New Jersey Welfare Rights Organization v. Cahill

• Citation: 349 F. Supp. 501
• Decision Date: 04 October 1972
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 879-71.
• Parties: NEW JERSEY WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION et al., Plaintiffs, v. William T. CAHILL, in his capacity as Governor and Chief Executive Officer of the State of New Jersey, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey

349 F. Supp. 501

NEW JERSEY WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION et al., Plaintiffs, v. William T. CAHILL, in his capacity as Governor and Chief Executive Officer of the State of New Jersey, et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 879-71.

United States District Court, D. New Jersey.

October 4, 1972.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Michael C. Parks, Gerard J. Clark, East Orange, N. J., for plaintiffs.

George F. Kugler, Jr., Atty. Gen. of N. J., by Stephen Skillman, Deputy Atty. Gen., for defendants.

OPINION

CLARKSON S. FISHER, District Judge.

This case challenges those changes in New Jersey's Welfare Law which became effective on July 1, 1971. Both constitutional and statutory issues were raised. In June of 1971, a single judge, after considering plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction against the institution of the disputed changes, granted a motion to dismiss proffered by the defendants. The plaintiffs then appealed and the Circuit Court of Appeals, 3rd Cir., 448 F.2d 1247, remanded the action to the District Court with instructions to allow plaintiffs additional time to complete their discovery and to convene a three-judge court to consider the constitutional issues. The three-judge court was convened on January 17, 1972 and its opinion has been separately filed today, D.C., 349 F.Supp. 491. The attack on the statutory portion of the action, delayed by problems of discovery between the parties, was heard by a single judge without a jury on June 6th, 7th and 9th, 1972. This opinion considers that aspect of the case.

The statute which plaintiffs specifically contend that defendants contravene by their alteration of welfare regulations is 42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(23)¹ as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the case of Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397, 90 S.Ct. 1207, 25 L.Ed.2d 442 (1970). That case held, in essence, that after July 1, 1969 a state participating in the Federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) Program could not lower its standard of need for recipients of aid under that program's auspices. It is such an illegal reduction in the content of the standard of need of New Jersey's AFDC recipients which plaintiffs claim has occurred by the institution of the changes of July 1, 1971.

The changes occurred as a result of Governor Cahill's desire to cut back on welfare abuses, to streamline the distribution of welfare to the state's needy citizens, and to increase the efficiency and lower the costs of the welfare system as a whole.² The Governor's Welfare Study Commission and his Task Force on Welfare Management both recommended that a consolidated flat grant payment system be adopted as a means for accomplishing this desired goal. It would be the culmination of gradual consolidations within the welfare system occurring over a period of years. Such flat grant consolidations were felt to give welfare recipients more control over their lives by eliminating second-guessing on expenditures by paternalistic welfare workers, to eliminate inequities among clients and between clients and non-clients, and to vastly increase efficiency in the administration of welfare. Prior to July 1, 1971, under the Manual of Distribution then in use, the Categorical Assistance Budget Manual (CABM), only one of the three categories of needs, personal and household needs, was met by a flat grant, which was determined by family size, composition and age of the eldest child. The other two categories, shelter and special circumstance grants,³ were paid at cost, with the only limitation being that the costs were reasonable. Under the new system, distributed according to the Family Assistance Manual (FAM), all three need categories are given as a flat grant with almost no variations considered for actual cost.⁴

The consolidated flat grant was initially arrived at through use of a methodology known as Benchmark I. As part of this methodology the Division of Public Welfare ordered each of its county offices to send to Trenton the case sheets (PA3A Forms) for December 1970, of all files whose numbers ended in certain predesignated digits. In this way it was hoped that a random sample of approximately 5% of all welfare cases could be collected and then all their component parts could be averaged. However, because of failure by certain county offices to fully comply with the Division's orders, a sample of only approximately 4% was received. The Division, however, proceeded to average all component parts of the returned case sheets.

Averages were obtained by adding the total amount of expenditures per need category and dividing by the number of family budget units of the same size. For instance if there was a total of $120,000 spent in one month for shelter by all families of four in the sample and there were 1,000 such families, the amount to be allotted per family was $120 per month. If the average personal and household need of all families of four in the sample was $180 per month, and the average special circumstance grant for such families was $20 per month,⁵ these two figures would be added to the $120 shelter figure and all recipient families of four would receive a check each month of $320. In addition a "creeping factor" to account for rises in the cost of living between the time of the study and the institution of the FAM, was added in. It amounted to fifty cents per person per month. In this manner a separate average was taken for each family size. The FAM merely listed the total amount to be given to each family varying in amounts only according to family size, without breaking it down to the three need categories plus the "creeping factor".

In computing the averages under Benchmark I, only the actual amounts paid per family budget unit size was recognized in the averaging process. No attempt was made to separately compute the rent of those families living in privately owned housing as opposed to those living in public housing, and whose rents would therefore be cheaper. Again no attempt was made to separate a family from Bergen County which might be paying $180 per month for rent from one from Salem County which might be paying $75 per month. Nor were people who needed no special circumstance grants separated from those who had large special needs such as special diets, etc.

The advantages in terms of administrative efficiency to be gained as a result of this flat grant consolidation are readily apparent. A welfare worker no longer had to worry whether a client's rental was reasonable or whether he or she needed special circumstance items and how much should be allotted for them. All the worker had to do was determine the size of the recipient family and then look at the FAM to find out how much that family should receive. The client, too, would know exactly how much he would receive and budget expenditures accordingly. He would not have to, nor would he be able to, run to the Welfare Department every time a need arose.

Benchmark I was partially modified by an Expanded Study conducted after the remand of this case. It was done at the prompting of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) which, although accepting the concept of averaging, did not feel that the study conducted pursuant to Benchmark I was extensive enough to ensure the proper averaging of a technically sufficient sample.

The methodology of the Expanded Study was similar to that used in Benchmark I except that instead of only one month's PA3A forms being studied and averaged, samplings of four months were collected. The four months, June 1970, September 1970 and March 1971, in addition to the original December 1970 study, constituted, according to HEW, a more adequate basis for accounting for possible geographic and seasonal factors affecting the averaging process.

Additionally, instead of averaging all payments according to family budget unit size as they were paid prior to July 1, 1971, regardless of all other factors which may have previously been considered in figuring the amount of that payment, certain discriminations were accorded to the averaging process in the Expanded Study. Under Benchmark I the shelter cost for all families in each family size were averaged whether the families were "square" or "non-square".⁶ Since "non-square" families were assisted in payment of rent by the person or persons within their living unit not on welfare, such families' shelter needs under the CABM were proportionately lessened and including them in the averaging process had a tendency to depress the final average. Non-square families were not averaged in the Expanded Study. In Benchmark I figures from all segments, C, F and N were averaged together for all three need categories, whereas in the Expanded Study, the N Segment was eliminated from calculations for personal and household needs and for shelter, although not from special circumstance averages. The rationale for this difference, according to the defendants, was that the N Segment had been wholly financed by the State and assistance criteria for families under its auspices differed from those in the C and F Segments. Special circumstance grants were computed on an individual basis and criteria under all segments did not differ for that category. Another difference between Benchmark I and the Expanded Study was that in the former all special circumstance grants were considered in the averaging, whereas in the latter study four such grants were excluded from the averaging. The four, homemaker service, child care, expenses of training, and emergency assistance will continue to be paid for at cost.

The results of the Expanded Study tended to corroborate the correctness of Benchmark I. Although the average four special circumstance grants rose from forty-eight cents per month per person to seventy-five cents, the only change in final averages was that computed for a family of five, for which it was determined that the proper flat grant payment should be $370 rather than $360 per month. An...