Gutierrez v. Butz
| Decision Date | 30 June 1976 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 74-1252. |
| Citation | 415 F. Supp. 827 |
| Parties | Ramon GUTIERREZ et al., Plaintiffs, v. Earl L. BUTZ et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Columbia |
Robert S. Catz, Antioch School of Law, Washington, D. C., Burton D. Fretz, California Rural Legal Assistance, Santa Maria, Cal., Howard S. Scher, Migrant Legal Action Program, Washington, D. C., Richard Skutt, Michigan Migrant Legal Assistance Project, Wayne State University School of Law, Detroit, Mich., John R. Kramer, Georgetown Law Center, Washington, D. C., Marvin H. Feingold, Ohio Migrant Legal Action Program, Bowling Green, Ohio, Ness Flores, United Migrant Opportunity Services, Inc., Milwaukee, Wis., Joseph Segor, Migrant Services Foundation, Miami, Fla., A. Gridley Hall, David J. Lillesand, Camden Regional Legal Services, Bridgeton, N. J., Vincent J. Carroll, Migrant Legal Reform and Rural Development Project, Indianapolis, Ind., for plaintiffs.
Earl J. Silbert, U. S. Atty., Ellen Lee Park, Peter C. Schaumber, Asst. U. S. Attys., Washington, D. C., for defendants.
This proceeding presents a challenge to a certain Regulation1 and Instruction2 to the States adopted by the Secretary of Agriculture relating to the administration and implementation of the Food Stamp Program which is carried out under the authority of the Food Stamp Act.3 The Regulation and Instruction in question relate to the procedures prescribed by the Department of Agriculture for the determination of income of households of seasonal farm laborers applying to participate in the Food Stamp Program. The plaintiffs are adult migrant farm workers and several migrant farm laborer organizations concerned with the advancement and protection of the interest of such workers. The defendants are the Secretary of Agriculture and certain officials in the Department responsible for administering the Food Stamp Program.
The core of the controversy is a Regulation issued by the Secretary which provides:
Monthly income means all income which is received or anticipated to be received during the month. 7 C.F.R. § 271.3(c)(1) (emphasis added).4
Plaintiffs challenge the Regulation on the theory that the "determination of eligibility and the setting of food stamp purchase levels for farmworker households according to anticipated income rather than income actually available contravenes the statutory mandates of the Food Stamp Act."5
A brief analysis of the statutory and regulatory scheme is relevant and instructive.
The Food Stamp Program was initially established in 1964 and has since been amended. In adopting the Food Stamp Act the Congress announced:
It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress, in order to promote the general welfare, that the Nation's abundance of food should be utilized cooperatively . . . to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's population and raise levels of nutrition among low-in-come households. . . . 7 U.S.C. § 2011.
Under the Act, the Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to develop and administer a program under which, upon the request of a State agency, eligible households within a State are provided "an opportunity to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet through the issuance to them of a coupon allotment" having a greater monetary value than the charge paid for such allotment by an eligible household. § 2013(a). The Secretary is authorized to promulgate regulations for the administration of the program, consistent with the provisions and purposes of the Act. § 2013(c).
Participation in the program is limited to "households whose income and other financial resources are determined to be substantial limiting factors in permitting them to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet." § 2014(a). Under § 2014(b) the Secretary establishes uniform national standards of participation eligibility by households in the program which at a minimum must prescribe the amounts of household income and other financial resources, including both liquid and nonliquid assets, to be used as criteria of eligibility. State plans must meet the standards of eligibility established by the Secretary. And pursuant to § 2019(b), the certification6 of applicant households and the issuance to them of food coupons is the responsibility of the State agency.
Shortly after this proceeding was filed, the defendants moved to dismiss, attacking the plaintiffs' theory and concept of income. Defendants contended that income determination is necessary to ascertain eligibility and that the Regulation and Instruction which require state agencies to use anticipated income rather than income actually available is consistent with the statute. Defendants relied on economic treatises for the proposition that "income" means assets which will become available in the future and that the phrase "income available in fact" is meaningless.
In response, plaintiffs moved for partial summary judgment and opposed defendants' motion to dismiss. Specifically, plaintiffs argued that allowing each state to estimate future income for farmworkers results in non-uniform national standards of eligibility, contrary to the requirement of 7 U.S.C. § 2014(b) that standards of eligibility be uniform across the country. Examples of the differing methods used by states to project the future income of migrant farmworkers were documented to show that some destitute families were being denied participation in the Food Stamp Program.
Both the motion to dismiss and the motion for partial summary judgment were denied after oral argument and discovery was ordered to proceed.
Defendants then filed their pending motion for summary judgment and plaintiffs followed with a cross-motion for summary judgment. The Court has considered the memoranda of points and authorities filed by counsel, and the entire record, and concludes that plaintiffs' cross-motion for summary judgment should be granted and defendants' motion for summary judgment should be denied.
Defendants argue that the present Regulations and procedures sufficiently account for the special problems of migrant laborers, for instance, by providing that the eligible worker may have food stamps furnished free of charge for the period of time when the worker enters an area and has not yet secured remunerative employment. Instruction No. 2326.1, The Food Stamp Certification Handbook (August 5, 1974) ("Handbook"). Certification periods of two weeks are available for families who anticipate income during the month but not before the first two weeks of the month. Instruction 2312.4, Handbook. A migrant family which had been receiving food stamps in another jurisdiction may continue participation at a new location for sixty days without a new certification. 7 U.S.C. § 2019(c).7 Finally, defendants rely on the provision for a hearing and restoration of benefits due to any misapplication of the above-cited protections as an adequate remedy for the abuses described in plaintiffs' papers.8
Plaintiffs, on the other hand, stress that the policy of anticipating monthly income in the certification process is inconsistent with the purpose of the Food Stamp Act to provide needy families with the opportunity to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet. 7 U.S.C. § 2013(a). Farmworker households who are destitute at the commencement of the work season have no income available from past employment, but are denied food stamps or required to pay an unrealistically high amount for stamps during the initial one to four week period in which income is anticipated but not yet received.
Plaintiffs emphasize in their motion the narrow and limited nature of their challenge to the regulations. The use of the anticipated income method is not questioned as to families with a stable predictable income, but rather as applied to migrant workers who are without funds when they arrive in an area but anticipate earning income in the future. Also, plaintiffs point out that they are not challenging the accuracy of methods used to determine future income, but question the validity of a policy which accurately predicts that a family will receive a certain amount of income at a certain date, but allows the family to go hungry for the one to three week interval between certification and the actual receipt of the anticipated income. They are also willing to have their available resources verified to show that they are indeed eligible to receive the stamps.
The Court concludes that the Regulations and Instructions cited by the government are an inadequate and feeble response to the problems of migrant workers. The provision for emergency issuance of food stamps,9 is entirely discretionary and fails to guarantee that migrant families will be provided the opportunity guaranteed them by the Food Stamp Act of attaining a nutritionally adequate diet. The 60 day carryover procedure10 is likewise an unacceptable solution since it is based on whatever income the family had been receiving before migration, which may be totally unrelated to the income actually available to them after migration and before the first paycheck. As to the provision for halfmonth certification,11 the Court notes that this too is discretionary, and that even a 13-14 day period of hunger would contravene the clear and unmistakable purposes of the Food Stamp Act.
The legislative history of the Food Stamp Act, including the amendments passed in 1971, leaves no doubt that Congress intended to assure that all needy families would be able to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet, regardless of administrative difficulties in implementing this objective. Judge J. Skelly Wright of our Court of Appeals recently discussed this Congressional mandate in Rodway v. United States Department of Agriculture, 168 U.S.App. D.C. 387, 514 F.2d 809 (1975). Speaking for that Court he noted that Congress had amended the Act in 1971,...
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Hess v. Hughes, Civ. A. No. J-80-731.
...to the original enactment of 1964 or the amendments of 1977) for bureaucratic difficulties or administrative backlog. Guiterrez v. Butz, 415 F.Supp. 827, 831 (D.D.C. 1976). See Rodway v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 514 F.2d 809, 818-20 (D.D.Cir. 1975). Indeed the very purpose of the program,......
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Usher v. Schweiker, 81-1181
...income of an AFDC family was unpredictable, its previous years income could be used to determine monthly income); and Gutierrez v. Butz, 415 F.Supp. 827 (D.D.C.1976) (regulation under the Food Stamp Program and applied to migrant workers, which calculated anticipated income for persons who ......
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Caulk v. Beal
...the Food Stamp Act and therefore improper. It appears that only one case has been decided which addresses this issue. In Gutierrez v. Butz, 415 F.Supp. 827 (D.D.C.1976), plaintiffs challenged the use of the concept of anticipated income as it applied to migrant workers. Apparently, migrant ......
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Bush v. Bays, Civ. A. No. 77-0472-R.
...upon application by destitute migrant farmworkers in an over-the-counter disposition. On 30 June 1976 the case of Gutierrez v. Butz, 415 F.Supp. 827 (D.D.C.1976) was decided. That case held that it was a violation of the Food Stamp Act to attribute income to migrant farmworker households wh......