Court Opinion

ID: 9425421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:39.041591+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.421833
License: Public Domain

*520Mr. Justice Blackmun,
dissenting.
Section 5 (b) of the Food Stamp Act, which the Court today holds unconstitutional, is not happily drafted and surely is not the kind of statute that attracts sympathetic review. Its purposes, however, are conceded to be laudatory. And, indeed, they are, for the statute seeks to prevent widespread abuse of the federal food stamp program by nonindigents and college students, with consequent denial of the full benefit of the program to those seriously in need of assistance.
The Court, however, invalidates § 5 (b) for, apparently, two reasons. The first is that tax dependency in one calendar year is tied to the subject’s lack of need in the following year, and this, it is said, has no rational connection. The second, although it may not be clearly articulated, is that all that is needed to disqualify a household is the presence in it of a person over 18 who is claimed as a dependent for federal income tax purposes by someone outside the household. That this is a reason is quite apparent from the Court’s special emphasis on the claims of dependency said to have been asserted by the father or parents of appellees Valdez, Broderson, and Schultz, even though the parent or parents, according to affidavits, gave “no support” or refused to give “any aid,” to use the Court’s words, ante, at 511.
For me, neither reason is persuasive. As I read § 5 (b) of the Act, see ante, at 509 n. 1, the years of ineligibility for food stamps are “the tax period such dependency is claimed” and the year that follows. They are not the latter year and the one subsequent thereto, as the Court seems to indicate. I confess that there must be some practical awkwardness in relating the food stamp year to the tax dependency year, for one often cannot know that he is being claimed as a tax dependent for a given year until the claimant files his income tax return *521for that year some time after its close. Despite this fact, the statute, for me, is clear and, at least, acceptable, and I would not rewrite it on a pragmatic basis, as, I think, the Court has done. Furthermore, the “year after” provision is not without rational basis, for Congress, in allocating limited resources, has determined that by this means it recoups in the later year the loss sustained in the earlier year when food stamps were improperly claimed.
My second concern centers in the meaning of the words, “who is claimed as a dependent child for Federal income tax purposes,” in § 5 (b) of the Act. I cannot believe that the mere fact of claiming is sufficient or that that is what Congress intended. It seems obvious to me that “claimed” in this context has only one meaning, that is, properly claimed for income tax purposes, and not the mere assertion of dependency in the return. This would be the sensible construction of the statute. It is obvious and clear, from the Court’s description of the Valdez, Broderson, and Schultz situations, ante, at 510-511, that the parent or parents who claimed those ap-pellees as income tax dependents were not at all entitled to make those claims. They clearly did not satisfy the requirements of §151 (e)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 26 U. S. C. § 151 (e)(1). Valdez’ problem is with his father, not with the food stamp program, if the facts the Court states are accurate. The same is true of Broderson. The same is true of Schultz.
Each of these aspects, which the Court chooses not to analyze and prefers, instead, to resolve by convenient nullification of the statute, could be handled by an appropriate hearing directed to the ascertainment of the actual facts. In that hearing it may be shown whether Joe Valdez, in fact, “receives no support from Ben.” If this be true, Joe should not automatically be ineligible *522for the program, and Ben’s improper claim of Joe as an income tax dependent should have no food stamp consequence whatsoever. So it would be with appellees Broderson and Schultz. The same may be true as to the remaining appellees with respect to whom claims of dependency status, on the affidavits filed, are at least questionable.
I, therefore, would vacate the judgment of the District Court and remand the case for a hearing directed to the development of the underlying facts in the light of § 5 (b) of the Food Stamp Act and of § 151 (e)(1) of the 1954 Internal Revenue Code, and for the entry of a new judgment in the light of those facts as so ascertained.