Mosley v. Hairston
| Decision Date | 09 January 1991 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 89-3473,89-3475,s. 89-3473 |
| Citation | 920 F.2d 409 |
| Parties | Phyllis MOSLEY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Roland HAIRSTON, Director, Ohio Department of Human Services, Defendant-Appellant, Donald Thomas, Director, Hamilton County Department of Human Services, et al., Defendants, Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., Secretary, United States Department of Health and Human Services, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Ross C. Owens, III, Stephen H. Olden (argued), Legal Aid Society of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Phyllis Mosley, on behalf of herself & all others similarly situated, plaintiff-appellee.
Alan Schwepe, Karen L. Lazorishak (argued), Office of the Atty. Gen. of Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, for Patricia Barry, Director, Ohio Dept. of Human Services, defendant.
Thomas E. Deye, Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Donald
Thomas, Director, Hamilton County Dept. of Human Services, defendant.
Ted Yasuda, Dept. of Health and Human Services, Office of the General Counsel, Region V, Chicago, Ill., Elizabeth Baringhaus Mattingly, Office of the U.S. Atty., Cincinnati, Ohio, Katherine S. Gruenheck (argued), William Kanter, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civ. Div., Appellate Staff, Washington, D.C., for Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, defendant-appellant.
Before KEITH and GUY, Circuit Judges, and LIVELY, Senior Circuit Judge.
These consolidated appeals present two issues related to the liability of federal and state officials for the payment of "passthrough" or "disregard" payments under the Aid to Families with Dependant Children (AFDC) program.
The AFDC program is a joint federal-state undertaking. It is contained in Title IV-A of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 601 et seq. Title IV-D of the Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 651 et seq., contains the Child Support Enforcement Program, which is designed to promote the fiscal responsibility of absent parents of AFDC dependents. Under this program, added as part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, AFDC applicants and recipients must assign to the state all rights to support that the applicant or recipient may have from any other person. As an incentive to encourage cooperation with the program, the statute in effect during the period encompassing the plaintiff's claim provided that the first $50 of each monthly support payment "collected periodically" be paid to the benefit-receiving family "without affecting its eligibility for assistance or decreasing any amount otherwise payable as assistance to such family during such month." 42 U.S.C. Sec. 657(b)(1) (1988). In addition, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 602(a)(8)(A)(vi) directed state agencies to disregard such payments in determining need. Thus, the first $50 was "passed through" by the collecting state to the recipient, and was "disregarded" in determining the family's entitlement to benefits and in calculating the amount of benefits payable for that month.
The Ohio Department of Human Services has delegated responsibility for the enforcement program to the county agency. Pursuant to parallel regulations of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the State of Ohio, passthrough payments were limited to $50 for the month in which they were received by a county agency. See C.F.R. Sec. 302.51(b)(1) (1984) and Ohio Administrative Code Sec. 5101:1-23-221(A) (1987). The federal regulation provided that:
[i]f the amount collected includes payment on the required support obligation for a previous month or months, the family shall only receive the first $50 of the amount which represents the required support obligation for the month in which the support was collected.... No payment shall be made to a family under this paragraph for a month in which there is no support collection.
The date of collection was defined as "the date on which the payment is received by the IV-D agency." 45 C.F.R. Sec. 302.51(a). Thus, if a support-obligor made a timely payment to the county agency but that agency did not receive the payment in the month when it was due to the support-obligee because of delays in transmittal, the payment was treated as untimely and no money was passed through to the AFDC recipient.
The plaintiff, Phyllis Mosley, is the mother of five minor children who live with her, and is a participant in the AFDC program. Her former husband, Sonny Hibbard, is the father of two of her five children. Following their divorce Hibbard was ordered by the court to pay $130 per month for support of his two children. This obligation is met by Hibbard's employer deducting the court-ordered amount from Hibbard's Although Hibbard's employer has made periodic deductions, it did not always remit the withheld wages to the county agency during the month of the deduction. In some months the full amount deducted was remitted, but in other months only partial amounts were remitted, and for seven months the employer remitted nothing. By September 1986 Hibbard's support account with the county agency was $770 in arrears. Payments through May 1988 were never sufficient in any given month to make Hibbard's account current or paid in advance.
wages each month. Under applicable regulations the employer is required to remit the deducted wages to the child support enforcement agency of Hamilton County, Ohio within 10 days of the deduction.
During five months in the period between September 1986 and March 1988 no money was paid by the employer. Although in later months the employer made some payments that were larger than the required $130, all the excess payments were applied to the arrearage, and the plaintiff received no passthrough payments for those five months.
Based on the federal and state regulations at issue, when a support account was in arrears as it was in this case, the AFDC recipient would receive a maximum of $50 of the amount collected as a passthrough payment. The amounts collected in excess of $50 were applied to any remaining current support order and then to any arrearage. With respect to the five months in which Hibbard's employer made no payments, the plaintiff received no passthrough payments even though the employer remitted more than the required $130 in some later months.
Ms. Mosley filed her second amended complaint in this action on May 20, 1988. She named as defendants the Director of the Ohio Department of Human Services, the director of the county agency and the members of the county commission, and the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She alleged that the defendants failed to pass through more than $50 in any month even though they received more than that amount from Hibbard's employer and a portion of the remitted amount in some months had been deducted in an earlier month. Thus, when a support payment was deducted by the employer in a given month, unless the defendants received the payment in that month, they treated it as an untimely payment and did not pass it through to the plaintiff.
Ms. Mosley's complaint charged that the regulations and the procedures followed in reliance upon them were inconsistent with, and violated the Social Security Act. She contended that she was entitled to have received a $50 passthrough payment for each month in which there was a deduction regardless of when the agency received payment from Hibbard's employer. She also asserted that the Act did not authorize the provision of the regulations that no passthrough payment should be made for a month in which there is no support collection. Rather, she maintained, later excess payments should have been applied first to make passthrough payments to the family before being used to reduce the arrearage.
The complaint sought a declaratory judgment that the regulations were invalid, an injunction prohibiting the continued application of the regulations, and an order directing the defendants to make passthrough payments of $50 for each of the five months referred to. The complaint also requested that a class action be certified and that class members receive passthrough payments in accordance with the plaintiff's construction of the act.
The state and county defendants filed motions to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim. In an accompanying memorandum the state defendants argued that the Eleventh Amendment prohibited the action against them. The Secretary filed an answer denying that there had been any deprivation or violation of federal rights. The The Secretary made a motion to file as an exhibit the text and a portion of the legislative history of the "Family Support Act of 1988," Pub.L. No. 100-485, 102 Stat. 2343 (1988). Section 102 of the 1988 Act amended 42 U.S.C. Secs. 602(a)(8)(A)(vi) and 657(b)(1) with respect to passthrough payments. Before the amendment, Sec. 602(a)(8)(A)(vi) provided for passthrough payment of "any child support payments received in such month." This language was stricken by the amendment and Sec. 602(a)(8)(A)(vi) now provides for passthrough "of any child support payments for such month received in that month, and the first $50 of child support payments for each prior month received in that month if such payments were made by the absent parent in the month when due." Section 657(b)(1) was similarly amended. The Conference Report to the 1988 Act states that the amendment "clarifies that the $50 disregard applies to a payment received in a month which was due for a prior month if it was made by the absent parent in the month when due." H.R. Conference Rep. No. 100-998, 100th Congress, 2d Sess. 91, reprinted in 1988 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 2776, 2879, 2886.
state defendants also filed an answer in which they pled the Eleventh Amendment as an affirmative defense.
After a hearing on the parties' cross motions for summary...
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