Peterson v. Norton

• Decision Date: 03 June 1975
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. H 74-232.
• Citation: 395 F. Supp. 1351
• Parties: William PETERSON, Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. Nicholas NORTON, Commissioner of the Connecticut State Welfare Department, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut

395 F. Supp. 1351

William PETERSON, Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. Nicholas NORTON, Commissioner of the Connecticut State Welfare Department, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. H 74-232.

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

June 3, 1975.

Walter Marcus and Mary R. Hennessey, Hartford, Conn., for plaintiffs.

Jacob Goldman, Asst. Atty. Gen., State of Connecticut, Hartford, Conn., for defendant.

Before SMITH, Circuit Judge, CLARIE, Chief District Judge, and NEWMAN, District Judge.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

J. JOSEPH SMITH, Circuit Judge:

William Peterson, the acknowledged father of an illegitimate child receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)¹ benefits, challenges the constitutionality of Connecticut's plan implementing the federal AFDC program insofar as that plan requires him to pay caretaker expenses for his child's mother.² Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 28 U.S.C. § 1343,³ the plaintiff seeks a declaratory judgment that the Connecticut Welfare Department regulation establishing this requirement⁴ violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as an injunction against the regulation's enforcement. Since the complaint raises a substantial question under the United States Constitution, this three-judge court was appropriately convened. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281, 2284;⁵compare California Water Service Co. v. City of Redding, 304 U.S. 252, 58 S.Ct. 865, 82 L.Ed. 1323 (1938). The plaintiff also alleges that this regulation is invalid under the Supremacy Clause, U.S.Const., art. VI, cl. 2, because it is inconsistent with federal statutory law. Although this latter claim would not suffice to activate a three-judge court, Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U.S. 111, 120-22, 86 S.Ct. 258, 15 L.Fd.2d 194 (1965); Johnson v. Harder, 438 F.2d 7, 13 (2d Cir. 1971), it requires consideration as a ground upon which a three-judge court with an independent jurisdictional basis may grant relief, Solman v. Shapiro, 300 F.Supp. 409 (D.Conn.) (three-judge court), aff'd mem., 396 U.S. 5, 90 S.Ct. 25, 24 L.Ed.2d 5 (1969). For the reasons set forth below, we reject the plaintiff's federal constitutional and statutory attacks on the Connecticut regulation and order judgment entered for the defendant commissioner of state welfare.

I. Conflict with Federal Statutory Scheme

The validity of the Connecticut regulation depends, first of all, upon its conformity with the federal government's AFDC guidelines. Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397, 90 S.Ct. 1207, 25 L.Ed.2d 442 (1970); King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309, 88 S.Ct. 2128, 20 L.Ed.2d 1118 (1968). In arguing that a conflict with the federal scheme — specifically, 42 U. S.C. § 606(b) and 45 C.F.R. § 220.48⁶ — exists in this instance, Peterson appears to vacillate between the alternative positions that: (1) the regulation establishes a support obligation of a nature uniformly disallowed by federal law; and (2) the regulation imposes a burden violative of federal law due to its inconsistency with the state statutes from which the regulation derives its authority.

On the one hand, then, the plaintiff contends that the above-cited provisions of the federal AFDC statute and regulations prohibit states from requiring acknowledged fathers of illegitimate children on AFDC to pay all or part of the caretaker mothers' expenses. To establish this proposition Peterson relies heavily on a letter to his attorney from Neil P. Fallon, a regional commissioner of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.⁷ In the letter, Mr. Fallon points out — and quite correctly, Rodriguez v. Vowell, 472 F.2d 622 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 412 U.S. 944, 93 S.Ct. 2777, 37 L.Ed.2d 404 (1973) — that under 42 U.S.C. § 406(b) a needy mother of a child on AFDC is awarded benefits pursuant to a determination of her overall needs, not simply as those needs relate to the child's. Since the Connecticut regulation refers to the caretaker's needs as part of the child's rather than as a matter for separate consideration, the commissioner concludes that the Connecticut Welfare Department may be operating under a "misconception" of the federal requirements. Although Mr. Fallon's opinion may be one which the state, if its understanding of federal law in fact deviates from his, would wish to act upon, it does not bear on the validity of the policy pursued by the Connecticut regulation. Connecticut could act differently but, as the letter recognizes, it need not. Similarly, since 45 C.F.R. § 220.48 addresses only the problem of support for the dependent child, it does not compel adoption of the regulation at issue. Again, the absence of a requirement in federal law that the acknowledged father pay some portion of the unwed mother's expenses does not preclude Connecticut from implementing such a requirement.

The plaintiff's apparent alternative position concedes that federal law allows states to impose the disputed support obligation on acknowledged fathers. In the plaintiff's view, however, Connecticut statutes make no such demand on this class of fathers.⁸ The implication, then, is that since the Connecticut regulation establishing this additional burden therefore contravenes the state's support policy, it does not satisfy the exception in the AFDC program sanctioning imposition of an obligation of this sort. Enforcement of the regulation would therefore violate supreme federal law.

We are not persuaded. Essentially, this reasoning attempts to bootstrap an alleged inconsistency with state law into a Supremacy Clause violation. Assuming arguendo that the regulation does violate Connecticut's support laws, we fail to see how the implementation of a policy which the federal AFDC scheme recognizes as not in conflict with its purposes can be said to deny that the federal law is "the supreme Law of the Land," U.S.Const. art. VI, cl. 2. Cf. Florida Lime & Avocado Growers, Inc. v. Paul, 373 U.S. 132, 142, 83 S.Ct. 1210, 10 L.Ed.2d 248 (1963); Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341, 354-56, 63 S.Ct. 307, 87 L.Ed. 315 (1943).

The challenged Connecticut law is consistent with the federal AFDC statute and its accompanying regulations.

II. Denial of Equal Protection

In contending that the Connecticut regulation denies him the equal protection of the laws, Peterson proceeds on two independent theories. First, by spreading the acknowledged father's child support over the needs of both the illegitimate child on AFDC and the unwed caretaker mother and not allocating any part of child support for a legitimate child on AFDC to the divorced or separated wife with custody, the regulation unjustifiably treats acknowledged illegitimate children receiving AFDC benefits worse than legitimate children on AFDC. Secondly, by requiring acknowledged fathers of illegitimate children on AFDC to contribute to the unwed caretaker mother's support and not demanding the same of fathers of illegitimate children not on AFDC, the regulation unlawfully discriminates against fathers of the former variety.

The first theory depends upon a distinction formal in the extreme. When the welfare department seeks to obtain payment from an acknowledged father of an illegitimate child or the father of a legitimate child, pursuant to Conn. Gen.Stat.Ann. § 17-82e, part of the payment goes to satisfy the mother's "caretaker expenses." This same result occurs when the father's obligation to the department is enforced by court order pursuant to Conn.Gen.Stat.Ann. § 17-324. However, when the father of a legitimate child is obligated by court order to furnish support to his child in connection with a divorce or separation, pursuant to Conn.Gen.Stat.Ann. § 46-42, the regulation challenged in this case provides that such support payments cannot be used to meet the mother's needs. The bar against such diversion to the mother is simply a reflection of the fact that her need is dealt with under the different rubric of alimony. Inevitably, the court's determination of the proper amount to be paid for the child's support in such situations is somewhat limited by the amount determined to be appropriate for alimony. Support payments received by legitimate children pursuant to court orders entered in divorce or separation proceedings are thus limited by an amount deemed appropriate for the children's caretaker in substantially the same way as support payments for all children, both legitimate and illegitimate, are limited when the department enforces the father's obligation and includes "caretaker expenses" in the determination of the child's needs. The two classes of children are thus treated similarly or, in the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, protected equally.⁹

The plaintiff's second theory, which focuses on the regulation's distinction between acknowledged fathers of illegitimate children on AFDC and acknowledged fathers of illegitimate children not on AFDC, invokes recent Supreme Court decisions intimating strongly that classifications on the basis of legitimacy of birth are, like racial and select other classifications,¹⁰ constitutionally suspect. See, Gomez v. Perez, 409 U.S. 535, 93 S. Ct. 872, 35 L.Ed.2d 56 (1973) (per curiam); Weber v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 406 U.S. 164, 92 S.Ct. 1400, 31 L.Ed.2d 768 (1972); Glona v. American Guar. & Liab. Ins. Co., 391 U.S. 73, 88 S.Ct. 1515, 20 L.Ed.2d 441 (1968); Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68, 88 S.Ct. 1509, 20 L. Ed.2d 436 (1968). But see, Labine v. Vincent, 401 U.S. 532, 91 S.Ct. 1017, 28 L.Ed.2d 288 (1971). Peterson's reliance on this line of authority is misplaced, however, for it mischaracterizes the nature of the classification at issue: The regulation's discrimination between the two classes of fathers is not made on the basis of their children's legitimacy of birth but instead on the basis of the children's AFDC recipiency. The instant situation, then, is not at all comparable to that present in Glona v. American Guar. & Liab. Ins. Co., supra, where the Court found that...