These three appeals were restored to the calendar for reargument. Each is an appeal from a decision of a three-judge District Court holding unconstitutional a State or District of Columbia statutory provision which denies welfare assistance to residents of the State or District who have not resided within their jurisdictions for at least one year immediately preceding their applications for such assistance. We affirm the judgments of the District Courts in the three cases.
In No. 9, the Connecticut Welfare Department invoked § 17-2d of the Connecticut General Statutes deny the application of appellee Vivian Marie Thompson for assistance under the program for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). She was a 19-year-old unwed mother of one child and pregnant with her second child when she changed her residence in June 1966 from Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Hartford, Connecticut, to live with her mother, a Hartford resident. She moved to her own apartment in Hartford in August 1966, when her mother was no longer able to support her and her infant son. Because of her pregnancy, she was unable to work or enter a work training program. Her application for AFDC assistance, filed in August, was denied in November solely on the ground that, as required by § 17-2d, she had not lived in the State for a year before her application was filed. She brought this action in the District Court for the District of Connecticut where a three-judge court, one judge dissenting, declared § 17-2d unconstitutional....
There is no dispute that the effect of the waiting-period requirement in each case is to create two classes of needy resident families indistinguishable from each other except that one is composed of residents who have resided a year or more, and the second of residents who have resided less than a year, in the jurisdiction. On the basis of this sole difference the first class is granted and the second class is denied welfare aid upon which may depend the ability of the families to obtain the very means to subsist -- food, shelter, and other necessities of life. On reargument, appellees' central contention is that the statutory prohibition of benefits to residents of less than a year creates a classification which constitutes an invidious discrimination denying them equal protection of the laws. We agree. The interests which appellants assert are promoted by the classification either may not constitutionally be promoted by government or are not compelling governmental interests.
Primarily, appellants justify the waiting-period requirement as a protective device to preserve the fiscal integrity of state public assistance programs. It is asserted that people who require welfare assistance during their first year of residence in a State are likely to become continuing burdens on state welfare programs. Therefore, the argument runs, if such people can be deterred from entering the jurisdiction by denying them welfare benefits during the first year, state programs to assist long-time residents will not be impaired by a substantial influx of indigent newcomers.
There is weighty evidence that exclusion from the jurisdiction of the poor who need or may need relief was the specific objective of these provisions. In the Congress, sponsors of federal legislation to eliminate all residence requirements have been consistently opposed by representatives of state and local welfare agencies who have stressed the fears of the States that elimination of the requirements would result in a heavy influx of individuals into States providing the most generous benefits. The sponsor of the Connecticut requirement said in its support: "I doubt that Connecticut can and should continue to allow unlimited migration into the state on the basis of offering instant money and permanent income to all who can make their way to the state regardless of their ability to contribute to the economy."
We do not doubt that the one-year waiting-period device is well suited to discourage the influx of poor families in need of assistance. An indigent who desires to migrate, resettle, find a new job, and start a new life will doubtless hesitate if he knows that he must risk making the move without the possibility of falling back on state welfare assistance during his first year of residence, when his need may be most acute. But the purpose of inhibiting migration by needy persons into the State is constitutionally impermissible. This Court long ago recognized that the nature of our Federal Union and our constitutional concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this movement. It suffices that, as MR. JUSTICE STEWART said for the Court in United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966): "The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union. It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.
". . . The right finds no explicit mention in the Constitution. The
reason, it has been suggested, is that a right so elementary was conceived
from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union
the Constitution created. In any event, freedom to travel throughout the
United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the Constitution."
In Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546 (C. C. E. D. Pa. 1825)
the right to travel interstate was grounded upon the Privileges and Immunities
Clause of Art. IV, § 2. In concurring opinions in Edwards
v. California, 314 U.S. 160, reliance was placed on the Privileges
and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Edwards v.
California and the Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283 (1849), a
Commerce Clause approach was employed. See also Kent v. Dulles,
357 U.S. 116 (1958); Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378
U.S. 500(1964); Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1 (1965), where the
freedom of Americans to travel outside the country was grounded upon the
Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Thus, the purpose of deterring the in-migration of indigents cannot
serve as justification for the classification created by the one-year waiting
period, since that purpose is constitutionally impermissible. If a law
has "no other purpose . . . than to chill the assertion of constitutional
rights by penalizing those who choose to exercise them, then it [is] patently
unconstitutional." Alternatively, appellants argue that even if it
is impermissible for a State to attempt to deter the entry of all indigents,
the challenged classification may be justified as a permissible state attempt
to discourage those indigents who would enter the State solely to obtain
larger benefits. We observe first that none of the statutes before us is
tailored to serve that objective. Rather, the class of barred newcomers
is all-inclusive, lumping the great majority who come to the State for
other purposes with those who come for the sole purpose of collecting higher
benefits. In actual operation, therefore, the three statutes enact what
in effect are nonrebuttable presumptions that every applicant for assistance
in his first year of residence came to the jurisdiction solely to obtain
higher benefits. Nothing whatever in any of these records supplies any
basis in fact for such a presumption.
More fundamentally, a State may no more try to fence out those indigents who seek higher welfare benefits than it may try to fence out indigents generally. Implicit in any such distinction is the notion that indigents who enter a State with the hope of securing higher welfare benefits are somehow less deserving than indigents who do not take this consideration into account. But we do not perceive why a mother who is seeking to make a new life for herself and her children should be regarded as less deserving because she considers, among others factors, the level of a State's public assistance. Surely such a mother is no less deserving than a mother who moves into a particular State in order to take advantage of its better educational facilities. Appellants argue further that the challenged classification may be sustained as an attempt to distinguish between new and old residents on the basis of the contribution they have made to the community through the payment of taxes. We have difficulty seeing how long-term residents who qualify for welfare are making a greater present contribution to the State in taxes than indigent residents who have recently arrived..... Appellants' reasoning would logically permit the State to bar new residents from schools, parks, and libraries or deprive them of police and fire protection. Indeed it would permit the State to apportion all benefits and services according to the past tax contributions of its citizens. The Equal Protection Clause prohibits such an apportionment of state services
We recognize that a State has a valid interest in preserving the fiscal integrity of its programs. It may legitimately attempt to limit its expenditures, whether for public assistance, public education, or any other program. But a State may not accomplish such a purpose by invidious distinctions between classes of its citizens. It could not, for example, reduce expenditures for education by barring indigent children from its schools. Similarly, in the cases before us, appellants must do more than show that denying welfare benefits to new residents saves money. The saving of welfare costs cannot justify an otherwise invidious classification.
In sum, neither deterrence of indigents from migrating to the State nor limitation of welfare benefits to those regarded as contributing to the State is a constitutionally permissible state objective.
Appellants next advance as justification certain administrative and
related governmental objectives allegedly served by the waiting-period
requirement. They argue that the requirement (1) facilitates the
planning of the welfare budget; (2) provides an objective test of residency;
(3) minimizes the opportunity for recipients fraudulently to receive payments
from more than one jurisdiction; and (4) encourages early entry of new
residents into the labor force.
At the outset, we reject appellants' argument that a mere showing of
a rational relationship between the waiting period and these four admittedly
permissible state objectives will suffice to justify the classification.
The waiting-period provision denies welfare benefits to otherwise eligible
applicants solely because they have recently moved into the jurisdiction.
But in moving from State to State appellees were exercising a constitutional
right, and any classification which serves to penalize the exercise of
that right, unless shown to be necessary to promote a compelling
governmental interest, is unconstitutional. The argument that the
waiting-period requirement facilitates budget predictability is wholly
unfounded.....
The argument that the waiting period serves as an administratively efficient rule of thumb for determining residency similarly will not withstand scrutiny. The residence requirement and the one-year waiting-period requirement are distinct and independent prerequisites for assistance under these three statutes, and the facts relevant to the determination of each are directly examined by the welfare authorities.
Similarly, there is no need for a State to use the one-year waiting
period as a safeguard against fraudulent receipt of benefits; n18 for less
drastic means are available, and are employed, to minimize that hazard.
Of course, a State has a valid interest in preventing fraud by any applicant,
whether a newcomer or a long-time resident. It is not denied, however,
that the investigations now conducted entail inquiries into facts relevant
to that subject. In addition, cooperation among state welfare departments
is common. Since double payments can be prevented by a letter or
a telephone call, it is unreasonable to accomplish this objective by the
blunderbuss method of denying assistance to all indigent newcomers for
an entire year.
A state purpose to encourage employment provides no rational basis
for imposing a one-year waiting-period restriction on new residents only.
We conclude therefore that appellants in these cases do not use and have
no need to use the one-year requirement for the governmental purposes suggested.
Thus, even under traditional equal protection tests a classification of
welfare applicants according to whether they have lived in the State for
one year would seem irrational and unconstitutional. But, of course,
the traditional criteria do not apply in these cases. Since the classification
here touches on the fundamental right of interstate movement, its constitutionality
must be judged by the stricter standard of whether it promotes a compelling
state interest. Under this standard, the waiting-period requirement clearly
violates the Equal Protection Clause.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, dissenting.
The Court today holds unconstitutional statutes which restrict certain kinds of welfare benefits to persons who have lived within the jurisdiction for at least one year immediately preceding their applications. The Court has accomplished this result by an expansion of the comparatively new constitutional doctrine that some state statutes will be deemed to deny equal protection of the laws unless justified by a "compelling" governmental interest. Having decided that the "compelling interest" principle is applicable, the Court then finds that the governmental interests here asserted are either wholly impermissible or are not " compelling." For reasons which follow, I disagree both with the Court's result and with its reasoning.
In upholding the equal protection argument, the Court has applied an equal protection doctrine of relatively recent vintage: the rule that statutory classifications which either are based upon certain "suspect" criteria or affect "fundamental rights" will be held to deny equal protection unless justified by a "compelling" governmental interest.
The "compelling interest" doctrine, which today is articulated more explicitly than ever before, constitutes an increasingly significant exception to the long-established rule that a statute does not deny equal protection if it is rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective. The "compelling interest" doctrine has two branches. The branch which requires that classifications based upon "suspect" criteria be supported by a compelling interest apparently had its genesis in cases involving racial classifications, which have, at least since Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), been regarded as inherently "suspect." The criterion of "wealth" apparently was added to the list of "suspects" as an alternative justification for the rationale in Harper 659 v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), in which Virginia's poll tax was struck down. The criterion of political allegiance may have been added in Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23 (1968). Today the list apparently has been further enlarged to include classifications based upon recent interstate movement, and perhaps those based upon the exercise of any constitutional right, for the Court states.
I think that this branch of the "compelling interest" doctrine is sound when applied to racial classifications, for historically the Equal Protection Clause was largely a product of the desire to eradicate legal distinctions founded upon race. However, I believe that the more recent extensions have been unwise. And whennd in the present case, a classification is based upon the exercise of rights guaranteed against state infringement by the Federal Constitution, then there is no need for any resort to the Equal Protection Clause; in such instances, this Court may properly and straightforwardly invalidate any undue burden upon those rights under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.
The second branch of the "compelling interest" principle is even more troublesome. For it has been held that a statutory classification is subject to the "compelling interest" test if the result of the classification may be to affect a "fundamental right," regardless of the basis of the classification. This rule was foreshadowed in Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), in which an Oklahoma statute providing for compulsory sterilization of "habitual criminals" was held subject to "strict scrutiny" mainly because it affected "one of the basic civil rights." After a long hiatus, the principle re-emerged in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), in which state apportionment statutes were subjected to an unusually stringent test because "any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized." The rule appeared again in Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89 (1965), in which, as I now see that case, the Court applied an abnormally severe equal protection standard to a Texas statute denying certain servicemen the right to vote, without indicating that the statutory distinction between servicemen and civilians was generally "suspect." It has reappeared today in the Court's cryptic suggestion that the "compelling interest" test is applicable merely because the result of the classification may be to deny the appellees "food, shelter, and other necessities of life," as well as in the Court's statement that "since the classification here touches on the fundamental right of interstate movement, its constitutionality must be judged by the stricter standard of whether it promotes a compelling state interest."
I think this branch of the "compelling interest" doctrine particularly
unfortunate and unnecessary. It is unfortunate because it creates an exception
which threatens to swallow the standard equal protection rule. Virtually
every state statute affects important rights. This Court has repeatedly
held, for example, that the traditional equal protection standard is applicable
to statutory classifications affecting such fundamental matters as
the right to pursue a particular occupation, the right to receive
greater or smaller wages or to work more or less hours, n13 and the
right to inherit property. n14 Rights such as these are in principle indistinguishable
from those involved here, and to extend the "compelling interest" rule
to all cases in which such rights are affected would go far toward making
this Court a "super-legislature." This branch of the doctrine is also unnecessary.
When the right affected is one assured by the Federal Constitution,
any infringement can be dealt with under the Due Process Clause. But when
a statute affects only matters not mentioned in the Federal Constitution
and is not arbitrary or irrational, I must reiterate that 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
stringent equal protection test....