Cozart v. Winfield

• Decision Date: 02 September 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-2846,81-2846
• Citation: 687 F.2d 1058
• Parties: William COZART, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Arnold F. WINFIELD, Individually and in his capacity as Supervisor for Evanston Township, and Evanston Township, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1058

687 F.2d 1058

William COZART, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Arnold F. WINFIELD, Individually and in his capacity as Supervisor for Evanston Township, and Evanston Township, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 81-2846.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued June 4, 1982.

Decided Sept. 2, 1982.

Barry A. Rose, Cook County Legal Asst., Evanston, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Jack M. Siegel, Jack M. Siegel & Assoc., Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before POSNER and COFFEY, Circuit Judges, and CAMPBELL, Senior District Judge. ^*

COFFEY, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from an order of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Judge George Leighton presiding. The order appealed from granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment and dismissed the plaintiff's amended complaint in this action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The actions of the defendants in administering township General Assistance grants were alleged to have violated the plaintiff's due process and equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. For the reasons stated below, the order of the district court granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment and dismissing the plaintiff's amended complaint is AFFIRMED.

The defendants in this action are the City of Evanston Township, Illinois, and Arnold F. Winfield, supervisor of Evanston Township. In his capacity as supervisor, Mr. Winfield administers the township's General Assistance program which provides welfare assistance from local taxes to eligible township residents. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 23, § 6-1 et seq. (1979).

Plaintiff William Cozart is an unmarried adult resident of Evanston Township. On January 4, 1980, Cozart was discharged from his employment because he had been absent from work due to his choice to care for his sister's child while she was hospitalized. The day after his discharge, the plaintiff contacted the Evanston General Assistance Office to request aid because his discharge from employment left him without income. The Evanston General Assistance Office informed Cozart that, under Evanston Township's General Assistance Regulations, he could not apply or be eligible for General Assistance for a thirty-day period because he had been discharged from his employment for cause. The relevant provision of the Evanston regulation, entitled "Terminated Employees," provides:

Persons who voluntarily leave their jobs without due cause or who are terminated for misconduct (excessive absence or tardiness, etc.) cannot file a General Assistance application for thirty (30) days from the date of termination. (III. 5. of Evanston GA Manual).

After waiting thirty days, the plaintiff applied for General Assistance on February 6, 1980. On February 26, 1980, the plaintiff received General Assistance benefits retroactive to February 6, 1980.

The plaintiff Cozart then filed a timely administrative appeal challenging the legality of the Evanston regulation and its effect of precluding him from applying for and receiving General Assistance benefits until thirty days after his employment termination. Following a hearing before the General Assistance Board of Appeals of Cook County, a final administrative decision was rendered. This decision upheld Evanston's Terminated Employees Regulation and affirmed the denial of plaintiff's right to apply for and receive General Assistance for thirty days following the termination of his employment.

Instead of appealing this administrative decision through the Illinois state court system, ¹ the plaintiff filed a § 1983 action in federal district court challenging the validity of Evanston's "Terminated Employees" regulation. In his § 1983 action, the plaintiff alleged that the "Terminated Employees" regulation violated his rights to equal protection and due process by improperly imposing a requirement for General Assistance eligibility (i.e., the thirty-day waiting period) not authorized by the Illinois General Assistance Statute, Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 23, § 6-1 et seq. (1979). ² Plaintiff sought declaratory and permanent injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

The defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint was granted by the district court on July 24, 1981, with the court finding that plaintiff failed to state a § 1983 claim or cause of action against the defendants. However, on August 7, 1981, pursuant to a Rule 59 ³ motion by the plaintiff, the district court vacated its July 24, 1981 order of dismissal and granted the plaintiff Cozart the right to file an amended complaint. The plaintiff filed an amended complaint and the defendants filed another motion to dismiss. The district court granted the defendants' motion, finding again that plaintiff failed to state a claim with respect to the thirty-day wait for General Assistance benefits. ⁴

ISSUES

1. Does the Evanston "Terminated Employees" General Assistance regulation violate the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

2. Does the Evanston "Terminated Employees" General Assistance regulation violate the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

DUE PROCESS

The plaintiff makes two separate due process arguments. The plaintiff's first due process claim alleges that Evanston Township, the local governmental unit charged with administration of General Assistance, is not authorized in the Illinois General Assistance Statute (Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 23, § 6-1 et seq. (1979)) to impose the thirty-day waiting period recited in the "Terminated Employees" regulation. Thus, if there is no statutory authorization for such a regulation, the plaintiff contends, the regulation violates his substantive due process rights because it is an unauthorized deprivation of his statutory right to General Assistance. To resolve this due process issue, it is therefore necessary to determine whether the Evanston Township regulation is authorized under Illinois law. Since we find that the Evanston "Terminated Employees" regulation is permissible under the Illinois General Assistance Statute, we reject plaintiff's first due process claim and expressly refrain from deciding whether the plaintiff would have a valid due process claim were he able to prove such a violation of Illinois law.

Prior to the adoption of the present Illinois General Assistance Statute, it was long recognized in Illinois that aid to the indigent and poor was a local concern to be handled at the township level. See, e.g., People ex rel. McWard v. Wabash R. Co., 395 Ill. 243, 70 N.E.2d 36 (1947). This approach was adopted and continues in the current Illinois General Assistance Statute: "The role and authority of the township supervisor in caring for the poor has remained steady and relatively unchanged in a statutory history which dates back to 1874." Johnson v. Town of City of Evanston, 39 Ill.App.3d 419, 350 N.E.2d 70, 75 (1976). The local nature of General Assistance is reflected in the fact that Evanston General Assistance grants are funded solely from locally collected taxes. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 23, § 12-3 (1979).

Certain basic eligibility requirements are contained in the Illinois General Assistance Statute itself. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 23, § 6-2 et seq. In contrast to the Evanston regulation, it (the Illinois General Assistance Statute) does not contain a thirty-day waiting period. However, we do not view the enumeration of standards in the state statute as precluding or preventing a township from adopting reasonable regulations to supplement the Illinois General Assistance Statute. Our interpretation is implicit in this court's holding in White v. Roughton, 530 F.2d 750 (7th Cir. 1976). In Roughton, we held that due process mandates the adoption by a township supervisor of written standards of eligibility for General Assistance and that the township supervisor is not bound by the eligibility regulations of the Illinois Public Aid Department. If, as the plaintiff argues, the township supervisor could only look to the requirements set out in the statute, there would be no need for him to prescribe and promulgate written standards. Instead, we interpret the Illinois General Assistance Statute as allowing a township to establish reasonable eligibility requirements to supplement those contained in the statute. Our interpretation further upholds Illinois' long standing policy of delegating responsibility for General Assistance to the townships.

Section 6-2 of the Illinois General Assistance Statute provides further support for this position. Under § 6-2, township supervisors are authorized to create regulations governing the "amount and nature" of General Assistance benefits. The Evanston "Terminated Employees" regulation governs the "nature" of the General Assistance benefits; for employees who are fired for cause, the benefits do not begin until thirty days after such termination. ⁵

As a second due process claim, the plaintiff argues that the thirty-day waiting period acts as an irrebuttable presumption of ineligibility for General Assistance and thus violates the Due Process clause. The plaintiff argues he should be given an opportunity to rebut this "presumption" of ineligibility at an individualized hearing. We reject this argument.

The so-called "irrebuttable presumption" analysis enjoyed a brief life in the early nineteen-seventies, when it was invoked in several cases to strike down legislative generalizations because they were not "universally true in fact." ⁶ Commentators criticized this doctrine, though, as "standardless, illusory" and "fundamentally misconceived." ⁷

The irrebuttable presumption doctrine, never consistently applied during its brief life, was soon rejected by the Supreme Court in Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U.S. 749, 95 S.Ct. 2457, 45 L.Ed.2d 522 (1975). Salfi set aside a lower court decision that had invalidated on irrebuttable presumption grounds a duration-of-relationship Social Security eligibility requirement for surviving wives and stepchildren...