92-CV-1157, 92-CV-1448 (District of Columbia Court of Appeals, December 18, 1995).
This case has been reported on in previous Bulletins as Little v. Kelly and Brown v. Kelly. It grows out of a 1991 change in the eligibility standards for general assistance in D.C. Under the new standards, only individuals found to be disabled under the SSI criteria are eligible for GA. Plaintiffs challenged as unconstitutional a provision of the GA statute which provided that recipients found ineligible for continuing assistance due to failure to meet the disability standard were not entitled to pretermination hearings. The local appeals court for the District of Columbia has now reversed a trial court decision granting summary judgement to the plaintiffs. According to the court, the D.C. general assistance statute authorizes aid for only finite "certification periods" and at the time of the change in eligibility standards permitted recipients to continue receiving aid under the old standards through their current certification period. Analogizing to the food stamps context and citing Banks v. Block, 700 F.2d 292 (6th Cir. 1983), the court concluded that plaintiffs did not have any property interest in ongoing assistance beyond their current certification periods and that there was not therefore any constitutional requirement that they be provided with pretermination hearings. CH # 47,460.
67 F.3d 256 (9th Cir. 1995).
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a federal Food Stamp regulation which permits the deferral of disqualification penalties for persons who are found to have committed intentional program violations. The court interpreted the Food Stamp Act to require that the disqualification period begin running immediately upon the determination of a violation, regardless of whether the individual is eligible to participate in the Food Stamp program at that time. In so holding the Circuit reversed an Oregon district court decision which had reasoned that although the regulation conflicted with the language of the federal statute, the regulation nevertheless comported with "Congress' true intent" to deter Food Stamp fraud. The Circuit read congressional intent differently, holding that Congress aimed to both simplify administration and to achieve deterrence against fraud through swift punishment.
67 F.3rd 1299 (7th Cir. Oct. 6, 1995).
The 7th Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a District Court decision which had held that Wisconsin's eligibility verification and home visit policies violated federal food stamps regulations and the Fourth Amendment. The Circuit affirmed the holdings that the food stamps regulations permit home visits only when documentary evidence is insufficient, require that applicants be given in advance the date (but not the time) of any home visits, and require that applicants must be given the opportunity to designate acceptable collateral contacts rather than having the state choose such contacts. It, however, reversed the District Court's findings that the state was required to tell applicants that they may be subject to a home visit if their documentary evidence is deemed insufficient or that collateral contacts will not be used if documentary evidence is sufficient. The court also stressed that in the case of joint applications for food stamps and public assistance, the food stamps regulations apply only to those eligibility criteria unique to food stamps. Reversing the District Court, the court further determined that home visits were not searches and therefore did not fall within the purview of the Fourth Amendment because the workers were only allowed to enter the applicant's home with permission and their inquiries were limited to items in need of verification. Finally, the court stated that even if the home visits were searches they would not violate the Fourth Amendment because they were reasonable because applicant's were given notice that they would occur within 10 days and because applicants were not penalized if they were not found to be home. CH # 46,817.