Martin v. Sullivan

• Decision Date: 05 October 1992
• Docket Number: No. 92-15137,92-15137
• Citation: 976 F.2d 582
• Parties: Velma MARTIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Louis W. SULLIVAN, M.D., Secretary, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 582

976 F.2d 582

38 Soc.Sec.Rep.Ser. 671

Velma MARTIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Louis W. SULLIVAN, M.D., Secretary, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 92-15137.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted July 22, 1992.

Decided Oct. 5, 1992.

Gill Deford, National Sr. Citizens Law Center, Los Angeles, Cal., Evelyn R. Frank, Legal Aid Soc. of Alameda County, Oakland, Cal., Paul Rose, Legal Aid Soc. of Alameda County, Hayward, Cal., for plaintiff-appellant.

John S. Koppel, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., George C. Stoll, Asst. U.S. Atty., San Francisco, Cal., William Kanter, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., for defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Before: CANBY, REINHARDT, and LEAVY, Circuit Judges.

CANBY, Circuit Judge:

Velma Martin, on behalf of herself and other Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claimants, contends that 20 C.F.R. § 416.1123(b)(1) and 42 U.S.C. § 1383(b)(1)(B) violate their rights to equal protection. We disagree.

BACKGROUND

As the widow of a former railroad employee, Martin became eligible to receive monthly survivor's benefits from the Railroad Retirement Board (Board) in December 1978. In May 1985, the Board informed Martin that she had been overpaid during the first four years by $8,528.92. According to the Board, this overpayment stemmed from Martin's failure to report additional income. Consequently, the Board informed Martin that her entire monthly benefit of $268.16 would be suspended for 34 months. This withholding reduced Martin's monthly income to about $386, the amount she received in Social Security Retirement Benefits.

Martin petitioned the Board for a waiver of the repayment. Faulting Martin for the overpayment, the Board denied the petition. In January 1987, she applied to the Social Security Administration (SSA) for SSI benefits to supplement her Social Security Retirement Benefits. After determining that Martin's income exceeded the maximum income permissible for SSI eligibility, the SSA denied her application. In computing Martin's income, the SSA, acting in accordance with 20 C.F.R. § 416.1123(b)(1), counted the amounts withheld by the Board to recover overpayments.

After exhausting her administrative remedies, Martin brought this action in district court on behalf of herself and a circuit-wide class of plaintiffs. The complaint alleged that the regulation violated both the language and intent of Title XVI of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1381 et seq., and that it deprived the plaintiffs of equal protection. The district court initially enjoined the regulation on statutory grounds, and declined to address the equal protection claim.

We vacated the injunction and remanded for further proceedings in Martin v. Sullivan, 932 F.2d 1273 (9th Cir.) (amended opinion), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 648, 116 L.Ed.2d 665 (1991) (Martin I ). We held that income may be used to determine SSI eligibility even if the claimant has not actually received it. Id. at 1275-78. In addition, we rejected the plaintiffs' argument that, because Congress limited the recovery rate of overpaid SSI benefits to 10 percent of the debtor's monthly income, Congress also must have intended similarly to limit the extent to which withholding under other programs could affect the amount of SSI benefits received. Id. at 1278. Finally, we noted that the Secretary had a policy to permit reduced withholding, and that Martin had been offered that option. Id.

After unsuccessfully petitioning for certiorari, the plaintiffs returned to district court to pursue their constitutional claim. They moved for summary judgment, and the Secretary filed a cross-motion for dismissal. The district court granted the motion to dismiss, and the plaintiffs appealed.

DISCUSSION

Congress enacted the SSI program to provide "a subsistence allowance, under federal standards, to the Nation's needy aged, blind, and disabled." Schweiker v. Wilson, 450 U.S. 221, 223, 101 S.Ct. 1074, 1077, 67 L.Ed.2d 186 (1981); see 42 U.S.C. §§ 1381-1383c. To be eligible for SSI benefits, a claimant's income must not exceed certain levels. 42 U.S.C. § 1382(a). The Social Security Act defines the "income" of SSI claimants as including both "earned income" and "unearned income." 42 U.S.C. § 1382a(a). Section 1382a(a)(1) lists the items constituting "earned income," and section 1382a(a)(2), in defining "unearned income," provides:

unearned income means all other income, including--

. . . . .

(B) any payments received as an annuity, pension, retirement, or disability benefit, including veterans' compensation and pensions, workmen's compensation payments, old-age, survivors, and disability insurance benefits, railroad retirement annuities and pensions, and unemployment insurance benefits.

The regulation central to this appeal provides that the funds listed in section (a) When we count unearned income. We count unearned income at the earliest of the following points: When you receive it or when it is credited to your account or set aside for your use. We determine your unearned income for each month ...

1382a(a)(2) as "unearned income" may be counted as follows:

(b) Amount considered as income. We may include more or less of your unearned income than you actually receive.

(1) We include more than you actually receive where another benefit payment (such as a social security insurance benefit) (see § 416.1121) has been reduced to recover a previous overpayment. You are repaying a legal obligation through the withholding of portions of your benefit amount, and the amount of the debt reduction is also part of your unearned income. Exception: We do not include more than you actually receive if you received both SSI benefits and the other benefit at the time the overpayment of the other benefit occurred and the overpaid amount was included in figuring your SSI benefit at that time.

20 C.F.R. § 416.1123.

In contrast, the statutory provision dealing with recoupment of SSI overpayments generally limits withholding to an amount equal to 10 percent of the claimant's income for that month. 42 U.S.C. § 1383(b)(1)(B). The statute, however, places no limit on the reduction of SSI benefits when a claimant is guilty of fraud, willful misrepresentation, or concealment of information. Id. The plaintiffs maintain that the interaction of the statutory provision with section 416.1123(b) results in an equal protection violation, because one group of overpaid SSI claimants (absent fraud) is guaranteed 90 percent of the SSI standard while the other overpaid claimants are not.

The principle of equal protection applies to the federal government through the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 498-500, 74 S.Ct. 693, 694-695, 98 L.Ed. 884 (1954). Unless the government utilizes a suspect classification or draws distinctions bearing upon a fundamental right, the challenged classification need only be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose. United States R.R. Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166, 174-76, 101 S.Ct. 453, 459-60, 66 L.Ed.2d 368 (1980). Because the classifications here do not discriminate on the basis of a suspect classification or inhibit the exercise of a fundamental right, we review them under the rational basis standard. See id.

Validity of the Classification

The plaintiffs contend that the two classes are similarly situated, because both contain overpaid beneficiaries who receive support from SSI and at least one other program. They argue that the government accordingly must treat them similarly, and guarantee plaintiffs payments to bring them up to 90 percent of the SSI standard enjoyed by recipients who are subject to recoupment of SSI overpayments. We reject this contention, because we conclude that there is a rational basis for the government's differentiation between the two groups.

The plaintiffs characterize the government's statutory interest as that of ensuring that eligible persons receive sufficient income to meet their subsistence needs. This statutory interest, they argue, is disserved by a rule that reduces actual income received by the plaintiffs to a level far below that established by the government as necessary for subsistence. The plaintiffs' view of the government's statutory interest is too narrow, however. The goal of meeting the recipients' subsistence needs is tempered by a competing interest in preserving "the fiscal solvency of the SSI program by protecting its coffers from dissipation through neglect, abuse and fraud." See Martin I, 932 F.2d at 1278; see also Cervantez v. Sullivan, 963 F.2d 229, 235 (9th Cir.1992). This combination of purposes animates the entire benefit scheme. See Martin I, 932 F.2d at 1278 ("Congress had dual policy concerns in The plaintiffs contend that, even if fiscal concerns are one of the legitimate governmental interests behind the SSI program, the classification in issue does not serve that interest. The plaintiffs see no reason to treat recipients subject to recoupment from non-SSI programs differently from those subject to recoupment of SSI benefits. In their view, rational treatment of the two groups would be identical.

mind when it implemented the SSI program").

We cannot accept this argument, because it ignores crucial distinctions between the position of the two groups that lead to the differences in their treatment under the statute and the regulation, respectively. Section 1383(b)(1)(B) of the statute applies to the recoupment by SSI of its own funds previously overpaid. In contrast, section 416.1123(b) of the regulations deals with recoupment by other agencies or parties under different programs. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is not in a position to control the actual rate of recoupment exacted by other agencies or, indeed, by private pension programs or the states (as in overpaid workers' compensation,...