Albany Welfare Rights Organization v. Wyman

• Decision Date: 14 March 1974
• Docket Number: No. 210,Docket 73-1580.,210
• Citation: 493 F.2d 1319
• Parties: ALBANY WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION et al., Appellants, v. George K. WYMAN, Individually and as Commissioner of Social Services for the State of New York, et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

493 F.2d 1319 (1974)

ALBANY WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION et al., Appellants, v. George K. WYMAN, Individually and as Commissioner of Social Services for the State of New York, et al., Appellees.

No. 210, Docket 73-1580.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued December 14, 1973.

Decided March 14, 1974.

Marvin N. Karpatkin, New York City, Joel F. Spitzer, Albany, N. Y. (Paul R. Lichterman, Albany, N. Y., Paul G. Chevigny and Eve Cary, New York City, on the brief), for appellants.

Alan W. Rubenstein (Louis J. Lefkowitz, Atty. Gen., Ruth Kessler Toch, Sol. Gen., on the brief), for appellee Wyman.

Condon A. Lyons, County Atty., Albany, N. Y. (Robert E. Harris, Albany, N. Y., of counsel), for appellees Schreck and Jay.

Before LUMBARD and MANSFIELD, Circuit Judges, and GURFEIN,^* District Judge.

GURFEIN, District Judge:

This is an appeal from an order of the District Court for the Northern District of New York, Judge Foley, entered on February 12, 1973, denying plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction after a hearing and dismissing the complaint.

Plaintiffs are the Albany Welfare Rights Organization (AWRO) and individual members and welfare recipients. AWRO is a local chapter of the Upstate New York affiliate of the National Welfare Rights Organization, which has some 150,000 members in approximately 850 local organizations throughout all fifty states. At the time of the hearing below, AWRO had approximately 400 members. The organization's purpose is educational and political in that it seeks to inform welfare recipients of their legal rights, to train them to help other welfare recipients in their dealings with the Welfare Department, and to organize them to exert political pressure on behalf of poor people upon local, state, and federal governments.

The controversy in this case arose when the plaintiffs attempted to pass out informational leaflets to welfare recipients inside the County Welfare Center and were forbidden to do so by the defendant Albany County Welfare officials who relied upon discretion conferred upon them by the defendant State Commissioner. This appeal by Albany Welfare Rights Organization and Catherine Boddie is from the District Court's orders under those claims for relief (Second, Fourth and Fifth) which relate directly to the exercise of the right of plaintiffs to distribute leaflets. The defendants are the State Commissioner of Social Services, the Albany County Commissioner, a deputy commissioner, the supervisor and a caseworker.

Jurisdiction is alleged under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343(3) and (4). We hold that there is jurisdiction under Section 1343(3).

The second claim for relief is based upon alleged violation of the Social Security Act and regulations in that the discretion vested by Commissioner Wyman in the County Social Services Departments to prohibit groups from disseminating information is discriminatory against the plaintiffs. The fourth claim is a constitutional claim alleging that denial to plaintiffs of access to the premises of the Albany County Department of Social Services deprives them of the equal protection of the laws. The fifth claim is that the denial of free access to the premises violates the rights of the plaintiffs to freedom of speech, and the right to assemble, to organize and to petition for redress of grievances in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments. Since we are constrained to reverse on the dismissal of the Fifth Claim, we need not consider the other claims raised.

The Albany County Social Services Department is located in a five-story building in the City of Albany. All the work of the Department employees that involves personal contact with welfare recipients is carried out on the first and third floors, and there are waiting areas on these floors for recipients who come to the Center.¹ The Welfare Department has approximately 400 employees.

All county business is carried out behind partitions. Welfare recipients upon arriving at the building are referred to a particular waiting area depending on the nature of their business. There the recipient informs a secretary of his presence and takes a seat in the waiting area.

Every few minutes a welfare department employee comes to the front of the waiting area and shouts out the address of a waiting recipient (to preserve anonymity) and that person then enters the work area through a door to see a caseworker.

As of May 31, 1972, the welfare department had 6,600 cases involving some 20,000 persons. On any given day between 200 and 250 welfare recipients come to the welfare center concerning public assistance alone, excluding those who come for food stamps and medicaid. Most of these persons wait a minimum of an hour and a half before the case is called.

At the end of 1969 members of the Albany Welfare Rights Organization began to go down to the Welfare Center every Monday to meet with Welfare officials and to pass out leaflets to waiting welfare recipients. The leaflets contained legal information about the rights of welfare recipients in relation to the welfare department and information about AWRO and the welfare rights movement. AWRO members would also try to answer welfare recipients' questions about their legal rights or would tell them to come to the AWRO office for help with complicated problems that could not be answered on the spot. People who expressed an interest were encouraged to join the organization.

The weekly distribution of leaflets went on for approximately six months during which time AWRO membership grew heavily. In mid-1970, however, a new policy was instituted by the County Welfare Department, and AWRO members were told that they could not pass out their leaflets inside the welfare center. When told to stop they did so for that day without protest, but they continued to return to the center on a number of occasions and to pass out as many leaflets as they could until someone came to insist they leave. No arrests were ever made of persons distributing leaflets nor were police called at any time to disperse them.

At the hearing there was no testimony that during the six months that AWRO members handed out leaflets in the welfare center there was any disruption whatever caused by their activities. On the contrary, the testimony tended to establish that distributing leaflets was carried on only in public areas of the building which were separated from areas where county business was carried out. There were some incidents of disruption, but these related to the refusal of county officials to discuss grievances align with AWRO, and were not related to distributing leaflets.

The appellees contend, so far as is relevant to this disposition, that (1) neither AWRO nor Boddie has standing to maintain the action; (2) the complaint does not state a constitutional claim against the State Commissioner; (3) subsidiary thereto, appellees contend that a waiting room in the office of a county social service department is not a proper place for a welfare organization to enter for the purpose of distributing leaflets and conduct organizing activities.

As Judge Friendly observed in Aguayo v. Richardson, 473 F.2d 1090, 1098 (2 Cir. 1973), cert. denied, Aguayo v. Weinberger, 414 U.S. 1146, 94 S.Ct. 900, 39 L.Ed.2d 101 (1974), welfare cases require the courts to "weave our way through a maze of problems relating to standing and jurisdiction." That is also true of cases asserting First Amendment rights brought by associations of people.

While a complaint by an association alleging that its members will be harmed by threatened conduct suffices to give the association standing under the general federal question statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1331, Aguayo, supra, 473 F.2d at 1099, that does not determine the $10,000 jurisdictional amount requirement. (Id. at n. 13) If we look to the standing of a welfare organization under the civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and its jurisdictional implementation, 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3), this Court has held that such an organization may not sue under the Civil Rights Act for the violation of rights of members. Id. at 1099-1100.

The District Judge, construing Aguayo to be applicable to the facts of this case, held that AWRO had no standing to raise the constitutional claims. We think that AWRO had standing to bring this complaint because the refusal of access alleged involved an abridgement of the constitutional right of association. N. A. A. C. P. v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 428-429, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed. 2d 405 (1963); Louisiana ex rel Gremillion v. N. A. A. C. P., 366 U.S. 293, 296, 81 S.Ct. 1333, 6 L.Ed.2d 301 (1961); Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516, 523 n. 9, 80 S.Ct. 412, 4 L.Ed.2d 480 (1960); N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 458-460, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958); see also Smith v. Board of Education of Morrilton School District No. 32, 365 F.2d 770 (8 Cir. 1966). There is sufficient evidence in the record to permit the conclusion that AWRO's efforts to increase its membership were adversely affected by its exclusion from the premises of the Albany County Welfare Department.

Judge Foley, with his customary patience, and in obedience to the suggestion in Negron v. Wallace, 436 F.2d 1139, 1141 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 402 U. S. 998, 91 S.Ct. 2184, 29 L.Ed.2d 164 (1971), tried to work out a compromise between the parties, but in Judge Foley's words, "the flat rejection was made to allow groups, or any number of A.W. R.O. members, to enter the waiting room of the Albany Department building and pass out leaflets and talk to people waiting on benches to be processed by the Department's case workers, or other employees and solicit them for membership in the A.W.R.O. or discuss with them problems concerning public assistance that certain of the recipients might be concerned with."

Upon the failure of the negotiations, the District Judge dismissed the complaint, thus sustaining the complete...