Supreme Court Rejects Child Support Right

In a setback for parents seeking child support, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that the nation’s welfare law does not give them a “federal right” to government help in obtaining the payments they are owed.

Since 1975, Congress has paid states and counties to collect child support from so-called “deadbeat dads,” but the program has had a troubled history. Nationwide, regular payments are being collected in only 18% of the cases.

Two years ago, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of 300,000 Arizona parents, who were demanding improvements in a floundering program. The understaffed Arizona state agency was then collecting money for less than 5% of the parents who turned to it for help.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles, writing for the appeals court, said the parents had documented “a range of administrative abuses extending from simple incompetence and bureaucratic bungling to shockingly callous indifference.”

In a typical example, one mother said she had supplied the state agency with her ex-husband’s home and work site address for month after month, yet failed to obtain a single child support payment for seven years.

If Reinhardt’s opinion had been affirmed, it likely would have spurred similar class-action lawsuits, especially in California.

California has turned its program over to county district attorneys, who now collect payments in only about 13% of the cases. In Los Angeles County, officials concede they have failed to obtain court support orders in 400,000 of their more than 650,000 cases.

But in its unanimous decision Monday, the Supreme Court threw out most of the Arizona lawsuit and said the Child Support Enforcement Act did not “create an individual entitlement to services.”

Congress pays two-thirds of the cost of the program, which, in turn, requires states to operate their programs in “substantial compliance” with goals set in Washington.

This systemwide requirement “was not intended to benefit individual children and custodial parents,” wrote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “and therefore it does not a constitute a federal right.”

The case was brought under a post-Civil War law that allows suits against state officials who violate “any right” guaranteed in federal law or the U.S. Constitution.

Monday’s ruling reflects the high court’s more conservative approach to the relations between the federal government and the states.

During the 1960s and ‘70s, the more liberal court often upheld class-action suits in federal court that demanded improvements in state prisons, schools, mental hospitals and foster care agencies. In such instances, a federal judge usually imposed new compliance rules.

But under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the court has backed off and has repeatedly said it is up to state and federal officials--not judges--to remedy the problems in troubled programs.

Some children’s rights advocates said they were pleased the court did not close the door entirely. O’Connor said the federal act, which is part of the welfare law, may include some “individual rights” that are “concrete and specific,” and she sent the case back to a trial judge in Phoenix to consider that possibility.

“At least we won the right to go back and make our case on individual claims,” said Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center in Washington.

Some state agencies have allegedly collected money for a custodial parent, but failed to turn over the funds. This failure would violate an individual right, lawyers said, and could be the basis of a federal lawsuit.

“This may not yield a class action, but we may be able to win individual relief on some of these provisions,” said William E. Morris, a legal aid attorney in Tucson who brought the original suit in the case of Blessing vs. Freestone, 95-1441.

Because of the recent welfare reform law, the Child Support Enforcement program is likely to grow in importance. If mothers with young children lose their welfare benefits, it can be especially important that they receive the monthly child support payments owed them.

Initially, the program served only parents on welfare, and the payments mostly reimbursed the government. Since 1978, however, the program has been open to all parents needing help to establish paternity for a child, to get a court order setting support payments and to collect the money.

Leaders of some parents’ groups have complained that Congress made a mistake by turning over the program to the states and allowing them to transfer it to counties. The result, they say, is that too many parents escape their obligations by crossing state or county lines.

The Clinton administration says it has made steady improvements in the program and raised the collection rate by 50% in the last five years. Last year, more than 19 million parents--mostly women--were served by the program, at a federal cost of $2 billion.

In other actions, the court:

* Rejected an appeal from six followers of Branch Davidian leader David Koresh who are facing 30-year prison terms for using a “machine gun” during the deadly 1993 shootout with federal agents near Waco, Texas. They argued that their weapons were firearms, not machine guns, and, therefore, they did not deserve the longer sentences (Castillo vs. U.S., 96-989).

* Let stand a $1-million libel verdict against ABC-TV for reporting that a Georgia county’s troubled garbage recycling machine “did not work.” The machine’s manufacturer said the recycler did work, and a lower court treated him as a private citizen who had been defamed rather than a public figure. The media can be held liable for a false, defamatory report about a private person, even if the mistake was a honest one (ABC vs. Lundell, 96-1342).

* TITLE IX UPHELD: Gender makeup of college sports teams must match the male-female ratio of the student body, high court says. C1