A federal judge has ruled that states may not discriminate against new residents by paying them lower welfare benefits than longtime residents.
His decision blocks Pennsylvania’s use of a tool given to states by the 1996 welfare law.
The decision has broad implications for Illinois, Wisconsin and other states that have adopted similar restrictions.
The judge, Clarence Newcomer of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, said such disparate treatment violates the Constitution because it is not rationally related to any legitimate governmental purpose. Specifically, Newcomer said in his ruling last week, the provision denies “equal protection of the laws” to indigent families moving from one state to another.
More than a dozen states have adopted such restrictions, according to the National Governors’ Association, and other states are considering them. Critics of the new welfare law have begun to challenge this and other provisions, and Newcomer’s decision will give them ammunition. While his decision bans the practice only in Pennsylvania, the ruling is sure to be cited as poor people challenge similar residency requirements in other states.
Pennsylvania was taking advantage of a provision of the federal law that allows states to calculate welfare benefits for new residents by using the rules of the states where they previously lived.
The case involved people such as Edwin and Maria Maldonado and their six children, who moved in May from Puerto Rico to Pennsylvania. Under an option allowed by the welfare law, Pennsylvania provided the Maldonados with $304 a month in cash assistance, representing the maximum they could have received in Puerto Rico, rather than the $836 paid to families of the same size who have lived in Pennsylvania more than a year.
The “desire to save money is not a legitimate basis for discriminating against newly arrived residents in the distribution of welfare benefits,” Newcomer said in his ruling, signed Oct. 6.
Pennsylvania said it wanted to avoid becoming a magnet for poor people.
More Top Picks Best Rtx 4070 Graphics Cards
“We must ensure that Pennsylvania resources are available to Pennsylvania residents,” it told the federal government. Moreover, the state said it wanted to discourage people from “shopping around for the best benefit package of the year.” Newcomer said such purposes were impermissible under the Constitution.
Even if the Maldonados received the full benefits allowed to longtime residents of Pennsylvania, their income would be only 37 percent of the official poverty level ($26,930 for a family of eight), Newcomer noted.
The Maldonados returned last month to Puerto Rico, saying they could not afford basic necessities such as shelter and clothing in Philadelphia. The class-action case involves hundreds of families.
Pennsylvania said the purpose of its residency requirement was not only to discourage an influx of poor people but also to encourage work, on the theory that “if the newcomers receive less money, they will have a greater incentive to join the work force.”
Newcomer said encouraging employment was a legitimate governmental purpose, but Pennsylvania’s policy “fails miserably to achieve this purpose.”
Poor people moving to Pennsylvania receive radically different amounts of cash assistance, depending on the states where they last resided, even if the families are identical in other respects, the judge said.
For example, a family moving to Pennsylvania from Puerto Rico, Tennessee or Kentucky receives the lower benefits allowed in those places. A family from California, which has higher benefits than Pennsylvania, receives the amount of cash assistance paid to longtime residents. About 20 states have benefits higher than those of Pennsylvania, the judge said.
“In addition, but more surprisingly,” he said, “the residency requirement appears not to apply to poor migrants from other countries. Hence, new state residents from one of the United States that pays lower benefits will receive less cash assistance than new residents from foreign countries.”
The judge concluded that Pennsylvania’s scheme was completely irrational and “violates the equal-protection clause of the United States Constitution.”
The residency requirement, he said, is based on “the wholly unsubstantiated assumption” that people arriving in the state have less motivation to seek work than longtime residents.
The judge observed that many states had adopted similar policies and that many states and the federal government saw such restrictions as “central to their current reform efforts.”
Andrea Kane, a welfare policy analyst at the National Governors’ Association, said that at least 13 states treated new residents differently.
In Illinois, officials with the Department of Human Services said the ruling could affect the state’s welfare recipients.
Illinois also calculates welfare benefits for new residents based on rules of the state where they previously lived, said Martha Allen, spokeswoman for the department of human services.
Minnesota has a 30-day residency requirement. People moving to the state are ineligible for cash assistance in the first 30 days. After that, during their first year in Minnesota, families get the amount of benefits paid by the states where they formerly resided, if such benefits are lower than Minnesota’s.
Deborah Huskins, an assistant commissioner of Human Services in Minnesota, said legislators were “well aware that courts have often invalidated durational residency requirements.” But, Huskins said, the legislature concluded that the new restrictions might survive because “Congress last year, for the first time, went on record saying this was a permissible state practice.”