Ban on Giving Food Stamps to Strikers Upheld by Court

The Supreme Court, in a defeat for labor unions, ruled Wednesday that Congress has the authority to deny food stamps to workers on strike.

On a 5-3 vote, the justices rejected union arguments that the 1981 food stamp amendment was a cold-hearted move to punish dissident workers and give management an advantage in ending labor disputes.

Instead, the court majority accepted the arguments of the Reagan Administration and Congress that giving food aid to strikers could represent “undue favoritism” in behalf of unions.

‘Weapon in Labor Disputes’

The Food Stamp Act was not intended “to establish a program that would serve as a weapon in labor disputes,” Justice Byron R. White said in ruling against the United Auto Workers.

“Exercising the right to strike inevitably risks economic hardship, but we are not inclined to hold that the (Constitution) . . . requires the government to minimize that result by qualifying the striker for food stamps.”

In dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall said that excluding strikers from benefits that other jobless workers receive is “one-sided . . . and amounts to a penalty on strikers, not neutrality.” He was joined by Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Harry A. Blackmun.

UAW President Owen Bieber said that the ruling is “a blow to working families throughout America” because it lets the government keep “children and other family members from receiving food stamps for which they would be otherwise eligible solely because a family member is engaged in a legal strike.”

‘Economic Warfare’ Cited

“This decision serves only the interests of those who wage economic warfare against working people,” he added.

The ban on food stamps for strikers was enacted as part of the huge budget-cutting measure passed by Congress soon after President Reagan took office. Conservative lawmakers had proposed the ban repeatedly since 1968, but without success until Republicans took control of the Senate in 1981.

The amendment said that a household may not become eligible for food stamps if “any member of the household is on strike because of a labor dispute (other than a lockout).” Families already on food aid remain eligible, but their benefits may not be increased to compensate for the striker’s loss of income.

The case was brought in 1984 on behalf of striking Midwest auto workers and Kentucky mine workers who said that the ban on food stamps had resulted in their children’s becoming malnourished and forced them to end their walkouts.

Suit Calls Law Unfair

In a federal court challenge filed in Washington, they contended that the law violated their constitutional right to freedom of association because their children were being punished for their strike action. They said also that the law was unfair because workers who quit their jobs with “good cause” were eligible for food stamps.

U.S. District Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer agreed and struck down the law in 1986. The food stamp ban “impermissibly strikes at the striker through . . . innocent members of” his family, Oberdorfer said. The Justice Department then appealed the decision directly to the Supreme Court.

Justice White, perhaps more than any other high court member, tends to support acts of Congress, whether liberal or conservative, and his opinion stressed that the court must be “deferential” to the judgment of Congress.

“The discretion about how best to spend money to improve the general welfare is lodged in Congress rather than the courts,” White wrote in the case (Lyng vs. UAW, 86-1471). His opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy did not participate because the case was heard before he joined the court.

California Case Dismissed

In other actions, the court:

--Dismissed a challenge to California’s more generous method of calculating Medicaid benefits for medically needy adult couples. The Reagan Administration contended that California was paying too much, but the state won an appeals court ruling upholding its standards. Since then, Congress has passed legislation endorsing California’s approach, leading the high court to end the challenge (Bowen vs. Kizer, 86-863).

--Ruled unanimously that short-term notes issued by public housing agencies and inherited in the early 1980s are subject to federal estate taxation (U.S. vs. Wells Fargo, 86-1521).