Fund Asks HEW Investigation of State Welfare Programs

    10 Columbus Circle 
New York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 
President FOR RELEASE 

Hon. Francis E. Rivers Thursday, 

Director-Counsel February 3, 1966 
Jack Greenberg = 

FUND ASKS HEW INVESTIGATION 
OF STATE WELFARE PROGRAMS 

Georgia and Arkansas Policies Called "Arbitrary and Irrational" 

WASHINGTON----The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., 

today asked the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to hold 

a hearing on "substitute parent" policies used to deny public 
welfare assistance to persons in Georgia and Arkansas. 

A lengthy complaint made public here marked the beginning of 
what attorneys say will be a campaign egainst welfare abuses that 
will see litigation in North Carolina, Mississippi and major 
northern cities as well as Georgia and Arkansas. 

Legal Defense Fund Assistant Counsels C, Stephen Ralston and 
Charles H. Jones, Jr., said the Fund is "seeking to reverse an 
evolving trend whereby states use welfare assistance as a means of 
practicing racial discrimination," 

"Untold thousands of children are being affected daily," they 
said, “Although we are presently focussing on Arkansas and 
Georgia, the patterns and policies under attack are common to many 
southern and northern states and the District of Columbia," they 
added. 

Today's complaint challenges local regulations that make 
families ineligible for assistance under aid to families with 
dependent children (AFDC) programs if the mother has a vaguely de- 

fined continuing relationship with a man. 

The complaint, filed in behalf of two women from Gould and 
Little Rock, Ark., and two from Warwick and Newton, Ga., alleges 
that the "substitute parent" policies of those states violate 
Title IV of the Social Security Act. 

The policies also violate the equal protection and due 
process clauses of the 14th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, 
the complaint charges, 

The four complainants, joined by the Legal Defense Fund as a 
party to the complaint, are asking HEW to grant a hearing so the 
allegations may be proved, or to issue a regulation saying the 
"substitute parent" policies of the two states are in conflict with 
Federal standards and must be changed or the states will face cut- 
off of Federal funds. 

Georgia welfare law considers a man living in common-law 
relationship with a woman a "substitute father" of any child had 
by that woman, and hence makes him "responsible for the support 
and care of his and her children, regardless of whether...he is 

married to another woman," 

By those rules, a common-law relationship exists if the man 
lives in the home of a woman "for the purpose of cohabitation," 
or "visits frequently for the purpose of living with or 
cohabitating with" the woman. 

In Arkansas, a "substitute father" can be a step-parent who 
lives with the mother or a partner in a "stable nonlegal union.” 

(more) 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 ey 



Fund Asks HEW 
Of State Welf 

ss avestigation -2- February 3, 1966 

are Programs 

ee "A stable nonlegal union is presumed, even though a father is 

not living continuously in the home, where the mother affords the 

privileges of a husband to a man and there is a continuing relation- 

ship," according to Arkansas law. 

"Frequent visits by the man to the home of the mother of the 

children," and "frequent appearances of the man aad mother in public 

as a couple," are considered evidence of such a relationship. 

Both states place the burden of disprovi of a 

"substitute father" on the woman applicant 

The Legal Defense Fund complaint asserts that both states have 

used "a semantical gimmick which redefines the word "parent." 

The "substitute parent" is not necessarily required by law to 

supply support, nor do the regulations call for evidence to show 

that he has voluntarily assumed support of the children, the 

complaint alleges. 

Further, he does not have custody over the children. He does 

not have any responsibility for the welfare, guardianship or 

education of the children. He may not be living in the same home. 

He may not even have any interest in the children, 

In short, "thousands of needy children are denied eligibility 

for AEDC...by redefining the word "parent" in a manner inconsistent 

with its common and ordinary meaning, its general legal usage... 

and in a manner inconsistent with the meaning of "parent" as used 

in Title IV of the Social Security Act," according to the complaint. 

The complaint further charges that the policies are an 

invasion of privacy because an applicant for, or recipient of AFDC 

must either report any relationship with a man, or be faced with 

the possibility of making herself ineligible for aid for withholding 

pertinent information. 

She is thus caught in this "impossible dilemma, “attorneys 

allege: 
"She may try to conduct a secret relationship; endanger her 

grant and live as if she were a criminal 

"She may strip herself and her male friend of every last 

vestige of dignity by reporting constantly on the intimacies of her 

friendship 

"She may abandon her effort to develop male friendships 

altogether." 
Unless she chooses the last alternative, she will run the risk 

that the man, who is not supporting her, will nevertheless be 

adjudged a "substitute father," or that he will abandon the friend~ 

ship, or both. 
The Legal Defense Fund charges that the "substitute parent" 

policies are used as a device to subvert HEW's "Fleming Ruling" 

handed down in 1961. 
The ruling outlawed a Louisiana policy by which thousands of 

Negro and white children were denied welfare assistance on the 

grounds of allegedly "unsuitable home" conditions, without providing 

some alternate plan of aid to the needy children. 

"Subistitute parent" policies “exclude persons (from AFDC) on 

an arbitrary and irrational basis," the Legal Defense Fund alleges. 

"The states in question are striking at the remaining vestige 

of stability of many Negro families, which have already endured 

crippling blows," the civil rights attorneys maintain, 

The complaint was prepared by Legal Defense Fund Attorneys 

John Walker of Little Rock; C. B. King and Dennis J. Roberts of 

Albany, Gas; Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg, Assistant Counsel 

Charles H. Jones, Jr., and Charles Stephen Ralston, all of New York, 

and Atty. Edward V. Sparer of the Center of Social Welfare, Law and 

Policy, Columbia University School of Social Work. 

a3ie