Court Opinion

ID: 9425422
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:39.045889+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.425052
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Powell concur, dissenting.
Appellees challenge on constitutional grounds a section of the most recent congressional revision of the Food Stamp Act, 7 U. S. C. § 2011 et seq., whereby households containing persons 18 years or older who have been claimed as “dependents” for income tax purposes are made ineligible to receive food stamps. The Court’s opinion sustains this challenge. Referring to what it conceives to be the legislative aim in enacting such a limitation, “a concern about abuses of the program by 'college students, children of wealthy parents,’ ” the opinion states that “the Act goes far beyond that goal and its operation is inflexible,” ante, at 513.
Notions that in dispensing public funds to the needy Congress may not impose limitations which “go beyond the goal” of Congress, or may not be “inflexible,” have not heretofore been thought to be embodied in the Constitution. In Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471 (1970), the Court rejected this approach in an area of welfare legislation that is indistinguishable from the food *523stamp program here involved. There the District Court, in the words of this Court,
“while apparently recognizing the validity of at least some of these state concerns, nonetheless held that the regulation 'is invalid on its face for overreaching/ 297 F. Supp., at 468 — that it violates the Equal Protection Clause ‘[b]ecause it cuts too broad a swath on an indiscriminate basis as applied to the entire group of AFDC eligibles to which it purports to apply Id., at 484.
Applying the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to state action, the Court reversed the District Court and held:
“[T]he concept of 'overreaching’ has no place in this case. For here we deal with state regulation in the social and economic field, not affecting freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and claimed to violate the Fourteenth Amendment only because the regulation results in some disparity in grants of welfare payments to the largest AFDC families. For this Court to approve the invalidation of state economic or social regulation as ‘overreaching’ would be far too reminiscent of an era when the Court thought the Fourteenth Amendment gave it power to strike down state laws ‘because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought’. . . .
“In the area of economics and social welfare, a State does not violate the Equal Protection Clause merely because the classifications made by its laws are imperfect. If the classification has some ‘reasonable basis/ it does not offend the Constitution simply because the classification ‘is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results *524in some inequality.’ Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 78.” Id., at 484-485.
In placing the limitations on the availability of food stamps which are involved in this case, Congress has not in any reasoned sense of that word employed a conclusive presumption as stated by the majority, ante, at 511, 512, and Mr. Justice Stewart in his concurring opinion, ante, at 516; it has simply made a legislative decision that certain abuses which it conceived to exist in the program as previously administered were of sufficient seriousness to warrant the substantive limitation which it enacted. There is a qualitative difference between, on the one hand, holding unconstitutional on procedural due process grounds presumptions which conclude factual inquiries without a hearing on such questions as fault, Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535 (1971), the fitness of an unwed father to be a parent, Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645 (1972), or, accepting the majority’s characterization in Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U. S. 441 (1973), residency, and, on the other hand, holding unconstitutional a duly enacted prophylactic limitation on the dispensation of funds which is designed to cure systemic abuses. Cf. Mourning v. Family Publications Service, Inc., 411 U. S. 356 (1973); Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U. S. 629, 643 (1968).
Thus, we deal not with the law of evidence, but with the extent to which the Fifth Amendment permits this Court to invalidate such a determination by Congress. In Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483, 487-488 (1955), the Court said:
“But the law need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it.”
*525Accord, Dandridge v. Williams, supra; Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726 (1963); Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603, 611-612 (1960).
The majority concludes that a “deduction taken for the benefit of the parent in the prior year is not a rational measure of the need of a different household with which the child of the tax-deducting parent lives.” Ante, at 514. But judged by the standards of the foregoing cases, the challenged provision of the Food Stamp Act has a legitimate purpose and cannot be said to lack any rational basis. Section 5 (b) declares ineligible for food stamps “[a]ny household which includes a member who has reached his eighteenth birthday and who is claimed as a dependent child for Federal income tax purposes by a taxpayer who is not a member of an eligible household.” Thus, in order to disqualify a household for food stamps, the taxpayer claiming one of its members as a dependent must both provide over half of the dependent’s support and must himself be a member of a household with an income large enough to disqualify that household for food stamps. These characteristics indicate that the taxpayer is both willing and able to provide his dependent with a significant amount of support. To be sure, there may be no perfect correlation between the fact that the taxpayer is part of a household which has income exceeding food stamp eligibility standards and his provision of enough support to raise his dependent’s household above such standards. But there is some correlation, and the provision is, therefore, not irrational. Dandridge v. Williams, supra. *
*526Nor is § 5 (b) deprived of a rational basis because disqualification of the household extends one year beyond the year in which the dependency deduction is claimed. Since income tax returns are not filed until after the termination of the tax year, the carryover provision is the only practical means of enforcing the congressional purpose unless Congress were to establish an administrative adjudication procedure wholly independent of the existing tax collection structure. Such an alternative system would doubtless have its own delays, inefficiencies, and inequities. Under these circumstances we cannot say that Congress acted irrationally in judging a person’s need in one year by whether he was claimed as a tax dependent in the previous year.
Finally, the fact that the statute as presently administered may operate to deny food stamps on the basis of fraudulent as well as lawful dependency deduction claims does not, as suggested by the three-judge District Court, 348 F. Supp. 242, 243 (DC 1972), render it unconstitu*527tional. A false dependency claim subjects the taxpayer to both civil and criminal penalties, and Congress may reasonably proceed on the assumption that taxpayers will obey the law.
The prior holdings of the Court convince me that this limitation which Congress has placed on the availability of food stamps does not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and I therefore dissent from the Court's affirmance of the judgment of the District Court.

The Court's opinion makes much of the facts that there maybe no relationship between the tax dependent’s parent and the remaining members of the household, that they may be completely destitute, and that they may be one or 10 or 20. Ante, at 514. Sec*526tion 3 (e) of the Food Stamp Act, 7 U. S. C. § 2012 (e), provides in relevant part:
“The term 'household’ shall mean a group of . . . individuals . . . who . . . are living as one economic unit . . . .”
In its instructions to the state agencies administering the food stamp program, the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service defines “economic unit” as meaning that “the common living expenses are shared from the income and resources of all members and that the basic needs of all members are provided for without regard to their ability or willingness to contribute.” (Reply Brief for Appellants in No. 72-534, O. T. 1972, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture v. Moreno, 9 n. 19, post, p. 528.)
The majority does not question that Congress could rationally so choose to dispense welfare benefits to “economic units” rather than to individuals. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471 (1970). Since the resources of the household member claimed as a tax dependent are by definition available to the entire household, it is rational to disqualify such units containing ineligible tax dependents.