Court Opinion

ID: 9425420
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:39.038697+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.420664
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Marshall,
concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court. I wish to state briefly what I believe are the analytic underpinnings of that opinion. One aspect of fundamental fairness, guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, is that individuals similarly situated must receive the same treatment by the Government. As Mr. Justice Jackson put it, the Government “must exercise [its] powers so as not to discriminate between [its] inhabitants except upon some reasonable differentiation fairly related to the object of the regulation.” Railway Express Agency v. New York, 336 U. S. 106, 112 (1949) (concurring opinion) . It is a corollary of this requirement that, in order to determine whether persons are indeed similarly situated, “such procedural protections as the particular situation demands” must be provided. Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 481 (1972). Specifically, we must decide whether, considering the private interest affected and the governmental interest sought to be advanced, a hearing must be provided to one who claims that the application of some general provision of the law aimed at certain abuses will not in fact lower the incidence of those abuses but will instead needlessly harm him. Cf. Reed v. Reed, *518404 U. S. 71 (1971); Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U. S. 441 (1973). In short, where the private interests affected are very important and the governmental interest can be promoted without much difficulty by a well-designed hearing procedure, the Due Process Clause requires the Government to act on an individualized basis, with general propositions serving only as rebuttable presumptions or other burden-shifting devices. That, I think, is the import of Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645 (1972).
Is this, then, such a case? Appellants argue that Congress could rationally have thought that persons claimed as tax dependents by a taxpayer himself not a member of an eligible household in one year could, during that year and the succeeding one, probably receive sufficient funds from the taxpayer to offset their need for food stamps. If those persons received food stamps, they would be denying to the truly needy some of the limited benefits Congress has chosen to make available. The statute, on this view, is aimed at preventing abuse of the program by persons who do not need the benefits Congress has provided. Even if, as appellants urge, the statute is interpreted to make ineligible for food stamps only those persons validly claimed as tax dependents, see Reply Brief for Appellants 2-3, I do not think that Congress adopted a method for preventing abuse that is reasonably calculated to eliminate only those who abuse the program. In particular, it could not be fairly concluded that, because one member of the household had received half his support from a parent, the entire household’s need for assistance in purchasing food could be offset by outside contributions.
It is, of course, quite simple for Congress to provide an administrative mechanism to guarantee that abusers of the program were eliminated from it. All that is needed is some way for a person whose household would *519otherwise be ineligible for food stamps because of this statute to show that the support presently available from the person claiming a member of the household as a tax dependent does not in fact offset the loss of benefits.* Reasonable rules stating what a claimant must show before receiving a hearing on the question could easily be devised. We deal here with a general rule that may seriously affect the ability of persons genuinely in need to provide an adequate diet for their households. In the face of readily available alternatives that might prevent abuse of the program, Congress did not choose a method of reducing abuses that was “fairly related to the object of the regulation,” by enacting the statute challenged in this case.
This analysis, of course, combines elements traditionally invoked in what are usually treated as distinct classes of cases, involving due process and equal protection. But the elements of fairness should not be so rigidly cabined. Sometimes fairness will require a hearing to determine whether a statutory classification will advance the legislature’s purposes in a particular case so that the classification can properly be used only as a burden-shifting device, while at other times the fact that a litigant falls within the classification will be enough to justify its application. There is no reason, I believe, to categorize inflexibly the rudiments of fairness. Instead, I believe that we must assess the public and private interests affected by a statutory classification and then decide in each instance whether individualized determination is required or categorical treatment is permitted by the Constitution.

Such a mechanism must be made available, on the interpretation of the statute advanced by appellants, to persons who contend that they were not validly claimed as dependents.