Carleson v. Superior Court for Sacramento County

• Court: California Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: REIEDMAN; JANES
• Citation: Carleson v. Superior Court for Sacramento County, 100 Cal.Rptr. 635, 23 Cal.App.3d 1068 (Cal. App. 1972)
• Decision Date: 10 March 1972
• Parties: Robert B. CARLESON, as Director of the Department of Social Welfare, et al., Petitioners, v. SUPERIOR COURT of the State of California FOR the COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO, Respondent; Bieuky DYKSTRA et al., Real Parties in Interest. Civ. 13277.

Page 635

100 Cal.Rptr. 635

23 Cal.App.3d 1068

Robert B. CARLESON, as Director of the Department of Social Welfare, et al., Petitioners, v. SUPERIOR COURT of the State of California FOR the COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO, Respondent Bieuky DYKSTRA et al., Real Parties in Interest.

Civ. 13277.

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

March 10, 1972.

Rehearing Denied April 5, 1972.

Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen. by John Fourt, Deputy Atty. Gen., Sacramento, for petitioners.

Peter D. Coppelman, Cal. Rural Legal Assistance Senior Citizens Project, San

Prancisco, and Blackmon, Isenberg, Moulds & Blicker, Sacramento, by Peter D. Coppleman, San Francisco, for real parties in interest.

REIEDMAN, Acting Presiding Justice.

I

Two recipients of Old Age Security (OAS) and their adult children filed a class action in the Sacramento Superior Court, seeking to enjoin state officials from requiring the adult children to make financial contributions to their parents' support under statutory amendments enacted by the Welfare Reform Act of 1971, Statutes of 1971, chapter 578.

Plaintiff Huntley, son of an OAS recipient, is 60 years old. He alleges that he and his 67-year-old wife have a net monthly income of $656.25 and are attempting to save for their retirement; that the San Joaquin Welfare Department has demanded monthly contributions of $70 from him and $80 from his brother for the support of their mother. Plaintiff Dykstra, son of another OAS recipient, is married and carns $680 per month as a truck driver. The same county welfare department has demanded that he contribute $75 per month to his mother's support. He declares that after paying his family bills, including $180 per month for child support and $145 for rent, he does not have $75 remaining. He states that he sent $10 per month to help his mother, then learned that the county welfare department had subtracted an equal amount from his mother's monthly aid payments.

The superior court issued a temporary restraining order, and the defendants (including Robert C. Carleson, Director of the State Department of Social Welfare) sought a writ of prohibition in this court. This court issued an order to show cause and stayed the superior court proceedings.

Three California statutes are under constitutional attack in the class suit--section 206 of the California Civil Code and sections 12100 and 12101 of the Welfare and Institutions Code.

From the 1872 adoption of the Civil Code until 1971, section 206 of theat code declared duties of parental and filial support of 'any poor person who is unable to maintain himself by work . . .' ¹ The Welfare Reform Act of 1971 amended section 206, expanding the duty of filial support to embrace not merely parents who were 'poor,' but those who are 'in need,' that is, parents who are receiving aid to the aged (OAS). ²

Filial responsibility as a statutory feature of the OAS program did not originate in the Welfare Reform Act of 1971. It has been part of that program since the latter's inception in 1937. One provision of the OAS law, Welfare and Instituions Code section 12100, authorizes a county to maintain a civil action to enforce contributions by a financially able adult child. It descends in unbroken continuity from a demand voiced by the original OAS law of 1937. ³ In 1941 the Legislature adopted the forerunner of present Welfare and Institutions Code section 12101, establishing a relatives' contribution scale which fixed the maximum monthly contributions of the adult child in relation to his income and the number of his dependents. (Stats.1941, ch. 1254, p. 3198.) The 1971 enactments did not amend section 12100, but amended section 12101 by sharply lowering the income point at which the child incurred contribution liability and sharply raising the level of contributions. The amended section appears in the margin. ⁴

In their role as real parties in interest, the class-suit plaintiffs contend that these statutes as amended in 1971, deprive them of equal protection of the laws, contrary to article I, sections 11 and 21 of the California Constitution, and contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. ⁵ They allege that the contribution requirement inflicts grievous and irreparable injury on affected parents and their adult children. They have filed declarations of a number of adult children, some of them elderly, all existing on limited incomes, who have received peremptory contribution demands from county welfare departments. Some of these official communications have included 'suggestions' that the parents leave the OAS rolls. The court fully agrees with the claims of irreparable harm, harshness and economic hardship.

Under the relatives' contribution scale emanating from the 1971 California Legislature, an adult child without dependents earning a net monthly income of $351 (after a 25% allowance for taxes and job expenses) must pay $20 to the county which furnishes OAS to his parent. He is permitted to subsist on the remaining $331. A contribution of $25 per month is extracted from a three-member family with a net monthly income of $476. The law promulgated by the 1971 California Legislature permits the three-member family to subsist on the remaining $451. A family of five with a net monthly income of $551 must squeeze out $20 for the parent and exist on the remaining $531. ⁶

The real parties in interest have also submitted a statement from the Office of Research of the California State Senate estimating that there are in California approximately 750,000 persons who are adult children of the 318,000 elderly citizens receiving OAS assistance.

Affluent adult children have affluent parents or can afford to support their dependent parents. Thus the sharply intensified contribution scale enacted by the 1971 California Legislature strikes most aggressively and harshly at adult children occupying the lower end of the income scale. The enforced shift of subsistence funds from one generation to the other distributes economic desolation between the generations. It galls family relationships. It injects guilt and shame into elderly citizens who have made their contributions to society and have become dependent through life's vicissitudes.

These considerations demonstrate the public significance of the present proceeding, confirm the litigants' need of early decision and justify exercise of the court's original jurisdiction. (Villa v. Hall, 6 Cal.3d 227, 229, 98 Cal.Rptr. 460, 490 P.2d 1148; People ex rel. Younger v. County of El Dorado, 5 Cal.3d 480, 492, 96 Cal.Rptr. 553, 487 P.2d 1193.) They do not demonstrate a denial of equal protection evoking the judicial power of invalidation.

II

The members of the court approach their constitutional task with deep concern--convinced of the law's cruel impact upon a selected group of citizens; conscious of the demarcation between legislative power and judicial authority; troubled by decisional ambiguities which, in California, blur that demarcation. The constitutional landscape before us is strewn with semantic sandtraps. Indeed the court finds its members in disagreement stemming from conflicting interpretations of utterances of the California Supreme Court.

When a statute is attacked as discriminatory, the test of validity is substantially the same under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and under the California Constitution's restriction against special laws. (County of Los Angeles v. Southern Cal. Tel. Co. (1948) 32 Cal.2d 378, 389, 196 P.2d 773; see also, Dept. of Mental Hygiene v. Kirchner (1965) 62 Cal.2d 586, 43 Cal.Rptr. 329, 400 P.2d 321.) Equal protection of the laws permits the state to establish differences in treatment so long as invidious discrimination does not result. (Douglas v. California (1963) 372 U.S. 353, 356, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811.) A statute in the field of economics and social welfare may cause some inequality but does not offend equal protection guarantees unless it is arbitrary. (Allied Stores of Ohio v. Bowers (1959) 358 U.S. 522, 526-527, 79 S.Ct. 437, 3 L.Ed.2d 480; In re Ricky H. (1970) 2 Cal.3d 513, 522, 86 Cal.Rptr. 76, 468 P.2d 204.) The Legislature has wide discretion in making statutory classifications. (O'Donnell v. Mullaney (1967) 66 Cal.2d 994, 999, 59 Cal.Rptr. 840, 429 P.2d 160.) Class legislation is not arbitrary if it is based upon some difference or distinction bearing a rational relationship to a conceivably legitimate state purpose. (Allied Stores of Ohio v. Bowers, supra; Sail'er Inn v. Kirby (1971) 5 Cal.3d 1, 16, 95 Cal.Rptr. 329, 485 P.2d 529; In re Ricky H., supra.) The California Supreme Court has advanced the notion of presumptive validity of legislative classifications. (Whittaker v. Superior Court (1968) 68 Cal.2d 357, 368, 66 Cal.Rptr. 710, 438 P.2d 358; Eye Dog Foundation v. State Board of Guide Dogs for the Blind (1967) 67 Cal.2d 536, 545, 63 Cal.Rptr. 21, 432 P.2d 717.) ⁷

In the resolution of equal protection questions, the coverage of a state law is a matter of legislative choice. (Sage Stores Co. v. Kansas (1944) 323 U.S. 32, 35, 65 S.Ct. 9, 89 L.Ed. 25.) Similarly, the California Supreme Court has declared: 'The Legislature is not bound, in order to adopt a constitutionally valid statute, to extend it to all cases which might possibly be reached, but is free to recognize degrees of harm and to confine its regulation to those classes of cases in which the need is deemed to be the most evident.' (Board of Education v. Watson (1966) 63 Cal.2d 829, 833, 48 Cal.Rptr. 481, 484, 409 P.2d 481, 484; see also, In re Ricky H., supra, 2 Cal.3dat pp. 521-522, 86 Cal.Rptr. 76, 468 P.2d 204.)

Although the doctrine of judicial abstention is often evoked in adjudicating the validity of economic regulations, it holds sway in the social welfare field as well. In Dandridge v. Williams (1970) 397 U.S. 471, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 25 L.Ed.2d 491, the court rejected an equal protection attack upon a...