's benefits. A law is not unconstitutional just because it has some negative or unintended effects.
This type of regulation normally would be reviewed (and upheld) under rational basis scrutiny, the lowest standard of review, since it does not relate to a fundamental right or protected group. However, the Court believed that the definition of household was changed to deny assistance to hippie communes, which it did not find to be a permissible justification.
Held: The legislative classification here involved cannot be sustained, the classification being clearly irrelevant to the stated purposes of the Act and not rationally furthering any other legitimate governmental interest. In practical operation, the Act excludes not those who are "likely to abuse the program," but, rather, only those who so desperately need aid that they cannot even afford to alter their living arrangements so as to retain their eligibility. Pp. 533-538. 345 F. Supp. 310, affirmed.
This case requires us to consider the constitutionality of § 3(e) of the Food Stamp Act of 1964, 7 U.S.C. § 2012(e), as amended in 1971, 84 Stat. 2048, which, with certain exceptions, excludes from participation in the food stamp program any household containing an individual who is unrelated to any other member of the household. In practical effect, § 3(e) creates two classes of persons for food stamp purposes: one class is composed of those individuals who live in households all of whose members are related to one another, and the other class consists of those individuals who live in households containing one or more members who are unrelated to the rest. The latter class of persons is denied federal food assistance. A three-judge District Court for the District of Columbia held this classification invalid as violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. 345 F. Supp. 310 (1972). We noted probable jurisdiction. 409 U.S. 1036 (1972). We affirm.
In January, 1971, however, Congress redefined the term "household" so as to include only groups of related individuals. [Footnote 2] Pursuant to this amendment, the Secretary of Agriculture promulgated regulations rendering ineligible for participation in the program any "household" whose members are not "all related to each other." [Footnote 3]
These and two other groups of appellees instituted a class action against the Department of Agriculture, its Secretary, and two other departmental officials, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the enforcement of the 1971 amendment of § 3(e) and its implementing regulations. In essence, appellees contend, [Footnote 4] and the District Court held, that the "unrelated person" provision of § 3(e) creates an irrational classification in violation
345 F. Supp. at 313.
345 F. Supp. at 314 n. 11.
Although apparently conceding this point, the Government maintains that the challenged classification should nevertheless be upheld as rationally related to the clearly legitimate governmental interest in minimizing fraud in the administration of the food stamp program. [Footnote 7] In essence, the Government contends that, in adopting the 1971 amendment, Congress might rationally have thought (1) that households with one or more unrelated members are more likely than "fully related" households to contain individuals who abuse the program by fraudulently failing to report sources of income or by voluntarily remaining poor; and (2) that such households are "relatively unstable," thereby increasing the difficulty of detecting such abuses. But even if we were to accept as rational the Government's wholly unsubstantiated assumptions concerning the differences between "related" and "unrelated" households, we still could not agree with the Government's conclusion that the denial of essential
At the outset, it is important to note that the Food Stamp Act itself contains provisions, wholly independent of § 3(e), aimed specifically at the problems of fraud and of the voluntarily poor. For example, with certain exceptions, § 5(c) of the Act, 7 U.S.C. § 2014(c), renders ineligible for assistance any household containing "an able-bodied adult person between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five" who fails to register for, and accept, offered employment. Similarly, §§ 14(b) and (c), 7 U.S.C. §§ 2023(b) and (c), specifically impose strict criminal penalties upon any individual who obtains or uses food stamps fraudulently. [Footnote 8] The existence of these provisions
Thus, two unrelated persons living together and meeting all three of these conditions would constitute a single household ineligible for assistance. If financially feasible, however, these same two individuals can legally avoid the "unrelated person" exclusion simply by altering their living arrangements so as to eliminate any one of the three conditions. By so doing, they effectively create two separate "households," both of which are eligible for assistance. See Knowles v. Butz, 358 F. Supp. 228 (ND Cal.1973). Indeed, as the California Director of Social Welfare has explained:
The Government initially argued to the District Court that the challenged classification might be justified as a means to foster "morality." In rejecting that contention, the District Court noted that "interpreting the amendment as an attempt to regulate morality would raise serious constitutional questions." 345 F. Supp. 310, 314. Indeed, citing this Court's decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965), Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557 (1969), and Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972), the District Court observed that it was doubtful, at best, whether Congress, "in the name of morality," could "infringe the rights to privacy and freedom of association in the home." 345 F. Supp. at 314. (Emphasis in original.) Moreover, the court also pointed out that the classification established in § 3(e) was not rationally related
The test of equal protection is whether the legislative line that is drawn bears "some rational relationship to a legitimate" governmental purpose. [Footnote 2/2] Weber v. Aetna
Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U. S. 164, 406 U. S. 172. The requirement of equal protection denies government
The right of association, the right to invite the stranger into one's home is too basic in our constitutional regime to deal with roughshod. If there are abuses inherent in that pattern of living against which the food stamp program should be protected, the Act must be "narrowly drawn," Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 310 U. S. 307, to meet the precise end. The method adopted and applied to these cases makes § 3(e) of the Act unconstitutional by reason of the invidious discrimination between the two classes of needy persons.
Admittedly, as the Court points out, the limitation will make ineligible many households which have not been formed for the purpose of collecting federal food stamps, and will, at the same time, not wholly deny food stamps to those households which may have been formed in large part to take advantage of the program. But, as the Court concedes, "[t]raditional equal protection analysis does not require that every classification be drawn with precise mathematical nicety,'" ante at 413 U. S. 538. And earlier this Term, the constitutionality of a similarly "imprecise" rule promulgated pursuant to the Truth in Lending Act was challenged
U.S. Department of Agriculture et al.
Jacinta Moreno et al.