Smith v. Commissioner of Transitional Assistance

• Decision Date: 07 March 2000
• Parties: ELIZABETH SMITH & another v. COMMISSIONER OF TRANSITIONAL ASSISTANCE.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

431 Mass. 638

729 NE 2d 627

ELIZABETH SMITH & another¹ v. COMMISSIONER OF TRANSITIONAL ASSISTANCE.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

March 7, 2000.

May 26, 2000.

Present: MARSHALL, C.J., ABRAMS, LYNCH, GREANEY, IRELAND, SPINA, & COWIN, JJ.

John R. Hitt, Assistant Attorney General (Judith S. Yogman, Assistant Attorney General, with him) for the defendant.

Ruth A. Bourquin for the plaintiffs.

MARSHALL, C.J.

The plaintiffs, Elizabeth Smith and Michelle Muise, challenge a Department of Transitional Assistance (department) regulation, 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 203.210(A) (1999), governing recipients' eligibility for extensions of benefits under the Transitional Aid for Families with Dependent Children program (TAFDC), and sought declaratory and injunctive relief.² A central question raised by the complaint is whether the financial eligibility test of the challenged regulation is consistent with relevant provisions of St. 1995, c. 5, § 110, also known as the Welfare Reform Act or Chapter 5 (Act). A judge in the Superior Court agreed that in establishing the financial eligibility test as it did in 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 203.210(A), the department exceeded the statutory authority conferred by the Act, and she granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs on this point. The department appealed that ruling and the judge's May 13, 1999, and May 20, 1999, orders granting injunctive relief to implement the earlier decision. We transferred this case from the Appeals Court on our own motion.

The plaintiffs have filed a motion to dismiss portions of the appeal as moot. For the reasons discussed below, we deny that motion (see Part 2). We affirm the entry of partial summary judgment in the plaintiffs' favor, invalidating the financial eligibility criteria in 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 203.210(A) (see Part 3), and affirm the injunctive orders granted by the court (see Part 4).

1. Background. Transitional Aid for Families with Dependent Children, administered by the department,³ is the successor program to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). See generally St. 1995, c. 5, § 110 (a); G. L. c. 118, §§ 1, 2; Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Health & Human Servs., 422 Mass. 214, 217 (1996); Salaam v. Commissioner of Transitional Assistance, 43 Mass. App. Ct. 38, 38 (1997). The purpose of the program, generally, is to enable children to continue living at home through the provision of funds for their shelter, food, and other necessities, where one or both parents is unable fully to provide support or is absent. Salaam v. Commissioner of Transitional Assistance, supra at 39. See Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Health & Human Servs., supra at 221 (discussing department's duty under G. L. c. 118, § 2). The program was amended by the Welfare Reform Act in 1995, an act whose stated purposes were to "promot[e] the principles of family unity, individual responsibility and self-reliance and to structure financial and economic incentives and disincentives that promote such principles in the administration of [TAFDC]." St. 1995, c. 5, § 110.

The Welfare Reform Act established a twenty-four month cumulative limit on a nonexempt⁴ recipient's receipt of TAFDC benefits in a sixty-month period, unless an extension is granted.⁵ St. 1995, c. 5, § 110 (f). If a nonexempt recipient is employed during the twenty-four month period, her benefits are reduced by the amount of her earned income minus an "earnings disregard" of thirty dollars and one-half of the recipient's earned income. St. 1995, c. 5, § 110 (d), (g). This "earnings disregard" effectively increases an employed recipient's benefits by the disregarded amount, i.e., by thirty dollars plus one-half of the income earned. The department also applies the earnings disregard to determine whether a recipient family makes too much earned income to be initially eligible for TAFDC benefits. 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 204.260. Under the financial eligibility test of the challenged regulatory provision, however, the earnings disregard is not applied in determining eligibility for an extension, 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 203.210(A), making it more difficult for the working poor to obtain an extension of benefits than if the disregard was applied. The plaintiffs assert that this regulation is not consistent with the letter, or the legislative intent, of the Act.

Smith and Muise are two working mothers paid less than $680 per month in take home pay and consequently eligible for transitional assistance.⁶ The plaintiffs were nonexempt recipients of TAFDC, and were thus subject to the twenty-four month assistance limit. Both would be eligible for TAFDC benefits but for the fact they have exhausted that twenty-four month limit. The plaintiffs claimed that the challenged regulation's financial eligibility requirements for the extension of benefits prevented them or would have prevented them from obtaining an extension of transitional assistance.

We recount the procedural history of this case in some detail as it has a bearing on the subsidiary issue raised by the plaintiffs of the asserted mootness of portions of the DTA's appeal and on the appeal of injunctive relief. The action was filed on March 5, 1999. On April 20, 1999, the judge allowed the plaintiffs' partial summary judgment motion as to Count I of their complaint that asserted that 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 203. 210(A), concerning the test of financial eligibility for extensions, and § 203.210(C), concerning the calculation of the amount of extension benefits, violated St. 1995, c. 5, § 110 (d), (g), and (j). The judge also granted partial summary judgment for the plaintiffs as to Count II of their complaint that asserted that 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 203.210(A) violated St. 1995, c. 5, § 110 (f).⁷ At that time the judge denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction, but stated that "[t]he denial of plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction is subject to reconsideration if the court's order is not implemented."⁸ On April 27, 1999, the plaintiffs filed a renewed motion for a preliminary injunction or prompt enforcement of the judgment, asserting that the plaintiffs were struggling to survive in the throes of poverty, with very limited earnings and no TAFDC benefits; that the department had communicated that it was likely to appeal and to seek a stay of the judgment pending appeal; and that it gave no assurances that the department would take steps to implement the April 20 judgment prior to a decision on any appeal.

According to a May 6, 1999, affidavit of the deputy commissioner of the department, the department had by May 6 begun to take steps to comply with the judge's order.⁹ On May 7, 1999, on the parties' joint motion, having determined that there was no just reason for delay, the judge entered a judgment, pursuant to Mass. R. Civ. P. 54 (b), 365 Mass. 820 (1974), that 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 203.210(C) and the financial eligibility criteria in § 203.210(A) are void because they are "contrary to the plain language of the statute and its underlying purpose." According to a May 11, 1999, affidavit of the deputy commissioner, the department began taking additional steps to comply with the judge's decision, beyond those listed in the May 6, affidavit.¹⁰ The department had also reportedly ceased to apply 106 Code Mass. Regs. § 203.210(A) and (C).

On May 13, 1999, the judge allowed the plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction and issued an order directing the department to take certain steps toward the reinstatement of benefits to individuals affected by the regulation.¹¹ On May 20, 1999, the judge issued a revised order that reiterated the substance of the earlier order and corrected erroneous citations. The department filed a notice of appeal, on May 27, 1999, from the May 7 judgment, the May 13 order, and the May 20 revised order.

On July 14, 1999, the judge issued a memorandum of decision and order on the plaintiffs' emergency motion for further order. In this order, the judge stated that she had "determined that the multi-page Notice sent to former TAFDC recipients by the [department] is unnecessarily complex, and is insufficient to advise recipients of their right to have their TAFDC benefits reinstated pending review of an application for extension. The Department's requirement that families complete the application for an extension of benefits as a condition precedent to having benefits reinstated is inconsistent with the [April 20 order]." This order stated that "the court further modifies its April 20 order to ensure that the intent of the court, as expressed in that Order and in the May 13 and May 20 clarifications of that Order, is carried out." The order required the department to mail a copy of an attached one-page notice to each member of the class of former TAFDC recipients whose benefits had been terminated after twenty-four months or after denial of an extension. A simple application for reinstatement of benefits was also attached.

Pursuant to a motion by the defendant, granted in part, the judge made several minor revisions to the July 14 order in a July 15, 1999, order.¹² The department appealed from the July 15, 1999, order. On October 1, 1999, however, the department moved to dismiss voluntarily its appeal of the July 15 order and the Appeals Court dismissed this appeal with prejudice.

2. Mootness. After transfer of the case to this court, Smith and Muise moved for the dismissal of the department's appeal concerning the May 13 and May 20 orders on grounds of the mootness of those claims. They argue that those orders have been superseded by subsequent implementation orders entered July 14 and 15 by the Superior Court judge and no longer under appeal by the department. They claim the July orders cover "all of the same subjects as were covered by the May 13 and May 20 orders."

The...