Bowen v. Gilliar

483 U.S. 587 (1987)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

The prior federal statute for AFDC did not require that all parents and siblings be included in an AFDC filing unit. If a teenage child had significant income of her own, perhaps from wages or perhaps in support payments from an absent parent, the other members of her family could exclude her from the filing unit in order to avoid disqualifying the entire family from benefits or reducing its level of benefits. Beaty Mae Gilliard (P) began receiving public assistance from North Carolina under AFDC in 1962. In February 1970, after her seventh child was born, the State automatically included him in the filing unit, thereby increasing the family's monthly allotment from $217 to $227 to reflect the difference between the benefit for a family of seven and the benefit for a family of eight. P was also receiving $43.33 each month in child support from the baby's father. When a formal parental support order was entered in April 1970, the State credited the support payments against her account and reduced her monthly benefit to $184. P sued, contending that she had a statutory right to exclude her seventh child from the unit and thus to continue to receive the $217 benefit for a family of seven and also to retain the $43.33 paid by her youngest child's father. A three-judge District Court agreed with her reading of the statute and entered an order requiring the State to reinstate her benefits at the $217 level and to reimburse her for the improper credits of $43 per month. The Supreme Court affirmed that judgment 409 U.S. 807 (1972). No constitutional question was decided at that time. Congress amended the AFDC program in 1975 to require, as a condition of eligibility, that applicants for assistance must assign to the State any right to receive child support payments for any member of the family included in the filing unit. These amendments did not harm recipients like P because they did not affect the right to define the family unit covered by an application and thereby to exclude children with independent income, such as a child for whom support payments were being made. Another change in the law was made in 1984. In general, the parents, sisters, and brothers living together with a dependent child must all be included; the option of excluding a sibling with income, for example, would no longer be available. The burden of the change was mitigated somewhat by a separate amendment providing that the first $50 of child support collected by the State must be remitted to the family and not counted as income for the purpose of determining its benefit level. If the assigned support exceeded $50 plus the difference in the benefit level caused by adding the child or children receiving support, the family would suffer; if less than $50 and the difference in the benefit level was collected as support, it would not. This prompted the original 1971 class to file a motion to reopen the 1971 decree and obtain further relief on behalf of the class. The District Court found that North Carolina's and the Department of Health and Human Services' regulations were in conformance with the statute, but concluded that the statutory scheme violated both the Due Process Clause and the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. North Carolina law imposed a duty on the custodial parent to use child support money exclusively for the benefit of the child for whom it had been obtained; forced assignment of the support money to the State in exchange for AFDC benefits for the entire family was a taking of the child's private property. The use of the child's support money to reduce the Government's AFDC expenditures was tantamount to punishing the child for exercising the fundamental right to live with his or her family. Because of the serious impact on the autonomy of the family - including the child's potential relationship with his or her noncustodial parent - 'special judicial scrutiny' was considered appropriate, and the deprivation of property and liberty effected by the statutory scheme could not, in the court's view, survive such scrutiny.