Roe v. Anderson

• Decision Date: 04 June 1997
• Docket Number: No. CIV-S-97-0529 DFL.,CIV-S-97-0529 DFL.
• Citation: 966 F.Supp. 977
• Parties: Brenda ROE and Anna Doe, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. Eloise ANDERSON, Director of the California Department of Social Services; California Department of Social Services; Pete Wilson, Governor of the State of California; Craig Brown, Director of the California Department of Finance, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of California

966 F.Supp. 977

Brenda ROE and Anna Doe, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. Eloise ANDERSON, Director of the California Department of Social Services; California Department of Social Services; Pete Wilson, Governor of the State of California; Craig Brown, Director of the California Department of Finance, Defendants.

No. CIV-S-97-0529 DFL.

United States District Court, E.D. California.

June 4, 1997.

Jordon C. Budd, ACLU Foundation, San Diego and Imperial Counties, San Diego, CA, David S. Schwartz, Mark D. Rosenbaum, ACLU Foundation of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, Martha F. Davis, NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, New York City, for Plaintiffs.

Theodore Garelis, Office of Attorney General, Sacramento, CA, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF OPINION AND ORDER

LEVI, District Judge.

This case again presents the question of the constitutionality of a one-year durational residency requirement for full welfare benefits. A California statute, enacted in 1992, provides that "families that have resided in this state for less than 12 months" and who qualify for welfare shall receive benefits no greater than the "maximum aid payment that would have been received by that family from the state of prior residence." Cal.Welf. & Inst.Code § 11450.03.¹ Under this provision, California residents who have migrated to California from states that provide a lower level of benefits than California would receive that lower level of benefits through the first year of their residency in California. The State first sought to implement this residency limitation in 1992. At that time, the court found that such a distinction among California residents, based on the duration of their residency, was unconstitutional under a line of Supreme Court cases addressing durational residency provisions in a variety of contexts. See Green v. Anderson, 811 F.Supp. 516 (E.D.Cal.1993), aff'd, 26 F.3d 95 (9th Cir.1994), vacated as unripe sub nom, Anderson v. Green, 513 U.S. 557, 115 S.Ct. 1059, 130 L.Ed.2d 1050 (1995). Because the controlling legal principles and precedents have remained unchanged, the court reaches the same conclusion and again finds that § 11450.03 makes an unconstitutional distinction between California residents based on the length of their residency.

I.

Section 11450.03 was enacted in 1992 in conjunction with a California experimental work incentive project under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children ("AFDC") program. Section 11450.03 is only effective upon approval by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Approval was given by the Secretary, in the form of a waiver, in October 1992.² The court entered an injunction prohibiting implementation of § 11450.03 on January 28, 1993. Green, 811 F.Supp. at 523. Subsequently, in a parallel litigation that challenged the Secretary's grant of waivers needed for the California welfare experiment — including the waiver for the durational residency limitation — the Court of Appeals vacated the Secretary's waivers. See Beno v. Shalala, 30 F.3d 1057 (9th Cir. 1994). By its own terms, § 11450.03 then ceased to apply in the absence of approval by the Secretary. Accordingly, having granted California's petition for certiorari in Green v. Anderson, the Supreme Court found that the constitutionality of § 11450.03 no longer presented a justiciable controversy. Anderson v. Green, 513 U.S. 557, 558-60, 115 S.Ct. 1059, 1060, 130 L.Ed.2d 1050 (1995).

In February 1996, the Secretary again granted the necessary waivers for the California welfare experiment with the exception of the waiver permitting the State to distinguish between old and new residents. The Secretary expressly declined to renew this waiver,³ and without the waiver § 11450.03 was a dead letter. There the matter stood until August 1996 when Congress enacted a new federal welfare law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 ("PRWORA"), 42 U.S.C. §§ 601, et seq. The PRWORA significantly increased the states' discretion to design their federally supported welfare plans without seeking waivers from the Secretary. The Act superseded the AFDC program with a new program entitled Temporary Assistance to Needy Families ("TANF").⁴ The Act specifically authorized the states to apply a one-year durational residency requirement of the kind embodied in Cal.Welf. & Inst. Code § 11450.03. See 42 U.S.C. § 604(c).⁵ In October 1996 the State of California submitted its TANF plan to the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The plan included a durational residency limitation consistent with California law and § 604(c). On February 28, 1997, in All-County Letter 97-11, the California Department of Social Services instructed the counties to implement § 11450.03 as of April 1, 1997. Pls.' Ex. 3.

The implementation instructions in the All-County Letter explain that to be eligible for AFDC at the California computed grant amount, one member of the "assistance unit" must have resided in California for twelve consecutive months. Id. at 25. Thus, even if family members had lived in California all of their lives, but left the State "on January 29th, intending to reside in another state, and returned on April 15th," the family would receive AFDC at the level of the state of residence from January 29 to April 15, if that level were lower than the benefits that California would otherwise provide to the family. Id. at 30. Similarly, if "children from another state move in with an unaided caretaker relative who is a California resident," the level of benefits of the children's state of prior residence would determine their benefits for the first year of their residence in California.⁶ Id. Nor would the birth of a newborn be treated differently because "neither the newborn nor any other member of the [assistance unit] has lived in California for 12 consecutive months." Id. at 32. In the computation examples, the instructions use a family of two — mother and one child — who move to California from Arizona. In California, region 1, the AFDC payment would be $456 a month compared to the Arizona payment of $275. Until the family has resided in California for twelve consecutive months, the family will receive AFDC benefits of $275. Id. at 33. And this lower amount will be the benefit level for the first year of residency whether or not the family actually was on welfare in the state of prior residence; the instructions note that "[i]t does not matter if a family was on aid in the former state." Id. at 30. On the other hand, the instructions explain that the residency requirement does not apply to families who have moved to California from another country because such countries would not have an AFDC program on which to base a comparison of benefit levels. Thus, a new state resident from one of the fifty states could receive a lower benefit than a new resident from a foreign country.

This action was filed on April 1, 1997, by plaintiffs Brenda Roe and Anna Doe. Brenda Roe was a resident of Oklahoma until early 1997. When her husband lost his job, the Roes decided to move to California to pursue employment. Ms. Roe was six months pregnant as of April 8, 1997. Ms. Roe states that because of complications that developed in her pregnancy after their move to California, Mr. Roe cannot leave her unattended and therefore cannot work. Ms. Roe was informed by the State social services office that she would be limited to the Oklahoma monthly grant level of $307 when she became eligible for AFDC at the six-month point of her pregnancy as compared to the California grant level of $565. According to Ms. Roe, the monthly rents in the community in which they now reside, Long Beach, California, are $300 for a studio apartment and $450 to $650 for a one-bedroom apartment. Ms. Roe avers that at the time she and her husband decided to move to California she did not know anything about AFDC or TANF and had never been on welfare.

Anna Doe recently moved to Los Angeles County from Washington, D.C. At the time of her move she was pregnant. She states that she came to California to look for a better job. According to her declaration, she obtained a job when she first arrived in California but later stopped working because she found the job too stressful. She has been living in a shelter. She became eligible for AFDC in April 1997 at the six-month point of her pregnancy. Under the two-tier system, her grant would be limited to $330 per month, the Washington, D.C. level as opposed to $456 per month, the California AFDC benefit for a single parent residing in Los Angeles County. According to Ms. Doe, the rents for apartments in her area range from $450 to $570 a month.

On April 1, 1997, a temporary restraining order was entered by the court enjoining implementation of § 11450.03⁷ The parties stipulated that the temporary restraining order would remain in effect until resolution of plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction. On April 23, 1997, on the stipulation of the parties, the court permitted the action to be maintained as a class action and certified a class of plaintiffs defined as "all present and future AFDC and TANF applicants and recipients who have applied or will apply for AFDC or TANF on or after April 1, 1997, and who will be denied full California AFDC or TANF benefits because they have not resided in California for twelve consecutive months immediately preceding their application for aid." Plaintiffs now move for a preliminary injunction prohibiting defendants from implementing the durational residency requirement in § 11450.03.⁸

II.

Plaintiffs make a number of factual contentions about the effect of § 11450.03 and the characteristics of the population of new residents that are relevant to their motion. As to the effect of § 11450.03, plaintiffs' exhibits demonstrate that the disparity between the California level and the level of the other forty-nine states will...