Judge Bars Lower Welfare for Newcomers

Declaring California law at odds with the constitutional right to migrate from state to state, U.S. District Judge David F. Levi on Thursday barred the state from paying lower welfare rates to new residents.

Levi said the new law, by restricting newcomers to the level of welfare benefits paid by the state where they had previously lived, “placed a penalty on migration” and unfairly discriminated against a vulnerable class of people.

“The state may not identify a group of current residents as its ‘own’ and seek to advance their interests and address their needs to the detriment of new residents,” Levi wrote in a 17-page opinion.

“If this durational residency requirement were valid, then so would (be) a measure limiting new residents to the same level of medical, education, police and fire services they received in their state of prior residence,” he said.

Levi acknowledged that residency restrictions were highly popular with voters as well as politicians, but he said the U.S. Supreme Court had made it abundantly clear in many cases that residency restrictions violate constitutional rights to equal treatment and to migrate freely.

Levi’s ruling, which found for welfare recipients on every point of law, was a major defeat for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who had made the residency issue a keystone in his plan to overhaul the state’s Aid to Families With Dependent Children program. It also invalidated the only portion of the plan to be enacted by the Legislature. Other cutbacks and adjustments that Wilson sought were rejected by the Legislature and defeated by voters last November.

“We’re disappointed,” said Amy Albright, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Social Services. “This is the one welfare reform that won consensus from both Democrats and Republicans.”

Wilson had pressed strongly for passage of the law, saying that California’s comparatively generous AFDC benefits were making the state a “welfare magnet.” He argued that in the face of declining tax revenues and a prolonged economic recession, the state could no longer afford to extend benefits at California’s levels to poor people from other states.

He said the law, which took effect Dec. 1, would discourage migration by limiting newcomers who had lived in California less than 12 months to the welfare benefit levels paid by their previous home states. State officials estimated that the residency restrictions would save the state $8.4 million in the 1992-93 fiscal year and $22.5 million in the 1993-94 fiscal year.

Though these are small amounts compared to a state budget gap measured in the billions, Wilson has made welfare costs a major political issue.

Levi’s decision leaves welfare rates in place that were restored to newcomers as the result of a temporary order issued Dec. 22.

As a matter of practicality, legal experts said the judge left the state little alternative but to appeal because the next step in Levi’s court is a hearing on a petition for a permanent injunction. Given the stern wording in his order Thursday, they said it is unlikely that Levi would deny that injunction.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Theodore Garelis, who defended the law for the state, said the ruling could be appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals but that the decision has not been made.

Mark Greenberg, legal counsel for the Washington-based Center for Law and Social Policy, said that although Levi’s ruling would not set a legal precedent it could have a chilling effect on other states planning to copy California’s residency restrictions.

“I think that for other states looking at similar ideas the decision makes clear that all they are buying is an unsuccessful lawsuit,” he said.

The victors in the case are the Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, and the San Mateo County Legal Aid Society, who brought the action on behalf of three welfare mothers.

All three women had moved to California in recent months and applied for welfare. Court documents quoted them as saying they had migrated to the state to be near their parents and escape abusive home situations.

Deshawn Green’s story was typical of all three. A former Sacramento resident, she left California in 1985 and moved to Louisiana, where she had two children. In December she moved back to California to be near her mother. Upon applying for welfare, she learned that instead of receiving the $624 California monthly grant for a family of three, she was limited to the Louisiana grant of $190 a month.

“There’s no dispute that what’s at issue for the plaintiffs is potential homelessness,” said Sarah Kurtz, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society.

But Garelis countered that although hardship was an issue for the plaintiffs it was also an issue for the defendants. If the law were invalidated, he said, the state would suffer severe financial harm at a time of “extreme fiscal crisis.”

“The harm is to the entire state of California; all of its residents,” Garelis said.