This case challenges on right to travel and federal and state equal protection grounds a Minnesota statute that denies new residents all public assistance for 30 days and then for the rest of their first year in the state applies the benefit level and time limit applicable in new residents' previous states to their Minnesota public assistance cases. In 1993, the Minnesota Supreme Court struck down a law that paid lower General Assistance benefits to new residents for their first six months in the state. Mitchell v. Steffen, 504 N.W.2d 198 (Minn. 1993). Recognizing that the new statute might well be struck down in light of the Mitchell decision, the legislature wrote a contingency plan into the law which will deny new residents childcare and access to education and training as a work activity and will require immediate job search for new residents during their first year in the state. Plaintiffs also challenge these provisions on right to travel and equal protection grounds as well as on the ground that it is an attempt to chill their first amendment right to challenge the provision of lower benefits to new residents. Plaintiffs do not challenge an aspect of the contingency plan which would ratably reduce assistance to all recipients once the number of new residents receiving aid reaches a certain threshold after the provision regarding lower benefits for new residents is struck down.
Plaintiffs' attorneys: Anne Cofell and Ralonda Mason, St. Cloud Legal
Services, (320) 253-0121; Barbara Kuhn, Southside Legal Aid Office, (612)
827-3774; and Timothy Thompson and Anne Quincy, (612) 332-1441.
Plaintiff brought an individual action to challenge the state's elimination of the $50 child support pass-through, claiming, inter alia, that the state's purported Oct. 1, 1996 emergency regulation ending the pass-through violated the state Administrative Procedures Act, that the state violated federal due process requirements, state law, and the state constitution in failing to give prior notice to the plaintiff, that refusing to pay the pass-through constituted a taking of property without just compensation in violation of the federal and state constitutions, and that the state had breached a contract with the plaintiff arising out of her assignment of support rights.
The case became a class action and the court approved a settlement under which the state agreed to provide class members with the state share of the pass-through from October 1, 1996 through March 31, 1997. The settlement did not preclude the state from rulemaking then in progress to determine whether or not to terminate or otherwise change the pass-through after March 31, 1997.
Plaintiffs' attorneys: The case was brought by Richard Cullison of Northern Kentucky Legal Aid, Covington, Ky., tel. (606) 431-8200 and other Legal Services attorneys and concluded by a private attorney.
Success Against All Odds v. Dept. of Public Welfare, __ A.2d__, 1997 WL 473122 (Pa. Cmwlth., Aug. 20, 1997).
This case challenged the state's March 1997 elimination of the $50 child support pass-through. In April 1997 the court granted preliminary relief on plaintiffs' claims that the state statute required continuation of the pass-through and that the state had not complied with rulemaking requirements. The court has now concluded that the state statute required a pass-through only as long as federal law required such payments and the elimination of the pass-through did not violate rulemaking requirements. Petitioners' attorney reports that the matter has been appealed to the state Supreme Court and that as a result of the litigation the class received continued pass-through payments totally some $8 million. Although pass-through payments are no longer being made as a result of the August decision, petitioners have asked the state Supreme Court to stay the court's lifting of its injunction. Last reported in the July 1997 Welfare Bulletin.
Plaintiffs' attorneys: Amy E. Hirsch, Community Legal Services, Law
Center North Central, 3638 North Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19140, tel.
(215) 227-2415; Sue Frietsche, Women's Law Project, and other attorneys.
This action challenges provisions of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, P.L.104-193, and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, P.L. 104-208, which prevent any state or local law from prohibiting or restricting communication between state and local officials and the INS. Plaintiffs claim that the provisions violate principles of federalism, the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the Constitution's Guarantee Clause, Article IV, section 4, which provides that the United States shall guarantee every state a republican form of government. The court has dismissed the action. It concluded that the federal provisions do not require the City to legislate, regulate, enforce, or implement federal immigration policy and that they only bar the City from interfering with a voluntary exchange of information. There is no intrusion on state sovereignty sufficient to constitute a violation of the Tenth Amendment or principles of federalism. The court rejected arguments that the statutes intrude on core functions of City government, finding this substantive analysis has been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court also found that the Guarantee Clause claim was nonjusticiable. Plaintiff is reportedly appealing.
Plaintiff's attorneys: Gail Rubin, Hilary B. Klein, Michael Henry, Office
of the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, 100 Church St., Room
3-158, New York, NY 10007, tel. (212) 788-0995.
In this case, Western Wisconsin of Legal Services represented petitioner in a court challenge to an administrative hearing affirmance of a denial of benefits and services under the then existing Wis-consin General Assistance program. The trial court held against petitioner. The County then moved for attorneys' fees against the petitioner's legal services lawyer and the program for which he worked. The trial court found that the petitioner's claims were frivolous and that her attorney should have known them to be and awarded fees. The Court of Appeals reversed, finding that the legal services lawyer had acted in good faith seeking to obtain benefits for his client in the face of contradictory facts, unpublished agency policies, less than precise statutory language, and a paucity of prior decisional history.
Plaintiffs' attorney: Charles Kreimendahl, Western Wisconsin Legal Services, P.O. Box 101, North Main Street, Dodgeville, WI 53533-0101; tel. (608) 935-2741; fax (608) 935-2803.