Court Opinion

ID: 9426027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:32.153392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.698854
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
As the majority implicitly acknowledges, the evidence available to help resolve the issue of statutory construction presented by this case does not point decisively in either direction. When it passed the Social Security Act in 1935 Congress gave no indication that it meant to include or exclude unborn children from the definition of “dependent child.” Nor has it shed any further light on the question other than to consider, and fail to pass, legislation that would indisputably have excluded unborn children from coverage.
The majority has parsed the language and touched on the legislative history of the Act in an effort to muster support for the view that unborn children were not meant to benefit from the Act. Even given its best face, however, this evidence provides only modest support for the majority’s position. The lengthy course of administrative practice cuts quite the other way. Although the question is a close one, I agree with the conclusion reached by five of the six Courts of Appeals that have *588considered this issue,1 and would accordingly affirm the judgment below.
The majority makes only passing reference to the administrative practice of 30 years’ duration, under which unborn children were deemed eligible for federal AFDC payments where state programs provided funds for them. According to the majority} this longstanding administrative practice is deprived of any significant weight by HEW’s present suggestion that it has always treated unborn children as being outside the statutory definition of “dependent child.” The agency’s characterization of its former position, however, misrepresents the history of the administrative practice.
As early as 1941 the Bureau of Public Assistance faced the problem of whether unborn children were covered by § 406 (a) of the Act. At that time, the Board determined that under the Act federal funds could be provided to the States for aid to unborn children. The agency’s governing regulation in the HEW Handbook of Public Assistance Administration expressly included unborn children among those eligible for aid “on the basis of the same eligibility conditions as apply to other children.” Pt. IV, § 3412 (6) (1946). The language of the regulation and the inclusion of unborn children among five other classes of children eligible for AFDC payments under the definition of “dependent child” make it evident that the *589agency deemed unborn children to come within the terms of § 406 (a) of the Act.2
This regulation remained unchanged until 1971, when it was placed in the Code of Federal Regulations as 45 CFR § 233.90 (c) (2) (ii). Although its language was altered somewhat, the regulation still provided that, in electing States, federal participation would be available for unborn children once the'fact of pregnancy was confirmed by medical diagnosis. It was only when a series of lawsuits were filed seeking to have AFDC made available to unborn children in those States that did not provide for them in their local AFDC plans that the agency contended that unborn children were not really within the eligibility provisions of § 406 (a) after all.
After this Court's decisions in King v. Smith, 392 U. S. 309 (1968), Townsend v. Swank, 404 U. S. 282 (1971), and Carleson v. Remillard, 406 U. S. 598 (1972), it appeared obvious that if any class of potential beneficiaries was within the Act’s eligibility provisions, the States were required to provide aid to them. Thus, if HEW had chosen to stick with its previous' interpretation that unborn children were within the eligibility provision of § 406 (a), it would have had to require that all participating States grant benefits for unborn children. On the other hand, if it were determined that unborn children were not eligible under the Act, federal financing would not be available even in those States that provided *590AFDC payments for them. In order to preserve the status quo, the agency came up with the inventive solution of ascribing the “unborn children” regulation to its rulemaking power under § 1102 of the Act, and thus avoiding the mandatory effects of a finding of “eligibility” under § 406 (a).
This ingenious but late-blooming tactical switch does little, in my view, to cancel out the effect of the long and consistent prior course of administrative interpretation of the Act. Since the agency’s position in this case and related cases is evidently designed to preserve its authority to extend federal aid on an optional basis in spite of King, Townsend, and Carleson, I would view somewhat skeptically the agency’s assertion that it has never deemed unborn children to be within the eligibility provisions of §406 (a).
Even if the agency’s new position is not discounted as a reaction to the exigencies of the moment, the policies underlying the doctrine of administrative interpretation require more than simply placing a thumb on the side of the scale that the agency currently favors.3 The agency’s *591determination that unborn children are eligible for matching federal aid was made early in the life of the program, and the administrators of the Act determined only a few years after the Act's passage that making AFDC payments available to unborn children was consistent with the statutory purposes. This contemporaneous and long-applied construction of the eligibility provision and purposes of the Act is entitled to great weight — particularly in the case of a statute that has been before the Congress repeatedly and has been amended numerous times. The majority contends that because of the details of the unsuccessful 1972 legislative effort to exclude unborn children from coverage, the respondents can claim little benefit from the natural inference that the statute still included them among those eligible for aid. This may be so, but in light of the history of the administrative interpretation of § 406 (a), I cannot agree that the Act, in its present form, should be read to exclude the unborn from eligibility.
I dissent.

 Besides the court below, the Courts of Appeals holding that unborn children are within the eligibility terms of § 406 (a) include the First, the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Seventh Circuits, see Carver v. Hooker, 501 F. 2d 1244 (CA1 1974); Doe v. Lukhard, 493 F. 2d 54 (CA4 1974); Parks v. Harden, 504 F. 2d 861 (CA5 1974); Wilson v. Weaver, 499 F. 2d 155 (CA7 1974). Only the Second Circuit has taken the opposite view, Wisdom v. Norton, 507 F. 2d 750 (1974).

 Among the other “situations within the scope of the [statutory] term 'deprivation’ [of parental support or care]” were “Children Living With Both Natural Parents,” § 3412 (1); “Children Living With Either Father or Mother,” § 3412 (2); and “Children of Unmarried Parents,” § 3412 (5). In discussing the eligibility of the last group, the regulations noted: “The act provides for the use of aid to dependent children as a maintenance resource available on equal terms to all children who meet eligibility conditions.” Ibid.

 The reasons for assigning weight to an administrative agency’s interpretation vary in part according to the role that Congress intended the agency to play in the lawmaking process. Where the act in question is an open-ended statute under which Congress did not “bring to a close the making of the law,” but left the “rounding out of its command to another, smaller and specialized agency,” FTC v. Ruberoid Co., 343 U. S. 470, 486 (1952) (Jackson, J., dissenting), the agency’s shift in position, even at a late date, should be given substantial weight. See NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., ante, at 265-266; Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, 313 U. S. 177, 193-194 (1941). Plainly, however, Congress did not intend the term “dependent child” in this detailed and often-amended statute to be subject to re-examination and redefinition as the agency’s perceptions of social needs changed. In cases such as this one, where the agency is intended merely to carry out the congressional mandate, a longstanding course of administrative interpretation is relevant primarily *591as a contemporaneous construction of the Act by persons dealing intimately with its terms on a day-to-day basis.