Legal Advocacy Groups Sue Over Food Stamp Changes

In the latest challenge to the federal welfare overhaul, activists have filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking California’s rules for dispensing food stamp benefits to millions of residents, especially those guidelines targeting legal immigrants.

Poverty lawyers say the “confusing, misleading and erroneous” implementation scheme put into place last month left counties without proper guidance, broke California’s own regulatory guidelines and may result in people being wrongly denied benefits.

“There’s been mass confusion, and counties have been left floundering on how to implement this thing,” said Curtis Child, an attorney with Northern California Lawyers for Civil Justice, one of several legal advocacy groups that filed the suit late Wednesday in Sacramento Superior Court.

Opponents of the welfare overhaul are seeking a court injunction barring implementation until the state adopts regulations that comply with the California Administrative Procedure Act, which would require a lengthy period of public notice, comment and hearings.

Lisa Kalustian, a spokeswoman for Gov. Pete Wilson, called the lawsuit a groundless delaying tactic.

“Once again, a group of special interests is trying to thwart the will of the people and its elected representatives,” Kalustian said.

The action is the second legal challenge to Wilson’s implementation of the sweeping welfare overhaul signed into law by President Clinton in late August. Earlier this week, activists filed legal papers in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeking a restraining order blocking the governor’s efforts to cut off state-subsidized prenatal care to some 70,000 illegal immigrants statewide.

Among the major provisions of the new welfare law are broad changes in the federal government’s multibillion-dollar food stamp program, which provides food vouchers to needy families and individuals nationwide, including some 3.2 million recipients in California--most of them children. Monthly benefits average $184 per household.

The welfare law mandates across-the-board benefit reductions, restricts eligibility and makes legal immigrants ineligible unless they qualify under one of several exceptions--such as being veterans, refugees or having worked in the United States for 10 years or more.

In accordance with the federally mandated changes, California authorities last month imposed dozens of revisions in food stamp administration and instructed counties to put the changes into effect by Sept. 22, the federal deadline. Although the food stamp program is federally funded, it is administered by state and county governments.

The most sweeping change was a mandate making most new legal immigrant applicants ineligible. Legal immigrants currently on the food stamp rolls--including more than 300,000 in California--cannot be cut off until April 1, according to federal law.

Implementation of the new guidelines has been spotty in California and elsewhere in the nation, attorneys say. Some counties instituted the changes immediately and others are awaiting further clarification from state and federal officials.

In an Oct. 8 letter to the state Department of Social Services, John F. Michaelson, a San Bernardino County official who is president of the County Welfare Directors Assn., wrote that the state’s directions are “in places vague, subject to misinterpretation, and in least once instance . . . contained information inconsistent with the federal law.”

The lawsuit cites the cases of several legal immigrants who should qualify for food stamps, under an exemption in the new law, because they have worked in the United States for 10 years, lawyers say. Such immigrants fear being denied benefits because they do not have complete records of their employment--a common problem for immigrants, who are often paid in cash and work off the books.

Meanwhile, California authorities announced that statewide public hearings on the overhaul of the welfare system would begin Thursday in Fresno. Subsequent sessions are scheduled for Oct. 28-29 at the Junipero Serra State Building in downtown Los Angeles.