Food Stamps
Center and Colleagues Stop New York City from Unlawfully Preventing Access to Benefits
Federal Court Finds New York City Illegally Deters and Denies Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Cash Assistance Applications and Bars Expansion of "Job Centers"
From March, 1999 Welfare News
Introduction Finding that New York City’s Job Center staff illegally discourage and deny needy people from applying for Food Stamps, Medicaid and cash assistance, a federal court in New York has barred the City from converting any more welfare offices to Job Centers and ordered officials to develop a corrective action plan, to comply with the law, and to continue an informal process to consider individual cases of urgent need. The court’s January 25th 49 page decision in Reynolds v. Giuliani was issued after a three day court hearing that began after the settlement discussions proved unsuccessful.
The hearing and decision followed the court’s December 16th issuance of a temporary restraining order requiring the city to provide Food Stamps and emergency cash assistance to the individual plaintiffs. In mid-February the City filed its corrective action plan with the court, and plaintiffs and the State Department of Health, one of the defendants, criticized the plan as inadequate. The plaintiffs are represented by the Welfare Law Center, the Legal Aid Society, New York Legal Assistance Group, and Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation. (For information on obtaining the decision and related case papers see the accompanying box.)
The case has dealt a major setback to the City’s continuing efforts to drive down welfare rolls by "diverting" people from public assistance. Diversion is the goal behind the city’s conversion of its Income Support Centers to Job Centers, which began last summer. The Job Center approach requires prospective applicants to go through a series of steps, including multiple interviews with agency staff and a repeat visit to the Center before they get an application, as well as engage in an extensive job search during the application process. During this process Job Center staff actively discourage prospective applicants from applying for assistance and encourage them to look elsewhere for support - for example to food pantries, family members, and charities. For a fuller description of the process and additional background see the December 1998 Welfare News, p.1. Because Job Centers also administer Medicaid and Food Stamps, the City’s efforts to divert needy individuals and families from public assistance has also resulted in deterring and denying applications for Food Stamps and Medicaid.
As the conversion moved ahead, reports of abusive practices and the desperate plight of needy families received both media attention and the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Agriculture which launched an investigation. The Mayor and City officials, however, staunchly defended their program as consistent with the philosophy of encouraging self-sufficiency rather than dependency and the federal TANF law’s emphasis on moving recipients into employment. The litigation followed.
The Reynolds claims are based on federal Food Stamp and Medicaid laws, including those protecting individuals’ right to apply without delay and receive prompt determinations, to receive expedited Food Stamps and emergency Medicaid, and to have Food Stamps and Medicaid eligibility determinations made separately from cash assistance eligibility determinations; state law regarding the right to apply for cash assistance and receive a prompt determination; and due process. Federal Food Stamp, Medicaid, and due process requirements apply, of course, in all states.
As the first decision to address problems with the interaction between cash assistance, Medicaid, and Food Stamps since the 1996 federal welfare law eliminated the AFDC program and replaced it with the TANF block grant, Reynolds is a strong precedent for other states where overzealous or careless welfare administrators’ efforts to reduce cash assistance rolls are causing improper denials of Food Stamp and Medicaid. Indeed, national, state, and local advocacy
organizations report troubling declines in Medicaid and Food Stamp receipt which may be caused, at least in part, by new welfare policies and practices to divert people from cash assistance. In a February 25th article The New York Times reports growing Congressional concern about the decline in the Food Stamp rolls and the recognition by some that there may be a link to strict new welfare policies. Representative Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee on Human Resources said the committee will hold hearings this year, according to the Times.
The Reynolds case is a reminder of the important role that litigation plays in assuring that welfare officials abide by federal law when informal advocacy fails and agency self-scrutiny is absent. City officials had refused to address the growing reports of needy individuals and families being turned away from new Job Centers. The court’s ruling means that the power of the court is now being used to compel and oversee the City’s corrective action efforts on a timetable set by the court. Indeed, just two short months after the litigation began, the City has now submitted a corrective action plan pursuant to the court order.
Since the plaintiffs sought to enforce compliance with explicit Food Stamps and Medicaid requirements, they had to persuade the court that the City was engaged in a pattern of illegal practices that amounted to a violation of law. As the January 25th decision reveals, the plaintiffs’ factual showing was extensive and persuasive. This task required a massive team effort by plaintiffs’ counsel over a short time period to develop a detailed and convincing factual record to support their claims and to refute the city’s position that plaintiffs’ individual experiences were simply examples of occasional agency errors.
The January 25th Decision and Subsequent Corrective Action Plan. In granting a preliminary injunction, the court concluded that the plaintiffs had shown that they faced irreparable harm and that they had a likelihood of success on their legal claims. Both the written declarations of the individual plaintiffs and their testimony at the hearing, including that of a homeless, single mother who was pregnant with twins and who waited over a month to get Food Stamps and went entirely without food more than once during that period, led the court to observe that "there is simply no question" that plaintiffs faced the risk of irreparable harm.
As to the likelihood of success on the merits, the court rejected the city’s argument that plaintiffs had not stated a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. It held that the Food Stamp and Medicaid statute and regulations gave plaintiffs an enforceable legal right and that plaintiffs had an "overarching property interest" in receiving Food Stamps, Medicaid, and cash assistance and had asserted a viable due process claim under §1983.
In reviewing the record before it, the court noted Commissioner Turner’s testimony that "[w]e didn’t do a lengthy planning followed by implementation, instead we acted first and worried abut the consequences later. And that seems to have worked for us." The City had not assured compliance with federal statutory protections, and only took ad hoc steps to correct problems only after the hearing began. While the court acknowledged that the city could adopt policies to promote work, it emphasized the city’s obligation to comply with federal law and said it was "impelled to ensure that remedial steps are taken on a specified time-line and that the effects of the revisions to job center procedures are measured to ascertain whether they are working."
In examining the effects of the conversion to Job Centers the court reviewed a litany of statistical data and documentary and testimonial evidence. It noted that after conversion fewer applicants were approved for benefits and that staff had received a message to divert people from aid. Data from individual centers showed large percentages of prospective applicants turned away without having filed an application and significant percentages of staff actively trying to discourage applications.
The court also found that those with emergency needs were denied immediate assistance. It noted that large numbers of needy individuals were not seen by the Job Center Financial Planners who assess emergency needs, that pre-investigation emergency cash grants decreased after conversion to Job Centers and that the number of persons granted expedited Food Stamps also declined dramatically. This data and evidence from community services personnel led to the conclusion that referrals to food pantries were used as a replacement for expedited benefits. Training materials for Job Center staff do not include procedures for processing expedited Food Stamps or emergency cash assistance or remind staff to inform applicants that their application will be processed if it has their name, address, and signature, a requirement of Food Stamp law.
Declarations from numerous individuals showed that they had not received expedited Food Stamps, that applicants who arrived at a Center after a certain hour were told to return to the Center on another day regardless of their emergency needs, that the form used by the agency allowed eligible applicants for expedited benefits to fall through the cracks. Agency data showed that prospective applicants were improperly turned away because their spouse was not with them.
Testimony from agency workers and supervisory staff, individual plaintiffs, and state and federal supervising agencies showed that workers improperly denied all benefits, including Food Stamps and Medicaid, when an individual failed to meet the employment requirements for cash assistance. Evidence from individual plaintiffs and the city indicated that many applicants are not provided with written notice of a denial and the reason for the denial and are therefore unable to request a fair hearing to review the denial.
Based on this extensive record the court concluded that the plaintiffs had shown a systemic violation of law, rejected the City’s argument that the problems were isolated incidents, and ordered the relief described above.
In mid-February, the City submitted its corrective action plan to the court. Plaintiffs have submitted a 50 page response criticizing the plan as failing to cure the systemic problems to deter and discourage applications, to provide for effective training of agency workers, and to establish an evaluation mechanism to assure that corrective actions are implemented successfully and are effective in assuring compliance with the law. They have asked the court to require the city to meet with them to develop modifications to the plan and to develop evaluation techniques. They have also asked the court to prevent further conversion until these steps are taken and shown to be effective. In a significant development, the State Department of Health, a co-defendant, has also submitted to the court a criticism of the Medicaid aspects of the city’s plan.
Federal and state agency investigations of Job Center practices. In early February U.S.D.A. released its final report of its investigation of city practices with respect to Food Stamps, New York Program Access Review, November - December 1998 (Feb. 5, 1999). The report, which is directed to the state agency responsible for Food Stamp administration, identifies a range of practices that violate Food Stamp application processing requirements, and concludes that the city is denying Food Stamps based on eligibility requirements not permitted by Food Stamp law and that the state has failed to provide effective oversight of city Food Stamp Administration. U.S.D.A. set a timetable for the city to submit a corrective action plan and threatened possible fiscal sanctions, as provided in the federal Food Stamp statute, if the problems are not corrected. U.S.D.A. states unequivocally that Food Stamp policies are based on federal Food Stamp requirements which Congress reaffirmed in the 1996 federal welfare law.
A February 4, 1999 New York Times story reported that state health agency investigators, posing as Medicaid applicants, were denied Medicaid applications at four of eight centers they visited on the day after the Reynolds decision. A state agency representative indicated the monitoring would continue. An investigation begun some seven months ago by the federal Health Care Financing Administration, which oversees the Medicaid program, is still pending.
