Appellant
Vivian Marie Thompson
Appellee
Shapiro, Commissioner of Welfare of Connecticut
Appellant's Claim
That the denial of state and the District of Columbia welfare benefits to residents of less than one year is discriminatory and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Archibald Cox
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Francis J. MacGregor
Justices for the Court
William J. Brennan, Jr. (writing for the Court), William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, Thurgood Marshall, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Hugo Lafayette Black, John Marshall Harlan II, Earl Warren
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
21 April 1969
Decision
Affirmed the decisions of three district courts which found various state andDistrict of Columbia welfare residency requirements unconstitutional.
Significance
This decision was a landmark in judicial right-to-travel interpretation. Thefirst case to analyze the right to travel in the context of the Equal Protection Clause, it was also the first to apply "strict scrutiny" to the protection of that right and to confirm that government statutes could not even indirectly restrict it. The U.S. Supreme Court had long before established travel as a valid right, but before this case it had never addressed how that right might conflict with a modern government's needs and abilities to withhold benefits. By this ruling the Court gave unprecedented weight to the right.
The Right to Interstate Travel
Vivian Marie Thompson was a 19-year old single mother who was pregnant with her second child when she moved from Massachusetts to Hartford, Connecticut. She first lived with her mother, a Hartford resident, then later moved into her own apartment. Unable to work or attend job training programs because of her pregnancy, she applied for assistance under Connecticut's Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. In accordance with their regulations,the state denied her aid because she had not yet resided in Connecticut for one full year. Thompson brought action against the state in the District Courtfor the District of Connecticut. That court found that because the waiting period requirement had "a chilling effect on the right to travel" it was unconstitutional. It also held that the same requirements violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it was intended, as Connecticut acknowledged, to discourage people who need aid from moving into Connecticut.
On appeal, the case moved on to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was considered together with two similar cases, Washington v. Legrant, and Reynolds v. Smith. In the Washington case, three people had been denied AFDCaid because they had not met a District of Columbia one-year residency requirement. In Reynolds, two people had been denied aid in Pennsylvania for the same reason.
Writing for the majority, Justice Brennan first established that the one-yearresidency requirement created two classes of needy resident families. Thesetwo classes, he said, were different only in that one group had resided in the particular area for over one year, and one group for less than a year. Thatdistinction, he stated, was not reason enough for a government to deny one group the necessities of life.
The appellants had argued that the residency requirements were intended to keep public assistance programs functional by preventing a rush of destitute newcomers from draining state welfare resources. They maintained that people who entered welfare programs during their first year of residence in a new state were likely to stay on those programs. This would eventually impair the state's ability to assist its needy long-time residents, they said. Justice Brennan centered his response to this on every U.S. citizen's right to travel freely throughout the country. This right was not expressly named in the Constitution, he said, but was a product of both that document and the "nature of our Federal Union." Thus, he reasoned, if a classification of residents was created solely for the purpose of deterring the poor from moving between states,then it was unconstitutional.
The appellants further argued that even if it was unconstitutional for a state to try to prevent an influx of poor into its population, then the requirement could still be justified as a way to keep out those who were moving in simply to try to obtain larger benefits. Justice Brennan responded by noting that the state's requirements did not attempt to find out if that was the applicant's reason for moving, but simply presumed that it was the reason in all cases. Regardless, he wrote, the state could not discriminate against such a motive, no more than they could against an individual who changed residence totake advantage of a better educational system. The appellants presented yet another justification of the requirement: that in differentiating old from newresidents, it identified who was making a greater economic contribution to the state through tax payments. Justice Brennan quickly dispensed with an analysis of facts in the case, instead contending that the appellants' reasoningwould allow a state to distribute public benefits and services based on a citizen's past tax payments. This, he said, would be forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause.
Justice Brennan then challenged the argument that the waiting period requirement was justified by several administrative purposes. Although he acknowledged that the state had a valid interest in each purpose, those interests, he concluded, did not outweigh the constitutional right to interstate travel. Finally, the appellants contended that the constitutionality of the waiting period requirement could not be challenged because Congress had approved the requirement. As part of the joint federal-state AFDC program, they argued, Congress had authorized the states and the District of Columbia to impose the waiting period requirement. Justice Brennan disagreed. The relevant provision of the Social Security Act, he wrote, only prevented the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare from rejecting state AFDC plans simply because theyincluded such a requirement. He suggested that perhaps the provision itselfwas unconstitutional, in that "Congress may not authorize the States to violate the Equal Protection Clause."
Legitimate Government Objectives?
In his dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Warren disagreed with the majority regarding Congress' powers over and intentions for the waiting period requirement. He believed that Congress did have the power to authorize states to impose minimal residence requirements, and that it had "constitutionally exercised" that power for over 30 years. He wrote also that any restrictions on an individual's right to travel created by the requirement were not substantial enough to outweigh the governmental justifications for the requirement. Finally, he noted that the majority opinion addressed only the "top of the iceberg."There were many other areas where states apply residency requirements, he said, such as voting eligibility and attendance at state-supported universities. He felt the majority decision ignored its implications for these areas.
Justice Harlan also strongly dissented. He disagreed with the majority's reasoning mainly because it was based on an "unwise" expansion of an
The majority, he wrote, had reached a wrong conclusion using this reasoning because they had simply deemed the appellants' list of governmental objectiveseither unlawful or not "compelling." Secondly, he was concerned with the "fundamental right" branch of this doctrine.
He proceeded with an analysis in which he weighed the two competing interests: the individual's right to travel against the governmental interests servedby the waiting period. He concluded that the residence requirements placed only "indirect and . . . insubstantial" restrictions on travel and the governmental purposes they served were "legitimate and real." Thus, he reasoned, therequirements were constitutional.
Impact
A test was created in Shapiro for determining when state waiting period requirements hindered the right to travel and thus prompted "strict scrutiny," and when they did not. This test was criticized for being vague, but theCourt did more finely define it in subsequent cases. Over the next 20 years,the question of the constitutionality of such requirements seemed settled. The Court in the 1989 Eddleman v. Center Township case referred to "theold and well-established" standard set by Shapiro. Meanwhile, state waiting period requirements for welfare aid quickly began to evaporate after Shapiro, according to Clark Peterson in "The Resurgence of Durational Residence Requirements." Some were invalidated by the courts and others disappeared due to lack of enforcement. With residency requirements gone, assertedTodd Zubler in "The Right to Migrate and Welfare Reform," people on welfare began to move from state to state in greater numbers. This increased migration, he contended, caused individual states to keep lowering their welfare benefits to avoid becoming a "welfare magnet" state. So Shapiro, he concluded, created a dangerous "race to the bottom" among states. In the early 1990sa trend toward reactivating old requirements or enacting new ones began in some states, sometimes in open resistance to Shapiro, sometimes carefully worded to avoid its "strict scrutiny." Opinion is divided over whether these new requirements will fail for the reasons set out by Shapiro, or whether Shapiro will fail to survive future struggles over welfare reform.
Related Cases
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
Millions of children have benefitted from the Aid to Families with DependentChildren (AFDC) welfare program since its creation in 1935. With the intent to help needy children through a family environment, states were given latitude to determine the level of assistance available to indigent parents and their children for basic necessities. AFDC provided cash assistance to poor single-parent families with children, or to poor families with two parents where the main wage earner was physically or mentally incapacitated.
With the sweeping federal welfare reform legislation of 1996, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced AFDC. The new Welfare-to-Work program provides set sums of federal money, "block grants," to states to administerwelfare programs with almost complete local control over determining eligibility and benefits. With charges that AFDC made welfare a way of life, TANF requires parents to be working within two years of first receiving aid and limits aid to a maximum of five years in the lifetime of a family, even less in some states. State and local governments also assumed greater responsibility to generate more jobs and provide job training, career counseling, and job placement services.
TANF ended a six decade guarantee of federal welfare checks to all eligible low-income mothers and children, and removed many federal legal protections.
Sources
Grigsby III, J. Eugene. "Welfare Reform Means Business as Usual." Journalof the American Planning Association, winter 1998.
Vivian Marie Thompson
Appellee
Shapiro, Commissioner of Welfare of Connecticut
Appellant's Claim
That the denial of state and the District of Columbia welfare benefits to residents of less than one year is discriminatory and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Archibald Cox
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Francis J. MacGregor
Justices for the Court
William J. Brennan, Jr. (writing for the Court), William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, Thurgood Marshall, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Hugo Lafayette Black, John Marshall Harlan II, Earl Warren
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
21 April 1969
Decision
Affirmed the decisions of three district courts which found various state andDistrict of Columbia welfare residency requirements unconstitutional.
Significance
This decision was a landmark in judicial right-to-travel interpretation. Thefirst case to analyze the right to travel in the context of the Equal Protection Clause, it was also the first to apply "strict scrutiny" to the protection of that right and to confirm that government statutes could not even indirectly restrict it. The U.S. Supreme Court had long before established travel as a valid right, but before this case it had never addressed how that right might conflict with a modern government's needs and abilities to withhold benefits. By this ruling the Court gave unprecedented weight to the right.
The Right to Interstate Travel
Vivian Marie Thompson was a 19-year old single mother who was pregnant with her second child when she moved from Massachusetts to Hartford, Connecticut. She first lived with her mother, a Hartford resident, then later moved into her own apartment. Unable to work or attend job training programs because of her pregnancy, she applied for assistance under Connecticut's Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. In accordance with their regulations,the state denied her aid because she had not yet resided in Connecticut for one full year. Thompson brought action against the state in the District Courtfor the District of Connecticut. That court found that because the waiting period requirement had "a chilling effect on the right to travel" it was unconstitutional. It also held that the same requirements violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it was intended, as Connecticut acknowledged, to discourage people who need aid from moving into Connecticut.
On appeal, the case moved on to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was considered together with two similar cases, Washington v. Legrant, and Reynolds v. Smith. In the Washington case, three people had been denied AFDCaid because they had not met a District of Columbia one-year residency requirement. In Reynolds, two people had been denied aid in Pennsylvania for the same reason.
Writing for the majority, Justice Brennan first established that the one-yearresidency requirement created two classes of needy resident families. Thesetwo classes, he said, were different only in that one group had resided in the particular area for over one year, and one group for less than a year. Thatdistinction, he stated, was not reason enough for a government to deny one group the necessities of life.
The appellants had argued that the residency requirements were intended to keep public assistance programs functional by preventing a rush of destitute newcomers from draining state welfare resources. They maintained that people who entered welfare programs during their first year of residence in a new state were likely to stay on those programs. This would eventually impair the state's ability to assist its needy long-time residents, they said. Justice Brennan centered his response to this on every U.S. citizen's right to travel freely throughout the country. This right was not expressly named in the Constitution, he said, but was a product of both that document and the "nature of our Federal Union." Thus, he reasoned, if a classification of residents was created solely for the purpose of deterring the poor from moving between states,then it was unconstitutional.
The appellants further argued that even if it was unconstitutional for a state to try to prevent an influx of poor into its population, then the requirement could still be justified as a way to keep out those who were moving in simply to try to obtain larger benefits. Justice Brennan responded by noting that the state's requirements did not attempt to find out if that was the applicant's reason for moving, but simply presumed that it was the reason in all cases. Regardless, he wrote, the state could not discriminate against such a motive, no more than they could against an individual who changed residence totake advantage of a better educational system. The appellants presented yet another justification of the requirement: that in differentiating old from newresidents, it identified who was making a greater economic contribution to the state through tax payments. Justice Brennan quickly dispensed with an analysis of facts in the case, instead contending that the appellants' reasoningwould allow a state to distribute public benefits and services based on a citizen's past tax payments. This, he said, would be forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause.
Justice Brennan then challenged the argument that the waiting period requirement was justified by several administrative purposes. Although he acknowledged that the state had a valid interest in each purpose, those interests, he concluded, did not outweigh the constitutional right to interstate travel. Finally, the appellants contended that the constitutionality of the waiting period requirement could not be challenged because Congress had approved the requirement. As part of the joint federal-state AFDC program, they argued, Congress had authorized the states and the District of Columbia to impose the waiting period requirement. Justice Brennan disagreed. The relevant provision of the Social Security Act, he wrote, only prevented the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare from rejecting state AFDC plans simply because theyincluded such a requirement. He suggested that perhaps the provision itselfwas unconstitutional, in that "Congress may not authorize the States to violate the Equal Protection Clause."
Legitimate Government Objectives?
In his dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Warren disagreed with the majority regarding Congress' powers over and intentions for the waiting period requirement. He believed that Congress did have the power to authorize states to impose minimal residence requirements, and that it had "constitutionally exercised" that power for over 30 years. He wrote also that any restrictions on an individual's right to travel created by the requirement were not substantial enough to outweigh the governmental justifications for the requirement. Finally, he noted that the majority opinion addressed only the "top of the iceberg."There were many other areas where states apply residency requirements, he said, such as voting eligibility and attendance at state-supported universities. He felt the majority decision ignored its implications for these areas.
Justice Harlan also strongly dissented. He disagreed with the majority's reasoning mainly because it was based on an "unwise" expansion of an
equal protection doctrine of relatively recent vintage: the rule that statutory classifications which either are based upon certain "suspect" criteria oraffect "fundamental rights" will be held to deny equal protection unless justified by a "compelling" government interest.
The majority, he wrote, had reached a wrong conclusion using this reasoning because they had simply deemed the appellants' list of governmental objectiveseither unlawful or not "compelling." Secondly, he was concerned with the "fundamental right" branch of this doctrine.
Virtually every state statute affects important rights . . . [and] . . . I know of nothing which entitles this Court to pick out particular human activities, characterize them as "fundamental," and give them added protection under an unusually stringentequal protection test.
He proceeded with an analysis in which he weighed the two competing interests: the individual's right to travel against the governmental interests servedby the waiting period. He concluded that the residence requirements placed only "indirect and . . . insubstantial" restrictions on travel and the governmental purposes they served were "legitimate and real." Thus, he reasoned, therequirements were constitutional.
Impact
A test was created in Shapiro for determining when state waiting period requirements hindered the right to travel and thus prompted "strict scrutiny," and when they did not. This test was criticized for being vague, but theCourt did more finely define it in subsequent cases. Over the next 20 years,the question of the constitutionality of such requirements seemed settled. The Court in the 1989 Eddleman v. Center Township case referred to "theold and well-established" standard set by Shapiro. Meanwhile, state waiting period requirements for welfare aid quickly began to evaporate after Shapiro, according to Clark Peterson in "The Resurgence of Durational Residence Requirements." Some were invalidated by the courts and others disappeared due to lack of enforcement. With residency requirements gone, assertedTodd Zubler in "The Right to Migrate and Welfare Reform," people on welfare began to move from state to state in greater numbers. This increased migration, he contended, caused individual states to keep lowering their welfare benefits to avoid becoming a "welfare magnet" state. So Shapiro, he concluded, created a dangerous "race to the bottom" among states. In the early 1990sa trend toward reactivating old requirements or enacting new ones began in some states, sometimes in open resistance to Shapiro, sometimes carefully worded to avoid its "strict scrutiny." Opinion is divided over whether these new requirements will fail for the reasons set out by Shapiro, or whether Shapiro will fail to survive future struggles over welfare reform.
Related Cases
- The Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492 (1849).
- Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330 (1972).
- Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U.S. 250 (1974).
- Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393 (1975).
- Zobel v. Williams, 457 U.S. 55 (1982).
- Attorney General v. Soto-Lopez, 476 U.S. 898 (1986).
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
Millions of children have benefitted from the Aid to Families with DependentChildren (AFDC) welfare program since its creation in 1935. With the intent to help needy children through a family environment, states were given latitude to determine the level of assistance available to indigent parents and their children for basic necessities. AFDC provided cash assistance to poor single-parent families with children, or to poor families with two parents where the main wage earner was physically or mentally incapacitated.
With the sweeping federal welfare reform legislation of 1996, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced AFDC. The new Welfare-to-Work program provides set sums of federal money, "block grants," to states to administerwelfare programs with almost complete local control over determining eligibility and benefits. With charges that AFDC made welfare a way of life, TANF requires parents to be working within two years of first receiving aid and limits aid to a maximum of five years in the lifetime of a family, even less in some states. State and local governments also assumed greater responsibility to generate more jobs and provide job training, career counseling, and job placement services.
TANF ended a six decade guarantee of federal welfare checks to all eligible low-income mothers and children, and removed many federal legal protections.
Sources
Grigsby III, J. Eugene. "Welfare Reform Means Business as Usual." Journalof the American Planning Association, winter 1998.
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