Court Opinion

ID: 9428664
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:22.434174+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.552752
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring in part.
The Court speculates that subsection 17(D) might well be superfluous if subsection 17(B) were read to permit the Secretary to foreclose entirely the States’ ability to consider the income of the spouse of an institutionalized applicant. Ante, *279at .277. This speculation apparently is predicated on the be-liefrthat subsection 17(D) requires the States to deem certain income of an applicant’s spouse to be available to the appli-eant.1 The Court’s observation is both unnecessary and misleading.2 Subsection 17(D), like subsection 17(B), places a limit on the extent to which an applicant’s income may be deemed to include contributions from other sources. Nothing in the language of either subsection requires that any spousal income be deemed to be available to an applicant.
Apart from the Court’s speculation concerning a regulation that does not exist, I join its opinion.

 In Schweiker v. Gray Panthers, 453 U. S. 34, 45, the Court noted that subsection 17(D) might be superfluous if the statute were not read to permit certain deeming, see also 453 U. S., at 52 (Stevens, J., dissenting); the Court did not suggest that any amount of deeming was required by the statute.

 As The Chief Justice notes in his dissenting opinion, it also is more consistent with his analysis of the case than with the Court’s. See post, at 280-281, n. 2.