Proctor v. United States

• Decision Date: 30 November 1977
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 76-436.
• Citation: 448 F. Supp. 418
• Parties: Gloria PROCTOR, as mother and next friend of James A. Proctor, Nathaniel Proctor, Michelle L. Proctor, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES of America et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

448 F. Supp. 418

Gloria PROCTOR, as mother and next friend of James A. Proctor, Nathaniel Proctor, Michelle L. Proctor, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES of America et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 76-436.

United States District Court, District of Columbia.

November 30, 1977.

Julian Karpoff, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff.

Jay S. Bernstein, Silver Spring, Md., John J. Terry, Asst. U. S. Atty., Washington D. C., for defendants.

Before MacKINNON, Circuit Judge, and GREEN and PARKER, District Judges.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

JUNE L. GREEN, District Judge.

At issue in this case is a provision of the Civil Service Retirement Act which conditions award of a survivor's annuity to illegitimate children on a showing that the children have "lived with" the deceased federal employee "in a regular parent-child relationship." Legitimate children do not have to meet this requirement, and the question is whether the difference in eligibility standards violates the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Court decides that it does.

I.

Mr. James A. Holloway was employed by the District of Columbia government at the time of his death in late 1974. Under 5 U.S.C. § 8341, a provision of the Civil Service Retirement laws, his survivors had a right to apply for annuity benefits. On January 18, 1975, plaintiff Gloria Proctor filed with the Civil Service Commission an application for annuities on behalf of her three children: James, Nathaniel and Michelle Proctor. The children had not lived with Mr. Holloway, but he had acknowledged them as his own during proceedings brought by plaintiff in 1963 and 1965 for support, and his paternity had been adjudicated by the Juvenile Court for the District of Columbia. Mr. Holloway was under a continuing court order to support plaintiff's children, and the uncontradicted record shows that he made cash contributions and bought groceries for them up to the date of his death.

At about the same time that plaintiff applied for benefits, Mrs. Helen L. Holloway, the deceased's common-law wife, filed with the Commission applications for a spouse's annuity and for a child's annuity on behalf of herself and her daughter. Mrs. Holloway and her daughter were added as defendants in this action because a decision by the Court granting plaintiff's children relief would diminish the amount of the annuity payable to the daughter.

The Commission's Bureau of Retirement, Insurance and Occupational Health denied plaintiff's application for benefits on February 24, 1975. On April 7, 1976, the Commission's Appeals Review Board affirmed the Bureau's ruling. The Board based its decision explicitly on the definition of "child" contained in 5 U.S.C. § 8341(a)(3)(A)(ii), which is used to determine the eligibility of children for survivor's annuities. The pertinent provision reads:

§ 8341. Survivor annuities

(a) For the purposes of this section—

. . . . .

(3) "child" means—

(A) an unmarried child under 18 years of age, including (i) an adopted child, and (ii) a stepchild or recognized natural child who lived with the employee or Member in a regular parent-child relationship.

Plaintiff filed her original complaint in this action on March 17, 1976, and a subsequent request for a three-judge court was granted on March 24, 1977. She seeks an injunction which would bar use of the cohabitation requirement and compel the Commission to place her children on its rolls for receipt of child survivor annuities. She also seeks a lump sum in the amount of retroactive survivor annuity payments allegedly due the children since their father's death.

II.

Two recent Supreme Court decisions, Jimenez v. Weinberger, 417 U.S. 628, 94 S.Ct. 2496, 41 L.Ed.2d 363 (1974), and Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.S. 495, 96 S.Ct. 2755, 49 L.Ed.2d 651 (1976), deal with provisions of the Social Security Act containing legislative classifications based on illegitimacy. To a substantial extent these decisions define the issues we confront today.

In Jimenez the Court considered a constitutional challenge to a provision of the Act governing the award of benefits to children of disabled wage earners. The government maintained and the Court agreed that the overall purpose of the statutory scheme was to channel financial support to children actually dependent on the disabled workers and to ferret out undeserving claims. Jimenez, supra, 417 U.S. at 634-636, 94 S.Ct. 2496. To serve these purposes the statute defined an eligible "child" in a number of precise ways, the effect of which was to divide potential recipients into categories, supposedly in accord with a legislative judgment as to the likelihood of their members being dependent and thus deserving of benefits. All legitimate children received grants without having to make a particularized showing of dependency. Illegitimate children, however, were divided into a number of classes. Illegitimates born before the onset of their parent's disability qualified for benefits if they fell within a number of certain statutory exceptions; all else failing, they had an opportunity to show that they had been living with or receiving support from the worker at the time disability began. Illegitimates born after the onset of their parent's disability also qualified for benefits under certain statutory exceptions, but if they did not happen to come under those exceptions, they were given no additional chance to make a factual showing that they were dependent on the worker and thus came within the purposes of the statute. In effect the provision granted a conclusive "presumption" of dependency to all legitimates and those illegitimates covered by certain exceptions, while it imposed an equally rigid presumption of nondependency upon certain after-born illegitimate children. Plaintiffs in the case belonged to this last group.

The Court emphasized two points. First, it directed what were, in effect, due process objections to the statutory scheme's "blanket and conclusive exclusion of appellants' subclass of illegitimates" from the Social Security Act's benefits. Supra at 636, 94 S.Ct. at 2501. "Assuming that the appellants are in fact dependent on the claimant, it would not serve the purposes of the Act to conclusively deny them an opportunity to establish their dependency and their right to insurance benefits . . . ." Id. Second, the Court narrowed its focus to a comparison of those afterborn illegitimates who came within exceptions and thus qualified for benefits, and those afterborn illegitimates who fell outside the exceptions and were denied a chance to demonstrate dependency altogether. In finding the provision unconstitutional, the Court decided the potential for generating non-meritorious claims was equal for both groups; "hence to conclusively deny one subclass benefits presumptively available to the other denies the former the equal protection of the laws . . . ." Id. at 637, 94 S.Ct. at 2502.

The statutory scheme before this Court today is similar to the one involved in Jimenez. Because the father of the plaintiffs in the instant case was a federal employee, the Civil Service Retirement fund rather than the Social Security fund is involved, but this fact is not significant as far as the issues here are concerned. As in Jimenez, the government maintains that the overall purpose of the statutory provisions at issue is to channel financial support to children who were actually dependent on the worker involved and to weed out the undeserving claims.¹ In the service of these purposes, the statute divides potential recipients into a number of categories. All legitimate children enjoy a conclusive presumption of dependency. Since the only illegitimate children who qualify for benefits are those who "lived with the employee . . . in a regular parent-child relationship", illegitimates are divided into two classes. Those who are able to show cohabitation are thereafter presumed to be dependent and need not make an additional showing to that effect; those who do not show cohabitation are conclusively barred from benefits and have no chance to address the dependency question directly.

Before Jimenez can be relied upon as decisive precedent, however, the Supreme Court's opinion in Mathews v. Lucas, supra, must be considered. Lucas upheld the constitutionality of a Social Security Act provision related to the one struck down in Jimenez.

The program dealt with in Lucas dispenses benefits to survivors of deceased workers rather than to offspring of living but disabled workers. Eligibility is governed by many of the same statutory definitions of "child" which the Court considered in Jimenez, but the definitional scheme differs in several crucial respects to suit the characteristics of a survivors' benefit program. All legitimate children occupy one category, as in Jimenez, and receive benefits without having to make an individualized showing of actual dependency. Illegitimate children are divided into a number of classes. Those applicants who make a showing that (a) they can inherit under the applicable state intestacy law, (b) their deceased parent had gone through a marriage ceremony with the other parent which, but for a nonobvious legal defect, would have been valid, (c) their parent had acknowledged his or actual parentage in writing, (d) their parent had been decreed by a court to be the parent, or (e) their parent had been ordered by a court to support the applicant because of parentage, are then declared eligible for benefits without having to make a further showing of actual economic dependency.

The critical difference between the requirements considered in Jimenez and Lucas was that all applicants for the benefits program with which Lucas was concerned still had a chance to show "by evidence satisfactory to the Secretary" that the deceased worker "was living with or contributing to the support of" the applicant at the time the worker died. Social Security Act, 42...