Smith v. Board of Commissioners of District of Columbia

• Decision Date: 23 June 1967
• Docket Number: No. 20746.,20746.
• Citation: 380 F.2d 632
• Parties: Patricia A. SMITH et al., Appellants, v. BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

380 F.2d 632 (1967)

Patricia A. SMITH et al., Appellants, v. BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al., Appellees.

No. 20746.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued May 17, 1967.

Decided June 23, 1967.

Mr. Peter S. Smith, Washington, D. C., with whom Messrs. David H. Marlin and Laurens H. Silver, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellants.

Mr. John R. Hess, Asst. Corp. Counsel for District of Columbia, with whom Messrs. Charles T. Duncan, Corp. Counsel, and Hubert B. Pair, Principal Asst. Corp. Counsel, were on the brief, for appellees. Mr. Milton D. Korman, Principal Asst. Corp. Counsel at the time the record was filed, also entered an appearance for appellees.

Messrs. Daniel Marcus and David L. Chambers, III, Washington, D. C., filed a brief on behalf of the National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union, as amicus curiae urging reversal.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, WILBUR K. MILLER, Senior Circuit Judge, and McGOWAN, Circuit Judge.

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge:

This appeal is from a grant by the District Court of summary judgment in an action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in respect of the administration of the District of Columbia Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. 3 D.C. Code § 202 et seq. (Supp. V, 1966). Appellees are the District Commissioners and other officials having responsibilities in that regard. Appellants are mothers of needy children receiving assistance under the program, suing for themselves and others similarly situated. The District Court in its opinion, 259 F.Supp. 423, identified a number of reasons as independently supporting its decision. One was the failure of appellants, prior to invoking the aid of the District Court, to pursue avenues of administrative relief allegedly open to them. We address ourselves only to this ground, because we think it warrants our affirmance of the judgment appealed from.

I

The claims made by appellants purport to be derived from the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1964), the text of which is set forth in the margin.¹ Their complaint as filed alleged that appellees administer the AFDC program in a manner inconsistent with relevant statutes and, more significantly, in such a way as to deprive appellants of rights assured them by the Constitution. In particular, it is said that, on numerous occasions, since 1961, named and unnamed investigators for the Department of Welfare have unlawfully entered upon the premises of appellants and conducted interrogations and surveillances in an arbitrary and unreasonable fashion. It is represented that appellees threaten to, and do, terminate assistance payments unless appellants passively accept this continuing assault upon their constitutional privileges; and that appellants have not heretofore resisted this conduct for fear of losing the benefits due them under the law. Nothing is alleged as to the making of protests to higher authorities about these practices, nor about efforts to secure formal administrative relief against them.

The District Court was asked to declare that this kind of administrative tyranny infringed upon a variety of constitutional rights, most notably those which inhere in the Fourth Amendment. The injunctive relief sought was to the effect that appellants' homes be not entered except under the authority of a search warrant or the uncoerced consent of the occupant; and that assistance payments be not used as a club to exact an unwilling consent.

The procedural posture of the matter in the District Court was that the complaint elicited an alternative motion to dismiss or for summary judgment. This motion was accompanied by an affidavit by the appellee Director of the Department of Public Welfare representing that none of the Department's employees was authorized to enter the premises of any welfare recipient without the latter's prior consent, and that none of appellants were currently in jeopardy of losing their benefits for refusing such consent. After hearing counsel, the District Court, as noted above, awarded summary judgment to appellees.

The breadth of some of the propositions of law espoused by the District Court as justifying its ruling has not unnaturally put the appellants, and the amicus, at some pains to refute them. With respect to such matters as the standing of appellants to sue, the jurisdiction of the District Court to entertain the action, and the availability of Fourth Amendment protections to persons situated as are appellants, we may assume for present purposes the validity of the arguments pressed upon us.² But these assumptions leave unanswered the question of whether appellants are prematurely in court in terms of the possibilities open to them of administrative relief. We think they are; and that, in this respect at any rate, the District Court was on firm ground.

II

Appellants do not complain of anything in the statutory framework of the AFDC program. Neither does their complaint attack any of the regulations under which the program is administered. Indeed, in the District Court hearing counsel for appellants signified his awareness of the existence of written regulations issued for the guidance of Welfare Department investigators, and told the court that "if they were obeyed we wouldn't be here this morning."³ The District Court was, thus, confronted with what was essentially a challenge to the assertedly unlawful manner in which certain employees were performing their duties under an unexceptionable statute and concededly permissible regulations, and a request that judicial correction be afforded in essentially the form of a broad injunctive command to their superiors. As remarked above, the complaint does not allege that any effort was ever made to secure this relief directly from any of the appellees having authority over the program. We inquire, therefore, as to what provision Congress or the appellees, or both, have made for such internal relief.

Congress has written into the statute a direction that any aggrieved welfare client "shall be entitled to a hearing * * * conducted in accordance with rules and regulations prescribed by the Commissioners. * * *" 3 D.C. Code § 214 (Supp. V, 1966). These last are contained in a Handbook of Public Assistance Policies and Procedures. The Handbook has this to say, respectively, of the authority under which hearings are provided and the objectives they are designed to advance:

THE HEARING PROCESS

I. AUTHORITY

The Public Assistance titles of the Social Security Act, the Public Assistance Law of the District of Columbia, Commissioners\' Orders, and Departmental Directives require that the agency provide an opportunity for a fair hearing to any individual who is dissatisfied with any action or failure to act on the part of the agency. The agency recognizes this requirement in all of the regular financial assistance programs.

The establishment of the hearing process in Public Assistance is in keeping with the requirement of the Federal Administrative Procedures Act which provides that any decision or action of an administrative agency of the Government shall be subject to review in an administrative hearing, and, if the citizen is still dissatisfied, to test in the courts.

* * * * * *

III. OBJECTIVES

The following are some of the major objectives of the hearing process in Public Assistance:

A. To enable the Public Assistance Division, the Departmental Office, and the claimant to ascertain jointly the factual basis on which, through proper application of the assistance law and agency policies, a just and equitable decision may be reached.

B. To safeguard applicants and recipients from mistaken, negligent, unreasonable, or arbitrary action by agency staff.

C. To reveal aspects of agency policy that are inequitable or constitute a misconstruction of law, of Commissioners\' Orders or of Departmental Directives. It is intended to submit policy to test and argument, and to place in the hands of policy-making officials evidence indicating the need for modification of policies and standards, and the nature of the needed modification.

The Handbook goes on to provide that each request for a hearing shall eventuate in a final written decision within 60 days from such request; and that the Hearing Officer "shall conduct the hearing in such a manner as to insure that both the claimant and the agency have opportunity to present all facts which in their judgment have a bearing on the hearing." A transcript is made of the proceedings; the complainant may be represented by counsel or other representative of his choice; and he or his representative may examine and cross-examine witnesses, introduce documentary evidence, and present oral argument.

Appellants have argued to us that these complaint and hearing procedures are unavailing as to them because they are restricted to issues of eligibility for assistance and levels of allowance, and that they do not embrace grievances deriving from unlawful and arbitrary acts by investigators in the performance of their duties. It is patently true that eligibility determinations bulk large in the business to be dispatched by the hearing process, but we do not read the language of either statute or regulation so narrowly as do appellants. Indeed, we find it hard to conceive of more apt language, in relation to the nature of appellants' grievance, than that set forth in the Handbook, and quoted above, in Paragraphs B and C under the heading of "Objectives."

In any event, we do not have to speculate about how appellees construe the statute and the regulations. Both in brief and oral argument they have represented to us that they abjure the limited construction advanced by appellants, and that they regard the complaint and hearing procedure as plainly accessible to appellants for an airing and resolution of their objections to the allegedly unlawful and improper course of conduct of departmental personnel. In view...