Opinion ID: 195836
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Food Stamp Survey Provided Rational Basis

Text: 26 We find little merit in plaintiffs' assertion that the food stamp study did not provide a rational basis for the Secretary's establishment of the $1,500 automobile equity limit. Plaintiffs argue that the food stamp and AFDC programs are two distinct programs with different eligibility requirements. They further insist that there is no support in the administrative record for the Secretary's assumption that there is extensive overlap in the two populations or that the food stamp population is, on average, more affluent than the AFDC population. Plaintiffs say that food stamp recipients were already subject to an automobile-asset limitation at the time of the study, while AFDC recipients at that time were not subject to such a limitation. Thus, the fact that 96 percent of food stamp recipients owning an automobile had equity of less than $1,500 may simply have been a function of the food stamp program's preexisting equity limits. 27 Micro-arguments of this sort, however, ignore the breadth of the Secretary's discretion. The Secretary was not required to base her regulations only on perfect information. Rather, the Secretary's policy choice needed only to be rational. See State Farm, 463 U.S. at 43, 103 S.Ct. at 2866; Frederick, 862 F.Supp. at 42 (stating that the issue is not whether the Secretary used the best available source to develop a regulation, but whether the Secretary's conduct was reasonable). 28 The Secretary here acted reasonably in relying on the food stamp study. Accord Champion, 33 F.3d at 966; Falin, 776 F.Supp. at 1101. It is undisputed that the food stamp study provided the best data available at the time. The study was based on a 1979 survey which collected asset-ownership data from a statistically valid sample of 11,300 households of all income levels nationwide. Paul Bordes, who provided technical support to the Secretary while the regulation was being promulgated, noted in his deposition that equity data on aid recipients were extremely hard to come by. None of the comments at that time suggested any other sources of data. 11 There was evidence, moreover, of overlap in the food stamp and AFDC populations. Bordes noted that in 1981, approximately 80 percent of AFDC recipients also received food stamps. And the assumption that AFDC recipients were on the whole more affluent than food stamp recipients was a judgment within the expertise of the agency to make. That assumption was undisputed at the time. We, therefore, believe the Secretary acted rationally in relying on the food stamp study as a rough approximation of automobile equity ownership among AFDC recipients. 29 Plaintiffs also point to alleged statistical flaws in the study itself. Plaintiffs argue that the 96 percent figure (for food stamp recipients who owned automobiles and had equity in those automobiles under $1,500) was based on a computational error, since it erroneously included the percentage of the recipients who did not own cars at all. Plaintiffs suggest (and the Secretary now concedes) that a more accurate figure would be 90 percent. Plaintiffs also argue that the figure assumes that, within the 17 percent of recipients for whom there were no automobile-equity data available, the distribution of automobile equity ownership was identical to that within the population for which data were available--i.e. that there was no systematic bias in the reporting of vehicle equity. Plaintiffs argue that this assumption is unwarranted, since it is reasonable to suppose that those owning higher valued automobiles would be more likely to fail to provide information on automobile equity, for fear of disqualifying themselves from the program. 12 Plaintiffs argue that these statistical flaws rendered the Secretary's reliance on the study unreasonable. 30 We agree with the Eighth Circuit in Champion and the Fourth Circuit in Falin that, even assuming that the more accurate figure is 90 percent, the study still provided a rational basis for the Secretary's finding that the $1,500 limit was within the range of the vast majority of current recipients, since 90 percent is still a vast majority. 47 Fed.Reg. at 5657; see Champion, 33 F.3d at 967 n. 5; Falin, 776 F.Supp. at 1100, aff'd per curiam, 6 F.3d 207. Although plaintiffs suggest that systematic bias in underreporting was possible, they have presented no evidence that it actually occurred. Where there was no evidence of bias, it was not unreasonable for the Secretary to assume for the purposes of calculation that no such bias existed. Thus neither of these alleged statistical weaknesses rendered the study an insufficient basis for the Secretary's regulation. 31