Wilcox v. Petit, Civ. No. 85-0342-P.

• Decision Date: 09 December 1986
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 85-0342-P.
• Citation: 649 F. Supp. 685
• Parties: Gloria WILCOX, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Michael PETIT, et al., Defendants, v. Otis R. BOWEN, Secretary U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maine

649 F. Supp. 685

Gloria WILCOX, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Michael PETIT, et al., Defendants, v. Otis R. BOWEN, Secretary U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services.

Civ. No. 85-0342-P.

United States District Court, D. Maine.

December 9, 1986.

Thomas H. Kelly, Pine Tree Legal Assistance, Portland, Me., Mary T. Henderson, Pine Tree Legal Assistance, Augusta, Me., Robert E. Mittel, Portland, Me., for plaintiffs.

Leigh I. Saufley, Raymond E. Ritchie, Carmen L. Coulombe, Office of the Atty. Gen., Augusta, Me., for defendants Petit and Maine Dept. of Human Services.

Richard S. Cohen, Paula D. Silsby, F. Mark Terison, Office of U.S. Atty., Portland, Me., Joyce Elise McCourt, Asst. Regional Atty., Boston, Mass., for defendant Bowen.

ORDER DENYING MOTION TO DISMISS AND DENYING MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

GENE CARTER, District Judge.

The Plaintiffs in this case receive assistance through the Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) program.¹ As a condition of receipt of AFDC benefits, each Plaintiff has assigned her right to child support payments to the Maine Department of Human Services. The Plaintiffs have alleged three causes of action naming Michael Petit, Commissioner of the Maine Department of Human Services (DHS), and Otis T. Bowen, Secretary of the United States Department of Health & Human Services, as Defendants.

There do not appear to be any material factual disagreements between the parties in regard to Plaintiffs' first cause of action, which alleges that the Defendants have misconstrued 42 U.S.C. § 657(b)(1). That section directs that some child support, when received by the state from the estranged spouse, be "passed through" to the AFDC recipient without affecting her eligibility for AFDC assistance:

The first fifty dollars of such amounts as are collected periodically which represent monthly support payments shall be paid to the family without affecting its eligibility for assistance or decreasing any amount otherwise payable as assistance to such family during such month.

The parties agree on how this provision should be interpreted in cases in which one child support payment arrives each month and represents the entire amount due for that month. The Plaintiffs challenge the Defendants' interpretation of the statute, however, in cases where no payment is made one month and then a double payment is made the following month. The Secretary has mandated that in such cases only a single fifty dollars be forwarded to the welfare recipient. The Plaintiffs argue that if the Department has received two months worth of child support, then they should receive two fifty-dollar payments, not one.

Great deference is to be accorded the interpretation given a statute by the agency charged with administering it, but deference should never rise to the level of blind faith. See Committee for an Independent P-I v. Hearst Corp., 704 F.2d 467, 473 (9th Cir.1983). The Supreme Court has instructed that a court reviewing an agency's interpretation of law should not "slip into judicial inertia" or "rubber stamp" administrative decisions, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms v. Federal Labor Relations Authority, 464 U.S. 89, 97, 104 S.Ct. 439, 78 L.Ed.2d 195 (1983), and that reviewing courts "are not obliged to stand aside and rubber stamp" the agency. NLRB v. Brown, 380 U.S. 278, 291, 85 S.Ct. 980, 988, 13 L.Ed.2d 839 (1965). In addition, the Administrative Procedure Act states that "the reviewing court," not the agency, "shall decide all relevant questions of law." 5 U.S.C. § 706 (1982). See Mayburg v. Secretary of Health & Human Services, 740 F.2d 100 (1st Cir.1984). Courts should not defer to an administrative construction of a statute when there are "compelling indications that it is wrong." Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co., 414 U.S. 86, 94-95, 94 S.Ct. 334, 339-340, 38 L.Ed.2d 287 (1973), quoting Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 381, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 1802, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969).

In this case there are clear indications that the Secretary has erred. Under the Secretary's interpretation, fifty dollars is to be paid to the family per payment received, rather than per month's worth of child support received. If this really were the meaning of the legislation, then a parent could pass more money through to his family simply by paying child support in weekly or biweekly installments. Under the Secretary's interpretation, fifty dollars from each payment would go through to the family. A parent who paid his monthly support with a series of small checks could pass through all of the money, while a parent who paid his monthly support with one check would pass on only fifty dollars. This cannot be the intention of the legislation.

Plaintiffs point to three situations in which the offending payment pattern occurs and fifty dollars of child support is not passed on to them: when the responsible parent is late in forwarding a payment to DHS, when the responsible parent's employer is dilatory in forwarding weekly withholdings to DHS, or when DHS delays in entering the receipt of child support upon its books and credits payments made in one month to a later month.² In at least the second and third of these situations, the family is being penalized for circumstances entirely beyond its control. No rational purpose is served by denying child support to a needy family because...