Jackson v. Guissinger

• Decision Date: 12 June 1984
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 83-2695.
• Citation: 589 F. Supp. 1288
• Parties: Daisy Mae D. JACKSON, on behalf of herself and on behalf of her minor children and grandchildren, Barbara Jackson, Lahouma Jackson, Delana Jackson, Kenisha Jackson, Daisy Mae Jackson, and Natasha Jackson, as their next friend v. Roger P. GUISSINGER, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Human Resources.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Louisiana

589 F. Supp. 1288

Daisy Mae D. JACKSON, on behalf of herself and on behalf of her minor children and grandchildren, Barbara Jackson, Lahouma Jackson, Delana Jackson, Kenisha Jackson, Daisy Mae Jackson, and Natasha Jackson, as their next friend v. Roger P. GUISSINGER, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Human Resources.

Civ. A. No. 83-2695.

United States District Court, W.D. Louisiana, Lafayette-Opelousas Division.

June 12, 1984.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Henry C. Remm, Jr., Acadiana Legal Services Corporation, Lafayette, La., for plaintiffs.

Jerry H. Bankston, Staff Atty., State of La., Dept. of Health and Human Resources, Baton Rouge, La., for defendant.

RULING

SHAW, District Judge.

This matter comes before the Court on the motion of the defendant, Roger P. Guissinger, as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Human Resources, to dismiss the plaintiff's claims for want of jurisdiction over the subject matter and for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Also before the Court are cross-motions for summary judgment on the merits. For the reasons assigned below, the Court finds that it has jurisdiction over the plaintiff's claims but concludes that the defendant is entitled to judgment in his favor as a matter of law on all but one of the plaintiff's claims.

Background

Daisy Mae D. Jackson sues on behalf of herself and her minor children and grandchildren under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for declaratory and injunctive relief involving several alleged violations of federal statutory and constitutional law by the defendant in his administration of Louisiana's Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Medicaid programs. The basic facts underlying the plaintiff's claim are not disputed. On May 25, 1983, the Louisiana Office of Family Security (OFS) terminated the plaintiff's AFDC benefits effective June 1983 because of an alleged failure to submit a required monthly report by May 23, 1983. Jackson's appeal of this termination was heard on July 20, 1983, and the OFS determined on August 9, 1983 that Jackson had in fact deposited the report with the agency before the deadline. The hearing examiner recommended that Jackson's benefits be reinstated retroactively to June 1983 if the claimant was otherwise eligible for benefits.

In the meantime, Jackson received a notice dated July 15, 1983 stating that her "application" for renewed AFDC benefits had been denied because of her alleged receipt of a lump sum payment of $11,745.21. An OFS Appeal Decision affirmed this determination on October 18, 1983. The lump sum was allegedly received as part of a settlement of a personal injury action brought by Jackson.

According to the plaintiff's brief, Jackson's attorney loaned her $11,000 to purchase a mobile home prior to the negotiation and funding of the personal injury settlement. The loan was made on the condition that she repay it out of any proceeds obtained from a settlement or judgment in her favor. Later, Jackson negotiated a $19,000 settlement of her claim with Continental Insurance Company. When the settlement draft arrived, Jackson's attorney deducted his attorney's fees and expenses, past due medical expenses, and the repayment of the $11,000 loan before issuing a check to Jackson for the remaining $745.21.¹

The OFS determined that the alleged receipt of an $11,745.21 lump sum payment rendered Jackson ineligible for AFDC benefits from August 1982 through September 1983 with a $445.21 residual amount to be allocated to her October 1983 eligibility determination.² The OFS also terminated Jackson's eligibility for Medicaid, which she had been automatically entitled to as an AFDC recipient. The agency did not provide Jackson with a pretermination opportunity to establish eligibility for Medicaid on other grounds. The agency also denied a request to reduce the lump sum and thereby shorten the period of ineligibility on the basis of expenditures to meet alleged life-threatening circumstances. The OFS is presently recouping past benefits allegedly overpaid from Jackson's current AFDC benefits. The recoupment covers payments made from August 1982 through May 1983, a period in which the agency determined that the lump sum was available for the support and maintenance of the Jackson family.

The various motions before the Court raise the following issues:³

(1) whether the Court has jurisdiction over the plaintiff's claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3),

(2) whether, in the event that jurisdiction does not exist over these claims under section 1343(3), the jurisdictional limitations of section 1343(3) override and thus preclude resort to the general grant of federal question jurisdiction contained in 28 U.S.C. § 1331,

(3) whether the proceeds of the personal injury settlement are correctly characterized as a "resource" rather than "income" under the applicable federal and state laws and regulations,

(4) whether, if the sum is "income", the $11,000 was "available for current use" as income for purposes of the lump sum rule contained in Section 402(a)(17) of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(17) and section 15-842(N) of the OFS Payment Assistance Manual,

(5) whether the $745.21 remaining after the repayment of the attorney's loan should have been excluded from the eligibility determination under 42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(7)(B) and 45 C.F.R. § 233.20(a)(3)(i)(B), as amended by 47 Fed.Reg. 5648, 5656, 5674 (February 5, 1982),

(6) whether Jackson's expenditures for electrical work and service qualified as expenditures for life-threatening circumstances, entitling Jackson to a reduction in the lump sum that was counted against her AFDC eligibility,

(7) whether the manner in which the OFS terminated Jackson's AFDC and Medicaid benefits violated the notice, hearing and aid pending review provisions of the applicable federal regulations,

(8) whether the OFS violated federal regulations by failing to automatically redetermine Jackson's eligibility for Medicaid under the medically needy program upon the cessation of eligibility for Medicaid under the AFDC program,

(9) whether, under the fourteenth amendment's guarantee of procedural due process, the plaintiff was entitled to pretermination notice that the lump sum rule had changed, that the rule would apply to the facts of this case, and that the lump sum would be reduced upon verification of expenditures for life-threatening circumstances,

(10) whether the plaintiff was denied procedural due process when the OFS notices failed to inform her of her right to receive AFDC and Medicaid benefits pending review of the termination decision,

(11) whether application of the lump sum regulations denied the plaintiff of equal protection of the laws by treating a family with a residue under the lump sum allocation that exceeds the flat grant amount but is less than the standard of need differently from a family that receives an equivalent amount in the same month.

Jurisdiction

Plaintiff asserts that the Court has jurisdiction over her section 1983 claims under both the civil rights jurisdiction statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3), and the general federal question statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1331. Section 1343(3) grants original jurisdiction over claims to redress the deprivation of rights secured by the Constitution or by a federal statute providing for equal rights. The Social Security Act is not a statute providing for equal rights and therefore a section 1983 claim based solely on a state's violation of the Social Security Act does not come within the Section 1343(3) jurisdictional grant. Chapman v. Houston Welfare Rights Organization, 441 U.S. 600, 99 S.Ct. 1905, 60 L.Ed.2d 508 (1979). Section 1343(3) jurisdiction does exist, however, over a "substantial constitutional claim", and once such jurisdiction is established, the district court can exercise pendent jurisdiction over related federal statutory claims arising out of the same "common nucleus of operative fact". Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U.S. 528, 94 S.Ct. 1372, 39 L.Ed.2d 577 (1974). Thus, in the instant case, plaintiff must present a substantial constitutional claim before the Court can assert jurisdiction over her statutory claims under section 1343(3).

Up until the time of oral argument, plaintiff's counsel had failed to articulate any constitutional claims of substance. The complaint merely asserted violations of the Supremacy Clause and the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the fourteenth amendment. The alleged Supremacy Clause "violation" does not give rise to jurisdiction under § 1343(3). Chapman, supra, 441 U.S. at 612-15, 99 S.Ct. at 1913-15. In her Memorandum in Support of Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment, Jackson relies upon Goldberg v. Kelley, 397 U.S. 254, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970) for the proposition that the fourteenth amendment's guarantee of procedural due process entitled her to pretermination notice that the lump sum rule had been adopted, that the rule would be applied on these facts and that an exclusion for expenditures for life-threatening circumstances existed. This claim is not only patently meritless but is also foreclosed by the Supreme Court's affirmance of the decision of the three judge court in Whitfield v. King, 364 F.Supp. 1296 (M.D.Ala.1973), aff'd without opinion, 431 U.S. 910, 97 S.Ct. 2166, 53 L.Ed.2d 221 (1977). As Judge Godbold pointed out in Whitfield, Goldberg involved only adjudicative decisions to terminate an individual recipient's benefits based on the particular facts of that individual's case. The fourteenth amendment does not compel prior personal notice of state-wide policy changes implemented pursuant to an agency's legislative rulemaking function. Accord Cardinale v. Mathews, 399 F.Supp. 1163, 1172 (D.C. 1975); Provost v. Betit, 326 F.Supp. 920 (D.Ver.1971).

Indeed, Jackson's counsel did not even raise the foregoing procedural due process claim at oral...