Williams v. Wohlgemuth
| Citation | 540 F.2d 163 |
| Decision Date | 20 July 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 75-2239,75-2239 |
| Parties | Viola WILLIAMS, and Philadelphia Welfare Rights Organization, by Louise Brookins, its Chairwoman and Trustee ad litem, for themselves and all others similarly situated v. Helene WOHLGEMUTH, Secretary, Department of Public Welfare, et al., Appellants. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit) |
Stephen F. Gold, Community Legal Services, Inc., Philadelphia, Pa., for appellees.
Howard M. Holmes, Asst. Atty. Gen., Michael von Moschzisker, Deputy Atty. Gen., Philadelphia, Pa., Robert P. Kane, Atty. Gen., Harrisburg, Pa., for appellants.
Before ADAMS and HUNTER, Circuit Judges, and SCHWARTZ, District Judge.
We are asked in this appeal to determine the validity of certain regulations of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare (DPW). The regulations in question make emergency assistance payments available to persons whose special needs for such funding result from either of two enumerated causes civil disorder or natural disaster but not from any others.
Congress amended the Social Security Act in 1968 by authorizing the states to provide emergency assistance payments to needy families with children. 1 The legislation permitted the states to deliver money, payments in kind, medical care, or services to needy families with children in order "to avoid destitution of such child or to provide living arrangements in a home for such child . . . ." 2 Adoption of an emergency assistance plan by a state is optional, 3 but fifty percent of the total amount expended by a state that chooses to utilize the program is reimbursed by the federal government. 4
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania elected to initiate an emergency assistance program in 1969. Its plan made the assistance available only to those needy families whose destitution was caused by civil disorder. 5 Three years later, the arrangement was amended to allow assistance for emergency needs caused by natural disaster as well. 6
On December 11, 1974 Viola Williams and the Philadelphia Welfare Rights Organization filed a class action suit against the Secretary of DPW and officials of the Philadelphia County Board of Assistance, challenging the validity of Pennsylvania's emergency assistance plan. The gravamen of the complaint was that if a state chooses to provide any emergency assistance payments, it must make them available to all families with children facing destitution, regardless of the cause of the emergency. Specifically, it was alleged that Williams could not afford to pay her electric bill; that she and her child were in an emergency situation because the electrical service to her home had been terminated; and that DPW refused to provide emergency assistance payments to her, since her emergency was not caused by civil disorder or natural disaster. The complaint further alleged that the named plaintiffs represented a class composed of "all Pennsylvania recipients of public assistance who are denied a prompt emergency assistance grant." It was urged that the Pennsylvania plan violated the Social Security Act and the equal protection and due process clauses of the Constitution.
Six days after the complaint was filed, Williams received from DPW a lump sum payment sufficient to pay her past-due electric bill. It came after a check of her records by the Department and the resultant discovery that errors had been committed on payments previously made to her. The new payment solved her exigent needs. Presumably because Williams was therefore no longer able to represent the class, a motion to intervene as plaintiffs was filed two days later on behalf of four other individuals. Three of them Mary Witt, Beatrice Carmona, and Esther Saez averred that they had received notices of eviction from their landlords, and could not find other housing because they could not afford the security deposit. Carmona and Saez further stated in affidavits supporting the motion to intervene that their public assistance caseworkers had told them that DPW would not provide assistance to cover the deposit or any advance rental payments that might be required. The fourth individual, Geraldine Little, claimed that she had an outstanding water bill that she could not pay, and that she was faced with termination of her water service.
The district court held a hearing on December 20, the day after the motion to intervene had been filed. After the hearing, that court took under advisement the motion to intervene, the question of class action certification, and the merits of the case. 7 In a memorandum opinion and order dated August 22, 1975, the district court granted the motion to intervene, certified the proposed class, and held that the Pennsylvania emergency assistance plan conflicts with the applicable federal statute and the regulations promulgated under it. The defendants took an appeal.
We affirm.
As a preliminary matter, we must address two contentions raised by the defendants which, if correct, would require reversal of the judgment of the district court without the necessity of reaching the merits.
First, the defendants urge that the district court did not have jurisdiction over the subject matter. This contention is not meritorious.
The complaint alleged that Pennsylvania's emergency assistance program violated 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by depriving the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws and of due process of law. A pendent "statutory" claim that the Pennsylvania plan conflicts with the Social Security Act, and thus is in violation of the supremacy clause, 8 was also included. The complaint further asserted that the district court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3), which provides the federal courts with power to adjudicate civil actions instituted to "redress the deprivation, under color of any State . . . regulation, . . . of any right . . . secured by the Constitution . . . ."
In Hagans v. Lavine, 9 the Supreme Court upheld the decision of a district court to take jurisdiction in a similarly structured suit, one also attacking a state's welfare program. The Court ruled in Hagans that the district court had jurisdiction over the case if "the constitutional claim . . . was of sufficient substance to support federal jurisdiction." 10 A claim is sufficient to confer such jurisdiction, the Court stated, if it is not "wholly insubstantial" or "wholly frivolous." 11
Even "(i)n the area of economics and social welfare," 12 "(s)tate laws and regulations must still 'be rationally based and free from invidious discrimination.' " 13 We cannot say that the emergency assistance plan adopted by Pennsylvania is so unquestionably rational that the constitutional challenge is wholly insubstantial. 14 Thus, the district court properly took jurisdiction over the case.
Second, it is contended by the defendants that there was no plaintiff with standing to sue as an individual or on behalf of the class at the time the district court certified the class and decided the case.
The power of federal courts to adjudicate disputes is limited by article III of the Constitution to actual cases and controversies. For our purposes here, this requirement means, in the words of the Supreme Court in Sosna v. Iowa, 15 that "(t)here must . . . be a named plaintiff who has such a case or controversy at the time the complaint is filed, and at the time the class action is certified by the District Court pursuant to Rule 23, (and that) there must be a live controversy at the time this Court reviews the case." 16
We must, then, determine whether the present case complied with the three branches of the Sosna standard. We find that it did.
(1) When the complaint was filed, plaintiff Williams alleged that DPW had improperly refused to issue her an emergency assistance check. There was thus a controversy between at least one plaintiff and the defendants at that time.
(2) When the district court certified the class action, the motion of four other individuals to intervene as plaintiffs was simultaneously granted. Each of them had made the same claim that Williams had that DPW had improperly refused to pay emergency assistance. In the district court's memorandum opinion, it was observed that "some" of the claims of the intervenors had been remedied by aid received from other sources. We understand that statement to mean that some had not. But the district court made clear that the intervenors were entitled to litigate the interests of the class because the issue presented was "capable of repetition, yet evading review." Under these circumstances, the class has standing only if the certification of the class is found to "relate back" to the filing of the original complaint. 17 Although the trial judge might have certified the class earlier in the proceedings, the emergency nature of the claims is such that they might well have been moot prior to certification. Accordingly, application of the relation-back doctrine is proper here. Thus, not only was there a controversy between at least one plaintiff and the defendants at the time the class action was certified, but the certification of the class also related back to the time of the complaint.
(3) Nothing has been brought to our attention that would indicate that there is no longer any controversy between members of the plaintiff class and the defendants. 18
Because the Sosna test was met in the case before us, we conclude that there was at least one plaintiff with standing when the complaint was filed and when the class was certified, and that we may review the case in its present posture. We thus move to the merits.
The defendants make two claims concerning the merits: that Congress did not intend that emergency assistance be made available to recipients of aid to families with dependent children (AFDC), and that the Commonwealth may, in any event, choose to provide emergency assistance to victims of...
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