Opinion ID: 421802
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Financial Eligibility Requirement

Text: 75 The elimination of the current regulation as to teenagers' financial eligibility is clearly entailed by the Secretary's imposition of the parental notification requirement. The new regulation deletes the following: [U]nemancipated minors who wish to receive services on a confidential basis must be considered on the basis of their own resources. 58 If the confidentiality of adolescents is no longer to be respected, then the above requirement is logically unnecessary. 59 76 However, since the parental notification requirement is invalid, then so too is this change in determining financial eligibility. We thus agree with the reasoning of the District Court: the regulation requiring that an adolescent's eligibility for services be based on her parents', rather than her own, income is invalid because it has the same effect as the parental notification requirement. Planned Parenthood, supra, 559 F.Supp. at 669. Clearly, if a minor must obtain financial information from her parents to determine her own eligibility for family planning services, the regulation denies her the requisite confidentiality and operates as a de facto parental notification requirement. Indeed, if the parents do not meet the eligibility standards and the minor has no funds of her own, the regulation may operate as a de facto parental consent rule; by withholding funds, the parents can prevent the teenager from receiving any contraceptive services at Title X clinics. Either way, the regulation operates as a deterrent to teenage access to contraceptive services, thereby undermining Title X's goal of reducing the teenage pregnancy rate. 77 Moreover, the regulation also conflicts with Title X's specific admonition that the Secretary define low-income families in such a way as to insure that economic status shall not be a deterrent to participation in the programs assisted under [Title X]. 42 U.S.C. § 300a-4(c). Reflecting its general concern about the problems of adolescent pregnancy, Congress clearly intended to include all adolescents--not just those from low-income families--among the groups benefited by Title X. See, e.g., H.R.Rep. No. 158, 97th Cong., 2d Sess. 79 (1981); H.R.Rep. No. 1191, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 30 (1978). In short, the new financial eligibility requirement conflicts with the basic purpose and express provisions of Title X, finds no basis elsewhere in the Act, and is therefore invalid. 60