ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 22, 1997 TAG: 9704220093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: LOS ANGELES TIMES
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
Collection help is not a federal right, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in a decision widely considered to be a setback for women.
In a setback for women seeking child support, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that the United States' 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 percent of the cases.
Two years ago, a U.S. Appeals Court for the West Coast cleared the way for a class-action suit 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 5percent 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 address month after month, yet had failed to obtain a child-support payment for seven years.
If Reinhardt's opinion had been affirmed, it likely would have spurred similar class-action lawsuits.
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, and it 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 lawsuits against state officials who violate ``any right'' guaranteed in federal law or the U.S. Constitution.
Monday's ruling reflects the Supreme 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 Supreme Court has backed off and has said repeatedly that it is up to state and federal officials - not judges - to remedy the problems in troubled programs.
Some child-rights advocates said they were pleased the Supreme 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, Ariz., 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 allegedly have collected money for a custodial parent but failed to turn over the funds. This 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, Ariz., 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, the monthly support payments that are owed by their children's father become even more important.
Initially, the program served only parents on welfare, and the payments mostly reimbursed the government. Since 1978, however, it has been open to all parents who need help to establish paternity for their 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 turn it over 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 50 percent in the past five years. Last year, more than 19million parents - mostly women - were served by the program, at a federal cost of $2 billion.
LENGTH: Medium: 93 linesby CNB