Opinion ID: 3038857
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: State Regulation Prohibiting “Mass” &

Text: “Indiscriminate” Home Visits Appellants contend that Project 100% violates MPP § 20007.33, which prohibits “[m]ass or indiscriminate home visits.” Appellants argue that the home visits in this case are both “mass” and “indiscriminate” because they are performed on all applicants for aid and do not discriminate between applicants based on any reasonable suspicion of fraud. [16] A careful reading of MPP § 20-007 as a whole, however, reveals that the regulation applies only to Special Investigative Units “investigating suspected welfare fraud and suspected violations of the law.” MPP § 20-007.1 (emphasis added). Based on the plain language of the regulation, we conclude that the California Department of Social Services did not intend to apply § 20-007.33 to the home visits at hand because the Project 100% investigators are not conducting for-cause investigations.19 Moreover, the same argument raised by Appellants in this case was rejected by the California Court of Appeal in Smith, 128 Cal. Rptr. 2d at 706, which held that California’s prohibition against “mass or indiscriminate” home visits, “which is contained in the MPP’s voluminous fraud investigation procedures, [did not] limit procedures that are provided elsewhere in the MPP, and specifically in MPP [40-161], for determinations of eligibility for CalWORKS benefits.” Accordingly, we hold that MPP § 20007.33’s prohibition against “mass or indiscriminate” home visits does not apply to the case at bench. 19 While MPP § 20-007.33 applies to for-cause home visits, the controlling statutory scheme also clearly provides for the creation of not-forcause early fraud prevention programs such as Project 100%. See Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code § 11055.5. Accordingly, since the MPP has no parallel provision prohibiting “mass and indiscriminate” home visits in the context of suspicionless home visits, we must assume that DSS intended to exclude situations such as this. SANCHEZ v. COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO 11525