Wynn v. Indiana State Department of Public Welfare

• Decision Date: 20 July 1970
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 69 F 76.
• Parties: Mrs. Robbie WYNN et al., Plaintiffs, v. INDIANA STATE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

316 F. Supp. 324

Mrs. Robbie WYNN et al., Plaintiffs, v. INDIANA STATE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. 69 F 76.

United States District Court, N. D. Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.

July 20, 1970.

Ivan E. Bodensteiner, Norman P. Metzger, Legal Services Program, Fort Wayne, Ind., for plaintiffs.

Robert H. Berning, Fort Wayne, Ind., for Board of Directors of Allen County Dept. of Public Welfare.

Robert A. Zaban, Deputy Atty. Gen., for Indiana Dept. of State Public Welfare.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

ESCHBACH, District Judge.

This suit essentially involves a non-constitutional challenge to a state welfare law and regulation based upon their alleged inconsistency with an Act of Congress. It is before this court upon the state and local welfare defendants' motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Plaintiffs allege a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1964) and assert jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331(a), 1343(3), and 1343(4).

For the reasons discussed below, defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action under § 1983 will be granted.

I. NATURE OF ACTION

This is a class action brought upon behalf of all recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 601-609 (1964) and Ind.Stat.Ann. §§ 52-1113a, 52-1240 to 52-1251 (Burns 1964 Repl. & 1969 Supp.). In their second amended complaint, plaintiffs challenge Ind.Stat.Ann. § 52-1241 (Burns' 1969 Supp.) which imposes "dollar maximums" upon the amount of AFDC assistance and Forms 5A and 350, Ind. DPW, Public Assistance Manual Part IV E and IV F) revised 1966) which define the "standard of need" or financial eligibility requirements for AFDC assistance. Plaintiffs contend that these State welfare laws and regulations are inconsistent with § 402(a) (23) of the 1967 amendments to the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 602(a) (23) (Supp. IV, 1968) and are therefore invalid.

The original complaint in this cause was filed in August 1969. On December 31, 1969, all parties joined in a motion for a stay of proceedings until the Supreme Court issued an opinion in the then pending case of Rosado v. Wyman. This motion was granted until March 31, 1970 and subsequently extended until April 30, 1970. On April 6, 1970, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397, 90 S.Ct. 1207, 25 L.Ed.2d 442 (1970) and in a second relevant welfare case, Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 25 L.Ed.2d 491 (1970). Upon granting plaintiffs' motion to file an amended complaint, this court denied as moot the defendants' motion to dismiss the original complaint. As indicated at the pre-trial conference held on June 1, 1970, this present motion to dismiss filed by the state and local welfare defendants will be considered as directed toward the second amended complaint. Aside from adding several county officials who perform accounting and auditing functions, the second amended complaint is identical to the first amended complaint.

The Supreme Court has already determined the intention of Congress when it passed § 402(a) (23) of the 1967 Social Security Amendments. See Rosado v. Wyman, supra, 397 U.S. 397, 90 S.Ct. at 1218-1219. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has upheld "dollar maximums" against both constitutional and statutory challenges. See Dandridge v. Williams, supra. Plaintiffs herein seek, in effect, to have this court determine whether Indiana's welfare law and regulations conform with federal law as determined in Rosado and Dandridge. Yet these two Supreme Court decisions, although illuminating the merits of this action, shed little, if any, light upon the two legal issues raised by defendants' motion to dismiss.

With respect to whether this court has subject matter jurisdiction, the Supreme Court in Rosado held only that the district court had pendent jurisdiction over the claim of incompatibility between New York welfare law and § 402(a) 23). Rosado v. Wyman, supra 397 U.S. 397, 90 S.Ct. at 1212-1214, 1223-1224 (concurring opinion of Douglas, J.). The Court explicitly reserved the question, as it had in King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309, 312, 88 S.Ct. 2128, 20 L.Ed.2d 1118 n.3 (1968), whether district courts have original jurisdiction over suits, such as this one, challenging state AFDC provisions solely on the grounds that they are inconsistent with federal statute. Id. 397 U.S. 397, 90 S.Ct. at 1214 n.7.

With respect to whether plaintiffs have stated an action under § 1983, it should be observed that Rosado was not a § 1983 (federal) cause of action but, rather, was a pendent state action and that King, although a federal (§ 1983) action, did involve a substantial constitutional challenge. Here, on the other hand, plaintiffs have alleged a federal (§ 1983) action based solely on statutory grounds—an alleged incompatibility between state and federal welfare law. It must be noted here that with two exceptions discussed below, all reported § 1983 actions of which this court is aware have challenged the deprivation of a constitutional right.

It is not necessary for the disposition of this motion to decide whether this court has subject matter jurisdiction because, as will be discussed below, even assuming arguendo that it did have jurisdiction, plaintiffs have failed to state a cause of action under § 1983 and therefore defendants' motion must be granted.

The court does note, however, that at least one court of appeals has recently held that a district court lacked jurisdiction under either 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3) and (4) or 28 U.S.C. § 1331 to consider challenges to a state welfare law based solely upon alleged inconsistency with federal law. McCall v. Shapiro, 416 F. 2d 246 (2d Cir. 1969), aff'g 292 F.Supp. 268 (D.Conn.1968). But see Gomez v. Florida State Employ. Serv., 417 F.2d 569, 580 and 580 n. 39 (5th Cir. 1969) (alternative holding: jurisdiction under § 1343(4) for § 1983 action to enforce statutory rights of migrant farm workers under Wagner-Peyser Act, 29 U.S.C. A. §§ 49 et seq.). In two recent cases which sought to enforce classic-type (e. g., voting and nondiscrimination) federal civil rights laws, the Supreme Court noted that jurisdiction rested upon 28 U.S. C. § 1343(3) and (4). Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U.S. 544, 554-555, 89 S.Ct. 817, 22 L.Ed.2d 1 (1969) (statutory rights under 1964 Voting Rights Act); Jones v. Alfred H. Meyer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 412, 88 S.Ct. 2186, 20 L.Ed.2d 1189 n. 1 (1968) (statutory rights under 1866 Civil Rights Act, now § 1982). The rights of AFDC recipients which arise under the Social Security Act are not, it would appear, among these classic-type civil rights. See McCall v. Shapiro, supra. Moreover, the Supreme Court, as noted above, has twice reserved the question of whether a district court would have jurisdiction to consider challenges, such as this one, to state welfare laws based solely upon federal statutes.

Insofar as the discussion below of whether plaintiffs have stated a cause of action under § 1983 is applicable to the question of jurisdiction under § 1343,¹ it would suggest that there is no jurisdiction here under § 1343.² Yet, as observed earlier, this court need not answer this jurisdictional question in order to dispose of defendants' motion.

II. FAILURE TO STATE A CAUSE OF ACTION UNDER § 1983

A. Origins of § 1983

What is now codified as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1964) is derived from Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of April 20, 1871, 17 Stat. 13. The 1871 Act, which was popularly known as the "Ku Klux Act," was entitled "An Act to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for Other Purposes." Section 1 provided:

"That any person who, under color of law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State, shall subject, or cause to be subjected, any person within the jurisdiction of the United States to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States, shall, any such law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of the State to the contrary notwithstanding, be liable to the party injured in any action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress; such proceeding to be prosecuted in the several district or circuit courts of the United States, with and subject to the same rights of appeal, review upon error, and other remedies provided in like cases in such courts, under the provisions of the act of the ninth of April³, eighteen hundred and sixty-six, entitled `An Act to protect all persons in the United States in their Civil rights, and to furnish the means of their vindication'; and the other remedial laws of the United States which are in their nature applicable in such cases." (Emphasis added.)

Section 1983 presently provides:

"Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress." (Emphasis added.)

All changes in the language, both additions (e. g., "and laws") and deletions, and changes in the order of the clauses were made when the Act of 1871 was codified and appear without any explanation or comment in the Reviser's Draft (1872). 1 Revision of U.S. Statutes, Draft 947 (1872). No alterations in statutory coverage may be based upon these changes by the reviser. See Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 1627, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 n. 15 (1970) (opinion of Brennan, J.); Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 212-213, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 n.18 (1961) (opinion of...