Opinion ID: 454618
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Due Process/Equal Protection

Text: 5 In analyzing Jensen's due process/equal protection challenge that the statute creates an irrational classification by suspending disability benefits to incarcerated felons, the district court first noted that the Supreme Court has held that social security benefits are noncontractual benefits and that the Due Process Clause can be thought to interpose a bar only if the statute manifests a patently arbitrary classification, utterly lacking in rational justification. Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. at 611, 80 S.Ct. at 1373. 6 The district court correctly found that the suspension of benefits to incarcerated felons who are not participating in an approved rehabilitation program is rationally related to the Social Security Act's policy of compensating for a loss of earnings without providing a disincentive for rehabilitation. The Third Circuit has recently held that the exclusion of felons from disability payments while they are incarcerated and not engaged in a rehabilitation program has a perfectly rational justification in the fact that the expenses of shelter, food, clothing and medical care, which it is the purpose of disability payments to help defray, are, in the case of an incarcerated felon    being provided for him free of charge by the prison officials. Washington v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, 718 F.2d 608, 611 (3rd Cir.1983) (citing S.Rep. No. 96-987, 96th Cong., 2nd Sess., reprinted in 1980 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News, 4787, 4794-95); Accord Pace v. United States, 585 F.Supp. 399, 402-03 (S.D.Tex.1984); Anderson v. Social Security Administration, 567 F.Supp. 410, 412 (D.Col.1983). 7 As further evidence that the statute was tailored to the Act's goal of rehabilitation, the district court correctly noted that the statute did not suspend payments to an inmate who participated in an approved rehabilitation program and that benefits were not suspended to the inmate's dependents. We also agree with the district court that Congress had another permissible purpose in enacting the statute which was to avoid discipline problems which cash payments to inmates would create. See Pace v. United States, 585 F.Supp. at 401 (citing Receipt of Social Security Benefits by Persons Incarcerated in Penal Institutions: Hearings Before Subcomm. on Social Security of House Comm. on Ways and Means, 96th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1980) ).