Thompson v. Shapiro: Residence Requirements and the Right to Life

The Catholic Lawyer, Dec 2016

Published on 12/16/16

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Thompson v. Shapiro: Residence Requirements and the Right to Life

Thomp son v. Shapiro: Residence Requirements and the Right to Life 0 Part of the Constitutional Law Commons , Fourteenth Amendment Commons, and the Supreme Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation (2016) "Thomps on v. Shapiro: Residence Requirements and the Right to Life," Th e Catholic Lawyer: Vol. 15 : No. 3 , Article 11. Available at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl/vol15/iss3/11 - THOMPSON V. SHAPIRO: RESIDENCE REQUIREMENTS AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE* The most fundamental of all rights is the right to life. To Jefferson and the framers of the Constitution . . . the right to life meant the right not to be deprived of life. The right to life was to them in very truth a "natural"right. For it was a life that God gave and nature supported1. The recent pronouncement of the Supreme Court in Thompson v. Shapiro2 invalidating the durational residence requirement for state and federal welfare assistance removes a basic infringement on the constitutional rights of welfare recipients. In a long-awaited and broadly-written opinion, Mr. Justice Brennan, writing for a 6-3 majority, ruled that a one-year residence requirement constituted an invidious discrimination, denying welfare recipients the equal protection of the laws by depriving them of "the ability . . . to obtain the very means to subsist-food, shelter, and [the] other necessities of life."' 3 Historically, residence tests originated with the localism of the Elizabethan Poor Laws 4 and the concomitant notion of settlement,5 i.e., the idea that each individual belonged to a certain place which was obligated to support him in his time of need. 6 Under this system, before liability could be affixed for support, the indigent had to establish a This paper was prepared by the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. settlement in the particular locality which was to be made liable. 7 The concept of residence thus became fused with the idea of relief for the poor long before our present public assistance laws. Perhaps because of their very antiquity, the constitutionality of settlement provisions was never seriously questioned. In fact, prior to 1966, the residence requirements imposed by various state welfare programs received only two constitutional challenges. In the first, Rutland v. Mendon,s a Massachusetts court declared that the legislature possessed sufficient authority to enact a statute establishing a three-year residence period as a prerequisite to the achievement of settlement status by a pauper. In the second case, People ex rel. Heydenreich v. Lyons,9 decided in 1940, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld a state statute requiring applicants for assistance to have resided in a city for the three years immediately preceding the date of application. The court, pointing out that the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment merely requires that a classification be based upon a real and substantial distinction having a rational relation to the subject of the legislation, 10 concluded that no fundamental rights were impaired by the statute in question. Thus, it was not until 7 The Settlement Act of 1662, 13 & 14 Car. 2, c.12, provided that any person "likely to be chargeable" to the parish, who was not in residence for forty days, could be returned to his place of settlement. Additionally, the preamble of the Act declared: "By reason of some defect in the law, poor people are not restrained from going from one parish to another." 8 18 Mass. (1 Pick.) 154 (1822). 9 374 I11. 557, 30 N.E.2d 46 (1940). 10 Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 93 (1965). See also McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964). the recent wave of welfare cases that the constitutionality of residence requirements was put to a true test and found wanting. 1 The opinion of the Supreme Court in Thompson is founded upon the twin pillars of equal protection and the right to travel. However, it is not entirely certain whether the majority opinion rests primarily upon the interference with what is today considered to be a "fundamental" right-the right to travel freely. 12 The Right to Travel While its specific source is somewhat questionable, the fundamental right to freely travel is today clearly conceded."3 Although the Articles of Confederation provided that "the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and 11Prior to the Supreme Court decision in Thompson v. Shapiro, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), there had been several federal district court decisions invalidating residency tests. See, e.g., Harrell v. Tobriner, 279 F. Supp. 22 (D.D.C. 1967); Smith v. Reynolds, 277 F. Supp. 64 (E.D. Pa. 1967); Green v. Dep't of Public Welfare, 270 F. Supp. 173 (D. Del. 1967); Thompson v. Shapiro, 270 F. Supp. 331 (D. Conn. 1967); accord, Robinson v. Ott, 284 F. Supp. 735 (D. Mass. 1968); Ramos v. Health & Social Services Bd., 276 F. Supp. 474 (D. Wis. 1967). Contra, Waggoner (...truncated)


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Thompson v. Shapiro: Residence Requirements and the Right to Life, The Catholic Lawyer, 2016, Volume 15, Issue 3,