Court Opinion

ID: 9747046
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:54:05.603052+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:19.580452
License: Public Domain

*465WHITE, J.,*
Concurring and Dissenting. — I concur in the majority opinion to the extent it holds that mandamus relief was available to petitioners California Housing and Homeless Coalition. However, I dissent from that portion of the majority opinion which holds that California (State) has complied with 42 United States Code section 602(h) (sometimes referred to herein as section 602(h)). I would affirm the judgment of the lower court on this point.
At the heart of this case lies a disagreement concerning the kind of reevaluation section 602(h) requires. Petitioners contend the State must reevaluate the need standard every three years to determine whether it reflects the true cost of obtaining essential needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. The State, on the other hand, maintains that “reevaluation” merely means that it must set a need standard by balancing available fiscal resources against the social needs of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients. In other words, petitioners argue that section 602(h) requires states to make a good faith effort to determine the true cost of obtaining basic necessities, while the State contends it must merely establish a need standard based on its own fiscal concerns, without first determining the true cost of providing basic necessities. Importantly, even petitioners concede that the State need not change its need standard in light of the section 602(h) reevaluation; instead, it must merely publicize the results of the reevaluation in a way that clearly exposes the inadequacy of the payment standard.
I believe petitioners have the better of the argument. Consequently, I would affirm the portion of the writ of mandate which compels the State to reevaluate the need standard to determine the amount of money needed to purchase basic necessities in California and to report those results to the public.
I
The federal statute provides that “[e]ach State shall reevaluate the need standard . . . under its plan at least once every 3 years . . . and report the results of the reevaluation to . . . the public . . . .” (42 U.S.C. § 602(h)(1).) The plain language of the statute imposes a duty on states to do more than simply leave the need standard unchanged based on fiscal constraints, as California has done here. To “evaluate” means to “estimate or ascertain the monetary worth of” something. (Webster’s Third New Intemat. Dict. (1970) p. 786.)
*466The standard of need is “a dollar figure set by each State reflecting the amount deemed necessary to provide for essential needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter.” (Quern v. Mandley (1978) 436 U.S. 725, 737 [56 L.Ed.2d 658, 609, 98 S.Ct. 2068], fn. omitted.)
Thus, to “reevaluate” the need standard means to reascertain or reestimate the monetary cost of providing essential needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. A state does not “reevaluate” its need standard when it merely retains or resets that standard without relating that exercise to the current cost of obtaining basic necessities.
The legislative history of section 602(h) supports my interpretation of the statute. Section 602(h) was enacted as part of the Family Support Act of 1988.1 (102 Stat. 2343, 2398.) With respect to section 602(h), a Senate Finance Committee Report explained that “[u]nder present law, each State determines the ‘needs standards’ for families of various sizes. . . . [CJ0 The Committee bill does not change the present law flexibility which allows each state to establish its own need and payment standards for assistance. However, States will be required to undertake a reevaluation of these standards at least once every 5 [later changed to 3] [2] years. The bill does not require that States modify the standards as a result of the reevaluation, but they will be required to report the results to the Secretary who must in turn report to the Congress.” (Sen.Rep. No. 100-377, 100th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 49 (1988), 1988 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News, p. 2826.)
The Senate report shows that Congress distinguished between a reevaluation of the need standard, on the one hand, and a state’s resetting or readoption of the need standard, on the other. The Senate report makes it clear that while a state must report the results of its reevaluation to the public, it need not implement those results. In my view, the “results” of the need standard reevaluation refers to a conclusion about the true cost of supplying basic needs.
Petitioners contend — and I agree — that requiring the states to reevaluate their need standards and to report the reevaluation to the public is Congress’s *467way of increasing political accountability for a state’s decision to set payment levels which do not meet the basic needs of AFDC recipients. Congress did something similar in 1967 when it required states to make a one time adjustment to their AFDC need standards to fully reflect changes in living costs. (42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(23); Rosado v. Wyman (1970) 397 U.S. 397, 407 [25 L.Ed.2d 442, 452-453, 90 S.Ct. 1207].) Although this provision did not require the states to increase payments to AFDC recipients, the Supreme Court reasoned that it forced the states “to face up realistically to the magnitude of the public assistance requirement and lay bare the extent to which their programs [fell] short of fulfilling actual need . . . .” (Rosado, supra, at pp. 412-413 [25 L.Ed.2d at p. 456].) The high court continued: “The congressional purpose we discern does not render § [6]02(a)(23) a meaningless exercise in ‘bookkeeping.’ Congress sometimes legislates by innuendo, making declarations of policy and indicating a preference while requiring measures that, though falling short of legislating its goals, serve as a nudge in the preferred directions.” (Id., at p. 413 [25 L.Ed.2d at p. 456].) By requiring states to update their need standards, the states were forced to accept the political consequences of “actual assistance [which] falls short of the minimum acceptable.” (Ibid.] see also Matter of Rulemaking, N.J.A.C. 10:82-1.2 (1989) 117 N.J. 311 [566 A.2d 1154, 1158-1160].)3
Although Congress did not go as far in section 602(h) (which requires a reevaluation of the need standard) as it did in section 602(a)(23) (which required an actual adjustment of the need standard),4 I nevertheless believe Congress’s basic goal was the same in both situations: namely, to promote political accountability by exposing the inadequacy of current payment *468levels, while respecting the state’s traditional autonomy in setting AFDC standards. California’s interpretation of the statute would permit states to avoid this accountability, because it allows them to “reevaluate” their need standards without relating that exercise to the true cost of meeting basic needs, and without reporting the results of the reevaluation in a manner easily understood by the public.
II
Having determined that section 602(h)(1) requires states to make a good faith effort to determine the true cost of obtaining basic necessities and to report that reevaluation to the public, I next consider whether California’s 1991 section 602(h) reevaluation satisfied that duty. I conclude that it did not.
As indicated, California reported to the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that it had last reevaluated its need standard on June 29, 1990. In California, the need standard is legislatively established by Welfare and Institutions Code section 11452, subdivision (a)(1).5 The statute lists the basic needs which the need standard is intended to meet.6 In addition, another statute provides for automatic annual adjustments to the need standard based on changes in the cost of living, as reflected in the California Necessities Index (CNI). (Welf. & Inst. Code, *469§ 11453, subd. (a).) However, since 1971 the cost-of-living adjustment has been repeatedly reduced or suspended, and was in fact suspended in the 1990-1991 fiscal year, the very year California represented that it had last “reevaluated” its need standards. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 11452, subd. (a)(3).) As the trial court observed, reevaluation by using a suspended cost-of-living index is no reevaluation at all. Further, the fact that HHS accepted California’s reevaluation report is of little moment where “as here, the so-called approval does not appear to have followed explicit attention to the question now confronted.” (Fatula v. Buck (4th Cir. 1979) 598 F.2d 869, 873, fn. 11 [approval of state medicade plan]; see also Independent Nursing Home v. Simmons (S.D.Miss. 1990) 732 F.Supp. 684, 688 same].)7
Again, I wish to stress that the State need not use any particular method to reevaluate its need standard, and use of the CNI is certainly acceptable.8 However, the state must at minimum make a good faith effort to determine the true cost of obtaining basic necessities and report that reevaluation to the public in a manner that “lay[s] bare the extent to which [its] programs fall short of fulfilling actual need . . . .” (Rosado v. Wyman, supra, 397 U.S. at pp. 412-413 [25 L.Ed.2d at p. 456].) In my view, the State has gone out of its way to bury (rather than “lay bare”) the extent to which its programs fall short of actual need.
I believe section 602(h) serves an important purpose which California has attempted to thwart. The section 602(h) reevaluation is an informational exercise, akin, perhaps, to an environmental impact report. It does not compel a particular decision, but hopefully makes for more informed (and public) decisionmaking. As the Supreme Court of New Jersey observed in a similar context, “. . . it is a simple fact of human experience needing no empirical demonstration that not until we see the face of poverty do we react to it. ... OD .. . [T]here is every reason to believe that an informed *470society will react more humanely than an uninformed [one]. Dickens’s fables may represent the reality of human experience. We are not given visions of the future to guide our decisionmaking. We ought at least have a clear vision of the present.” (Matter of Rulemaking, N.J.A.C. 10:82-1.2, supra, 566 A.2d at p. 1160.) California would blur the public’s vision in order to avoid political accountability for its decisions. We should not permit it to do so.
I would affirm the judgment.

Retired Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, First District, sitting under assignment by the Chairperson of the Judicial Council.

The Family Support Act of 1988 was bom of a compromise between separate House and Senate versions of the law. Both the Senate and House versions included reevaluation provisions, although they differed in their terms. The Conference Committee adopted a compromise version of the competing provisions, resulting in current section 602(h). (H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 100-998, 100th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 91, 183 (1988), 1988 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News at pp. 2879, 2971.)

See House of Representatives Conference Report No. 100-998, 100th Congress, Second Session, at p. 183 supra, 1988 United States Code Congressional and Administrative News at page 2971.

In a report which studied the relationship between AFDC need standards and payment standards, the authors “found a strong positive correlation between the size of increases in payments and the size of the gap between need and payment standards. In both states with relatively generous benefits and those with relatively ungenerous benefits, benefits tended to increase faster where there was a significant distance between the need and payment standards. The authors speculate that, while need standards are highly manipulable, some states took them seriously, and good faith efforts to estimate need often resulted in standards above program payments. These standards in turn, the authors further speculate, exercised a kind of normative pressure on legislators that prompted benefit increases.” (Simon, Rights and Redistribution in the Welfare System (1986) 38 Stan.L.Rev. 1431, 1489 fn. 190, quoted in Matter of Rulemaking, N.J.A.C. 10:82-1.2, supra, 566 A.2d at pp. 1159-1160.)

The reason for this softening may have to do with changes in the importance of the standard of need. In 1967 AFDC mandated no particular relationship between the level of benefits paid and the standard of need. However, the standard of need took on greater significance in 1981 when Congress enacted legislation which created a ceiling for eligibility based on the standard of need and family income (42 U.S.C. § 602(18)) and made the standard of need important to other calculations (42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(31)). (Everett v. Schramm (3rd Cir. 1985) 772 F.2d 1114, 1115-1116.) Thus, in 1988 Congress may have been reluctant to force states to adopt new standards of need since this would directly affect how the states calculated and determined eligibility for benefits.

The current need standards (or minimum basic standards of adequate care, as they are called in the California statute) are:
‘Number of needy persons in the same family Minimum basic standards of adequate care
1 $ 341
2 560
3 694
4 824
5 940
6 7 1,057 1,160
8 1,265
9 1,371
10 1,489
plus fourteen dollars ($14) for each additional person.” (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 11452, subd. (a)(2).)

These needs include safe and healthful housing, minimum clothing for health and decency, low cost food budget, utilities, nonpublic essential medical and dental care, and other miscellaneous personal needs and expenses. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 11452, subd. (a)(1)(A)(F).)

I note that although the HHS may have found California’s reevaluation acceptable, the state Legislature did not. On August 24, 1984, while this case was pending, the Legislature passed Assembly Bill No. 3829 (1993-1994 Reg. Sess.). That bill would have required the Department of Social Services to “contract with an independent, qualified, and reputable public or private entity for the reevaluation required by” section 602(h). Assembly Bill No. 3829 further stated that the reevaluation “shall contain a study of the actual costs of subsistence needs for the families in the state . . . .” (Assem. Bill No. 3829, supra, § 1, italics added.) However, Governor Wilson vetoed Assembly Bill No. 3829 on September 27, 1994.

Petitioners also argue that merely using the CNI to calculate the need standard is unacceptable. Given that the states have broad discretion to set, and therefore to reevaluate, their need standards, I would not place any limits on the state’s efforts at this juncture. It would be premature to rule on any methodology that the state might use in its good faith effort to determine the true cost of obtaining basic necessities.