Opinion ID: 770530
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Child Support Recovery Act of 1992

Text: 8 The legislative history surrounding the CSRA reveals two principal concerns on the part of the law's drafters. First,Congress evidently wished to prevent non-custodial parents from fleeing across state lines to avoid paying their child support obligations. Second, Congress desired to recover those support payments that had not been made. The law that actually emerged from the 102nd Congress, however, reaches far beyond these stated goals. The slippage between the CSRA's text and its drafters' design ultimately renders the law constitutionally infirm. 9 House of Representatives bill 1241--which eventually would be come the CSRA--left the Judiciary Committee with a favorable recommendation. The Committee Report noted that about $5 billion in child support obligations went unpaid each year. H.R. Rep. 102-771, at 5 (1992). In approximately one-third of child support cases, the father lives in a state other than the state where the child or children live, the Report continued, and fifty-seven percent of custodial parents in interstate cases receive child support payments only occasionally, seldom, or never. Id. Suggesting that state enforcement was tedious, cumbersome and slow, the Report advocated a federal remedy to take the incentive out of moving interstate to avoid payment. Id. The Report concluded: 10 The Committee believes that a child should be able to expect the most basic support from those who chose to bring the child into the world. That expectation should not end at the state line. The Committee further believes that the taxpayers of America should be able to expect that the burden of caring for these children will be placed on the shoulders of the parents where it rightfully belongs. 11 Id. 12 These sentiments were reiterated during the debates held the day after the Committee Report was released. Representatives supporting the bill observed that state enforcement efforts had been hobbled by a labyrinth of extradition laws and snarls of redtape, and asserted that H.R. 1241 would strengthen rather than supplant state enforcement. 138 Cong. Rec. H7324-01, H7325 (Aug. 4, 1992) (statement of Rep. Schumer). The Representatives also worried that the burden of supporting children abandoned by deadbeat parents would fall on the American taxpayer through public assistance programs. Id. But running like a leitmotif throughout the debates is the understanding expressed by Congressman Ewing: that the bill would make it a crime for a parent to cross State lines in order to avoid making court-ordered child support payments. Id. at H7326. 13 Yet the text of the Child Support Recovery Act contains no mention of interstate flight, nor does it confine its reach to recovery of delinquent payments. At the time of Faasse's arrest and conviction, the Act provided in pertinent part: 14 (a)Offense.--Whoever willfully fails to pay a past due support obligation with respect to a child who resides in another State shall be punished as provided in subsection (b). 15 (b)Punishment.--The punishment for an offense under this section is 16 (1) in the case of a first offense under this section, a fine under this title, imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or both; and 17 (2) in any other case, a fine under this title, imprisonment for not more than 2 years, or both. 18 (c)Restitution.--As used in this section 19 (1) the term past due support obligation means any amount 20 (A) determined under a court order or an order of an administrative process pursuant to the law of a State to be due from a person for the support and maintenance of a child or of a child and the parent with whom the child is living; and 21 (B) that has remained unpaid for a period longer than one year, or is greater than $5,000; and (2) the term State includes the District of Columbia, and any other possession or territory of the United States. 22 18 U.S.C. § 228 (1994), amended by 18 U.S.C.A. § 228 (2000). 1 This language is overinclusive; it predicates criminal jurisdiction not on flight across state lines, but on simple diversity of residence. The Act thus sweeps Faasse within its compass, though the record in this case is devoid of any indication that he moved to California to avoid his child support obligations. It is clear that the statute imposes liability even if it is the child who moved out of state rather than the non-custodial parent. See, e.g., United States v. Sage, 92 F.3d 101 (2d Cir. 1996). 23 Similarly, the CSRA does far more than remove the incentive to move interstate to avoid payment. The CSRA criminalizes a situation that is not criminal in Michigan, simply because the defendant moved to another state, even if he moved to maintain the same, or attain a better, job, or moved to be closer to his family, or to obtain an education. Were the scope of the Act so restricted, it presumably would have been enacted pursuant to Congress's legislative authority under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, U.S. Const. art. IV, § 1, cl.2, since the Framers committed interstate enforcement of state court orders to that provision of the Constitution. See 3 Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 488 (1911) (statement of James Wilson) (remarking that if the Legislature were not empowered to declare the effect of state acts, records and judicial proceedings, the provision would amount to nothing more than what now takes place among all Independent Nations); see also The Federalist No. 42, at 287 (James Madison) (Jacob E. Cooke ed., 1961) (The power of prescribing by general laws the manner in which the public acts, records and judicial proceedings shall be proved, and the effect they shall have in other States . . . may be rendered a very convenient instrument of justice, and be particularly beneficial on the borders of contiguous States, where the effects liable to justice, may be suddenly and secretly translated in any stage of the process, within a foreign jurisdiction.); Green v. Sarmiento, 10 F. Cas. 1117, 1119 (C.C.D. Pa. 1810) (No. 5,760) (Washington, J., sitting on circuit) ([T]he power to limit the effect of [state] judicial proceedings, is undoubted; and it was wisely left to the discretion of congress, to regulate the degree of force to be given to such proceedings.). Instead, the Act deters non-payment of child support by creating a criminal penalty. 24 Put simply, the CSRA is not about recovery of child support payments avoided by interstate flight. Rather, the Act regulates, through the criminal law, obligations owed by one family member to another, using diversity of residence as a jurisdictional hook. This realization is troubling, for the States possess primary authority for defining and enforcing both the criminal law and the law of domestic relations. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: 25 [T]he Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress the power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people, therefore . . . all their other acts which assume to create, define, and punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution, are altogethervoid, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory. 26 Kentucky Resolutions, 2d Resolved cl. (1798), reprinted in The Portable Thomas Jefferson 281, 282 (Merrill Peterson ed. 1979); see also Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 201 (1977) (stating that preventing and dealing with crime is much more the business of the States than it is of the Federal Government). In a like vein, the courts have consistently recognized that [t]he whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, belongs to the laws of the states, and not the laws of the United States. Ex parte Burrus, 136 U.S. 586, 593-94 (1890); see also Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 404 (1975) (stating that the regulation of domestic relations . . . has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States); cf. Ankenbrandt v. Richards, 504 U.S. 689 (1992) (recognizing a domestic relations exception to the diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts in view of long-held understandings and sound policy considerations). 27 In this case, the CSRA's encroachment on these traditional preserves of state authority does considerable damage to Michigan's finely wrought scheme for regulating child support. In light of the traditional notions of federalism and in the wake of the watershed case of United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), we cannot conclude that the Commerce Clause countenances such damage.