United States v. Clark

Decision Date26 February 1980
Docket NumberNo. 78-1513,78-1513
PartiesUNITED STATES, Appellant, v. Patricia Ilene CLARK, Guardian for Shawn D. Clark and Tricia D. Clark
CourtU.S. Supreme Court
Syllabus

Held: Under the provisions of the Civil Service Retirement Act whereby a deceased federal employee's legitimate children under 18 years of age qualify for survivors' benefits but "recognized natural" children under 18 may recover only if they "lived with the employee . . . in a regular parent-child relationship," a recognized natural child is entitled to survivors' benefits when the child has lived with the deceased employee in a "regular parent-child relationship," regardless of whether the child was living with the employee at the time of his death. This construction of the statutory provisions is fair and reasonable in light of the language, purpose, and history of the enactment and avoids a serious constitutional question under the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Even if the "lived with" requirement is assumed to serve as a device to thwart fraudulent claims of dependency or parentage or to promote efficient administration by facilitating the prompt identification of eligible annuitants, to construe the provision as applying only to illegitimate children living with the employee at the time of death would raise serious equal protection problems that this Court must seek to avoid by adopting a saving statutory construction not at odds with fundamental legislative purposes. Pp. 26-34.

590 F.2d 343, 218 Ct.Cl. 705, affirmed.

Harriet S. Shapiro, Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Edward L. Merrigan, Washington, D. C., for appellee.

Mr. Justice MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court.

This appeal presents the question whether illegitimate children of a federal civil service employee are entitled to survivors' benefits under the Civil Service Retirement Act when the children once lived with the employee in a familial relationship, but were not living with the employee at the time of his death.

I

George Isaacson and the appellee Patricia Clark lived together from 1965 through 1971 without benefit of matrimony. They had two children, Shawn and Tricia Clark, born in 1968 and 1971, respectively, and the four lived together as a family. After the appellee and Isaacson separated, the appellee filed a state-court action in Montana seeking a determination of the paternity of the children. In June 1972, the Montana court issued a decree determining that Isaacson was the natural father of the children and ordering him to contribute to their support. Isaacson provided monthly support payments up to the time of his death in 1974.

At the time of death, Isaacson was a federal employee covered by the Civil Service Retirement Act, 5 U.S.C. § 8331 et seq. The Act provides that each surviving child of a deceased federal employee is entitled to a survivors' annuity. 5 U.S.C. § 8341(e)(1). All legitimate and adopted children under 18 years of age qualify for these benefits, but stepchildren or "recognized natural" children under 18 may recover only if they "lived with the employee . . . in a regular parent-child relationship." 5 U.S.C. § 8341(a)(3)(A). In September 1974, the Civil Service Commission's Bureau of Retirement, Insurance, and Occupational Health denied the appellee's application for such annuities for Shawn and Tricia. The Bureau held that 5 U.S.C. § 8341(a)(3)(A) bars recovery for otherwise qualified children born out of wedlock who, like Shawn and Tricia, were not living with the employee at the time of his death. The Commission's Board of Appeals and Review affirmed.1

The appellee then filed this action in the Court of Claims on behalf of her children. She argued that 5 U.S.C. § 8341(a)(3)(A) allows recovery where, as here, the recognized natural children had once lived with the employee in a parent-child relationship. Alternatively she contended that, if the Commission's interpretation of 5 U.S.C. § 8341(a)(3)(A) was correct, that provision violated the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment because it impermissibly discriminated against illegitimate children.

The Court of Claims granted the appellee's motion for summary judgment. 590 F.2d 343, 218 Ct.Cl. 705. Ignoring the statutory issue, the court granted relief on the authority of its earlier decision in Gentry v. United States, 546 F.2d 343, 212 Ct.Cl. 1 (1976), rehearing denied, 551 F.2d 852, 212 Ct.Cl. 27 (1977), which held that the "lived with" requirement of 5 U.S.C. § 8341(a)(3)(A) unconstitutionally discriminated against illegitimate children. We postponed consideration of our jurisdiction pending hearing on the merits, 441 U.S. 960, 99 S.Ct. 2403, 60 L.Ed.2d 1064 (1979), and now affirm on the statutory ground presented to but not addressed by the Court of Claims.2

II

The Civil Service Retirement Act provides survivors' annuities to all legitimate children, but grants the same benefits to children born out of wedlock only if they "lived with the employee . . . in a regular parent-child relationship." Such a classification based on illegitimacy is unconstitutional unless it bears "an evident and substantial relation to the particular . . . interests this statute is designed to serve." Lalli v. Lalli, 439 U.S. 259, 268, 99 S.Ct. 518, 524, 58 L.Ed.2d 503 (1978) (plurality opinion); see id., at 279, 99 S.Ct. at 530 (BRENNAN, J., dissenting). See also Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U.S. 762, 767, 97 S.Ct. 1459, 1463, 52 L.Ed.2d 31 (1977).3 The Government's asserted justification for the classification—that it is an administratively convenient means of identifying children who actually were deprived of support by the employee's death—is itself open to constitutional question, since the statute does not condition benefits to legitimate children on such a showing.

It is well settled that this Court will not pass on the constitutionality of an Act of Congress if a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the question may be avoided. E. g., Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682, 693, 99 S.Ct. 2545, 2553, 61 L.Ed.2d 176 (1979); New York City Transit Authority v. Beazer, 440 U.S. 568, 582, and n. 22, 99 S.Ct. 1355, 1364, n. 22, 59 L.Ed.2d 587 (1979); Machinists v. Street, 367 U.S. 740, 749-750, 81 S.Ct. 1784, 1789-1790, 6 L.Ed.2d 1141 (1961); Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S. 101, 105, 65 S.Ct. 152, 154, 89 L.Ed. 101 (1944). Where both a constitutional issue and an issue of statutory construction are raised, we are not, of course, foreclosed from considering the statutory question merely because the lower court failed to address it. Califano v. Yamasaki, supra, at 693, 99 S.Ct., at 2553; University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 328, 98 S.Ct. 2733, 2768, 57 L.Ed.2d 750 (1978) (opinion of BRENNAN, WHITE, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ.); id., at 281, 98 S.Ct., at 2743 (opinion of POWELL, J.); id., at 411-412, 98 S.Ct., at 2810-2811 (opinion of STEVENS, J.). Accordingly, we turn to the statute to determine whether resolution of the constitutional question is necessary to the disposition of this case.

Shawn and Tricia Clark were denied annuities on the ground that they did not meet the statutory requirement that they "lived with the employee . . . in a regular parent-child relationship." The appellee contended that her children did meet the requirement because they had lived with the decedent as a family from their birth through 1971. If the appellee's construction of the statutory language is correct, the children are entitled to survivors' annuities and decision of the constitutional question is unnecessary. The Civil Service Commission, however, has construed the "lived with" language to require that the children be living with the employee at the time of the employee's death.

When the statutory language is considered on its face, the appellee's reading is at least as plausible as that of the Government. Shawn and Tricia had "lived with" their father, and we believe those words would not ordinarily imply a temporal limitation. Moreover, Congress has demonstrated in other social welfare legislation that it knows how to restrict the class of eligible beneficiaries to those living with an individual at a particular time.4

We can find nothing in the legislative history of the statute to indicate that appellee's construction of the statute is out of harmony with the congressional intent. The original enactment in 1948 made an annuity payable to "an unmarried child, including a dependent stepchild or an adopted child, under the age of eighteen years, or such unmarried child who because of physical or mental disability is incapable of self-support." Act of Feb. 28, 1948, § 11, 62 Stat. 55. The amount of the annuity depended on whether another parent survived. Although children born out of wedlock were not expressly included, the provision was seemingly broad enough to cover them.5 The Government argues that, in granting annuities to surviving children, Congress intended to provide funds to replace support lost by the wage earner's dependents. The Government views the statutory scheme as designed to pay benefits only to those children Congress thought most likely to have been dependent on the wage earner, and to take account of the likelihood of supplementary support from the other parent. We note, however, that only stepchildren were required to show dependency.6

In 1956, Congress amended the definition of an entitled child to include "an unmarried child, including (1) an adopted child, and (2) a stepchild or recognized natural child who received more than one-half his support from and lived with the . . . employee in a regular parent-child relationship." Act of July 31, 1956, Title IV, § 1(j), 70 Stat. 744.7 For the first time children born out of wedlock were explicitly included, but their eligibility was made subject both to the ...

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