United States Department of Agriculture v. Murry

Delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Food Stamp Act of 1964, 7 U. S. C. § 2011 et seq., as amended in 1971, 84 Stat. 2048, has been applied to these appellees so as to lead the three-judge District Court to hold one provision of it unconstitutional. 348 F. Supp. 242. We noted probable jurisdiction. 410 U. S. 924.

Appellee Murry has two sons and ten grandchildren in her household. Her monthly income is $57.50, which comes from her ex-husband as support for her sons. Her expenses far exceed her monthly income. By payment, however, of $11 she received $128 in food stamps. But she has now been denied food stamps because her ex-husband (who has remarried) had claimed her two sons and one grandchild as tax dependents in his 1971 income tax return. That claim, plus the fact that her eldest son is 19 years old, disqualified her household for food stamps under § 5 (b) of the Act. Appellee Alderete is in comparable straits because her ex-husband claimed the five children, who live with their mother, as tax dependents, the oldest being 18 years old. Appellee Beavert’s case is similar. Appellee Lee is the mother of five children, her entire income per month being $23 derived from public assistance. Her five children live with her. Her monthly bills are $249, of which $148 goes for food. Her husband is not a member of her household; he in fact deserted her and has supplied his family with no support. But he claimed the two oldest sons, ages 20 and 18, as tax dependents in his 1971 tax return, with the result that the wife’s household was denied food stamps. Appellee Nevarez is in comparable straits.

Appellee Joe Valdez is 18 years old and married; and he and his wife have a child. He lives wholly on public assistance and applied for food stamps. His application was rejected because his father Ben claimed him as a tax dependent in his 1971 income tax return. Joe receives no support from Ben because Ben is in debt and unable to help support Joe.

Appellee Broderson is 18 and married to a 16-year-old wife and they have a small child. Their monthly income is $110 consisting of his wages at a service station. He cannot get food stamps because his father claimed him as a tax dependent. The father, however, gives him no support.

Appellee Schultz is 19 years old and she resides with a girl friend and the latter’s two children. Appellee Schultz has no income of any kind but received food stamps for the household where she lived. Food stamps, however, were discontinued when her parents claimed her as a tax dependent but refused to give her any aid. She soon got married, but she and her husband were denied food stamps because her parents had claimed her for tax dependency.

These appellees brought a class action to enjoin the enforcement of the tax dependency provision of the Act; and, as noted, the three-judge court granted the relief.

Appellees are members of households that have been denied food stamp eligibility solely because the households contain persons 18 years or older who have been claimed as “dependents” for federal income tax purposes by taxpayers who are themselves ineligible for food stamp relief. Section 5 (b) makes the entire household of which a “tax dependent” was a member ineligible for food stamps for two years: (1) during the tax year for which the dependency was claimed and (2) during the next 12 months. During these two periods of time § 5 (b) creates a conclusive presumption that the “tax dependent’s” household is not needy and has access to nutritional adequacy.

The Acting Administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service of the Department of Agriculture admitted in this case that:

“[I]n the case of households which have initially been determined to be ineligible for participation in the program on the basis of tax dependency, there are no factual issues to be presented or challenged by the household at such a hearing, other than the issue of whether or not a member of the household has been claimed as a dependent child by a taxpayer who is not a member of a household eligible for food assistance (a fact the household, in most cases, already will have disclosed in its application). If a household states that it has such a tax dependent member, the household is, in conformity with the Food Stamp Act, the program regulations, and the instructions of FNS governing the program administration by State agencies, determined to be ineligible.” App. 83.

Thus, in the administration of the Act, a hearing is denied, and is not available as the dissent implies. As stated by the District Court the Act creates “an irrebuttable presumption contrary to fact.” 348 F. Supp., at 243. Moreover, an income tax return is filed, say in April 1973, for the year 1972. When the dependency deduction is filed, the year for which the dependency claim was made has already passed. Therefore the disqualification for food stamps cannot apply to 1972 but only to 1973.

The tax dependency provision was generated by congressional concern about nonneedy households participating in the food stamp program. The legislative history reflects a concern about abuses of the program by “college students, children of wealthy parents.” But, as the District Court said, the Act goes far beyond that goal and its operation is inflexible. “Households containing no college student, that had established clear eligibility for Food Stamps and which still remain in dire need and otherwise eligible are now denied stamps if it appears that a household member 18 years or older is claimed by someone as a tax dependent.” 348 F. Supp., at 243.

Tax dependency in a prior year seems to have no relation to the “need” of the dependent in the following year. It doubtless is much easier from the administrative point of view to have a simple tax “dependency” test that will automatically — without hearing, without witnesses, without findings of fact — terminate a household’s claim for eligibility for food stamps. Yet, as we recently stated in Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645, 656:

“[I]t may be argued that unmarried fathers are so seldom fit that Illinois need not undergo the administrative inconvenience of inquiry in any case, including Stanley’s. The establishment of prompt efficacious procedures to achieve legitimate state ends is a proper state interest worthy of cognizance in constitutional adjudication. But the Constitution recognizes higher values than speed and efficiency. Indeed, one might fairly say of the Bill of Rights in general, and the Due Process Clause in particular, that they were designed to protect the fragile values of a vulnerable citizenry from the overbearing concern for efficiency and efficacy that may characterize praiseworthy government officials no less, and perhaps more, than mediocre ones.”

We have difficulty in concluding that it is rational to assume that a child is not indigent this year because the parent declared the child as a dependent in his tax return for the prior year. But even on that assumption our problem is not at an end. Under the Act the issue is not the indigency of the child but the indigency of a different household with which the child happens to be living. Members of that different household are denied food stamps if one of its present members was used as a tax deduction in the past year by his parents even though the remaining members have no relation to the parent who used the tax deduction, even though they are completely destitute, and even though they are one, or 10 or 20 in number. We conclude that the deduction taken for the benefit of the parent in the prior year is not a rational measure of the need of a different household with which the child of the tax-deducting parent lives and rests on an irrebuttable presumption often contrary to fact. It therefore lacks critical ingredients of due process found wanting in Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U. S. 441, 452; Stanley v. Illinois, supra; and Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535.

Affirmed.

Section 5 (b) of the Act provides in part: “Any household which includes a member who has reached his eighteenth birthday and who is claimed as a dependent child for Federal income tax purposes by a taxpayer who is not a member of an eligible household, shall be ineligible to participate in any food stamp program established pursuant to this chapter during the tax period such dependency is claimed and for a period of one year after expiration of such tax period. ...” 7 U. S. C. §2014 (b). (Emphasis added.)

The Regulations provide: “ ‘Dependent’ for the purpose of § 271.3 (d) of this subchapter, means a person claimed as a dependent for Federal income tax purposes by a parent or guardian and living apart from the household of such parent or guardian.” 7 CFR § 270.2 (q).

“Any household which includes a member who has reached his 18th birthday and who is claimed as a dependent for Federal income tax purposes by a member of a household which is not certified as being eligible for food assistance shall be ineligible to participate in the program during the tax period such dependency is claimed and for a period of 1 year after expiration of such tax period.” 7 CFR § 271.3 (d).

The relevant exemption provision in § 151 (e)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code, as amended, 26 U. S. C. § 151 (e) (1) (1970 ed. and Supp. I), reads:

“An exemption of $750 [shall be allowed] for each dependent (as defined in section 152)—

“(A) whose gross income for the calendar year in which the taxable year of the taxpayer begins is less than $750, or

“(B) who is a child of the taxpayer and who (i) has not attained the age of 19 at the close of the calendar year in which the taxable year of the taxpaj-er begins, or (ii) is a student. . . .”

And the term “dependent” is defined as meaning “any of the following individuals over half of whose support, for the calendar year in which the taxable year of the taxpayer begins, was received from the taxpayer . . . :

“(1) A son or daughter of the taxpayer . . . .” 26 U. S. C. § 152 (a)(1).

Household participation is based on current circumstances, not past needs. Food stamp certifications for households on public assistance coincide with their welfare certification periods. 7 CFR §§ 271.4 (a) (1) and 271.4 (a) (4) (ii). For nonpublic assistance households, certification periods last normally only three months. 7 CFR § 271.4 (a) (4) (iii). Longer certification periods are provided only “if there is little likelihood of changes in household status.” 7 CFR §§271.4 (a) (4) (iii) (b), (c), and (d).

116 Cong. Rec. 41979.