Social Welfare Law Commons^™

How Should Inheritance Law Remediate Inequality?, Felix B. Chang

Washington Law Review

This Article argues that trusts and estates (“T&E”) should prioritize intergenerational economic mobility—the ability of children to move beyond the economic stations of their parents—above all other goals. The field’s traditional emphasis on testamentary freedom, or the freedom to distribute property in a will as one sees fit, fosters the stickiness of inequality. For wealthy settlors, dynasty trusts sequester assets from the nation’s system of taxation and stream of commerce. For low-income decedents, intestacy (i.e., the system of property distribution for a person who dies without a will) splinters property rights and inhibits their transfer, especially to nontraditional heirs.

Holistically, …

"Send Freedom House!": A Study In Police Abolition, Tiffany Yang

Washington Law Review

Sparked by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the 2020 uprisings accelerated a momentum of abolitionist organizing that demands the defunding and dismantling of policing infrastructures. Although a growing body of legal scholarship recognizes abolitionist frameworks when examining conventional proposals for reform, critics mistakenly continue to disregard police abolition as an unrealistic solution. This Essay helps dispel this myth of “impracticality” and illustrates the pragmatism of abolition by identifying a community-driven effort that achieved a meaningful reduction in policing we now take for granted. I detail the history of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, a Black civilian …

Health Care Fraud Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry, Jacob T. Elberg

Washington Law Review

For decades, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued a steady flood of press releases announcing False Claims Act (FCA) settlements against health care entities and extolling the purportedly sharp message sent to the industry through these settlements about the consequences of engaging in wrongdoing. The FCA is the primary mechanism for government enforcement against health care entities engaged in wrongdoing, and it is expected to be DOJ’s key tool for addressing fraud arising out of government programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. DOJ has pointed to three key goals of its enforcement efforts (deterrence, incentivizing cooperation, and building …

Welfare And Federalism's Peril, Andrew Hammond

Washington Law Review

Recent scholarship on American federalism lacks case studies to inform that scholarship’s trans-substantive insights and claims. This Article examines the last two decades of devolution brought about by the 1996 Welfare Reform Act (PRWORA). It details the history of PRWORA and how the funding mechanism built into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—the TANF block grant—guaranteed the program’s deterioration. The Article documents the program’s failure to respond to increased need among poor families after Hurricane Katrina and in the Great Recession, showing how the federal government’s use of TANF in both crises teach us the limits of fiscally devolved programs. …

Disability, Vulnerability, And The Limits Of Antidiscrimination, Ani B. Satz

Washington Law Review

Despite the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), disabled Americans face substantial barriers to entry into the workplace, lack material supports including health care and transportation, and may not receive reasonable accommodation that best supports their functioning. In addition, individuals with impairments have difficulty qualifying as disabled for disability protections. In light of these problems, some commentators suggest that a civil rights or antidiscrimination approach to disability discrimination—an approach for which activists fought for twenty years prior to the enactment of the ADA—may not adequately address disability discrimination. Some critics advocate a return to the social …

Keffeler V. Department Of Social And Health Services: How The Supreme Court Of Washington Mistook Caring For Children As Robbing Them Blind, Tobias J. Kammer

Washington Law Review

Social Security benefits aid in the basic care of beneficiaries. Washington's Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) used benefits toward this end until Keffeler v. Department of Social and Health Services. In Keffeler, the Supreme Court of Washington ruled that DSHS, even when acting as representative payee, could not use a foster child's Social Security benefits to pay for his or her current maintenance. The court held that DSHS's use of Social Security benefits to pay for the current maintenance of foster children violated 42 U.S.C. § 407 of the Social Security Act, which protects Social Security …

States As International Law-Breakers: Discrimination Against Immigrants And Welfare Reform, Elizabeth Landry

Washington Law Review

As part of the current "devolution revolution," policy makers at the state and federal levels are designing proposals that would permit states to discriminate on the basis of immigration status in determining eligibility for public education, medical care, social services, and cash assistance. This Comment asserts that such proposals violate international human rights norms, by which both federal and state governments are bound. Mbreover, it maintains that legislators must consider international law when crafting proposals that would allow discrimination on the basis of alienage. If they fail to do so, courts are obliged to intervene and ensure that treaty provisions …

Marital Status And Eligibility For Federal Statutory Income Benefits: A Historical Survey, Marjorie Dick Rombauer

Washington Law Review

In an era when attitudes toward marriage institutions are changing and it has become a truism that governmentally dispensed benefits constitute "the new property," the extent to which marital status is a determinant of the right to receive such benefits is a subject of particular interest. The purpose of this article is to survey that subject. More specifically, this article will trace congressional and administrative efforts to arrive at acceptable definitions of who should be treated as a wife/widow (or husband/widower), so as to be entitled to particular statutory benefits, and similar efforts to define when the status- relationship has …

Standing, The "New Property," And The Costs Of Welfare: Dilemmas In American And West German Provider-Administration, Robert Dugan

Washington Law Review

The overwhelming increase in governmental welfare, subsidy, and licensing programs in the United States' recent history has prompted substantial acadenic controversy and judicial uncertainty over the requisites for standing to challenge the decisions of our provider-administration. Looking beyond our traditional theories, Mr. Dugan examines recent decisions of the West German Federal Administrative Court with respect to mandatory and discretionary governmental benefits which are deemed to create rights in their intended beneficiaries. He argues that the most sound analytical approach to the problem as we now view it would be to apply a "violated right" standard, since injury depends upon violation …

Escalation Of Welfare Warfare: The Case Of The Recent Resident, Anon

Washington Law Review

Vivian Marie Thompson, plaintiff, migrated from Boston, Massachusetts to Hartford, Connecticut to be near her mother. She arrived without prospect of specific employment or sufficient funds to maintain herself and her child while attempting to locate work. During her residency in Boston, she received financial support under a jointly-funded state-federal program of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC). When she applied for similar assistance in Hartford her request was denied by defendant, Connecticut's Commissioner of Welfare, because she had not been a resident of the state for one year as required by Connecticut law. plaintiff brought suit in the United States …

Escalation Of Welfare Warfare: The Case Of The Recent Resident, Anon

Washington Law Review

Vivian Marie Thompson, plaintiff, migrated from Boston, Massachusetts to Hartford, Connecticut to be near her mother. She arrived without prospect of specific employment or sufficient funds to maintain herself and her child while attempting to locate work. During her residency in Boston, she received financial support under a jointlyfunded state-federal program of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC). When she applied for similar assistance in Hartford her request was denied by defendant, Connecticut's Commissioner of Welfare, because she had not been a resident of the state for one year as required by Connecticut law. plaintiff brought suit in the United States …

Social Legislation, John B. Sholley

Washington Law Review

Covers compensation for civil defense workers, public assistance, unemployment compensation, and workmen's compensation.

Unemployment Compensation—Quitting Work For Good Cause—Question Of Law Or Fact, Thomas E. Smail. Jr.

Washington Law Review

A was working on an "inside job" for $1.63 per hour plus $.10 for working the second shift when he was told that he was to be transferred to an "outside job" at $1.43 per hour without an opportunity for the shift differential. A refused to accept the transfer and quit work. When making application for unemployment benefits, A signed a statement which read in part, "I quit mainly because I was transferred to an outside job. I had been ill last winter and did not want to work outside again.... However I would have stayed on the job had …

Recent Developments In The Washington Old Age Assistance Program, Vern Countryman

Washington Law Review

More than 60,000 persons over 65 years of age in the State of Washington now receive old age assistance totaling in excess of $3,500,000 per month. With the progressive advancement of life expectancy and the decline of employment opportunities for the aged in the postwar years, these figures can be expected to increase until by 1950 more than 75,000 aged persons in this state will receive assistance which, under present standards, will approximate $5,000,000 per month. Administration of this huge program of public assistance has been carried out under laws which are models of benevolent purpose and obscure meaning.

Old Age Assistance In Washington, Vern Countryman

Washington Law Review

Two decades ago, recognition of a governmental duty to care for the aged who had no means of support had gone no further than to provide for their maintenance in almshouses and poor farms. But in 1922 the American Association for Labor Legislation and the Fraternal Order of Eagles began a campaign to abolish the poorhouse system and to substitute for it a proposed Old Age Pension Act providing for monthly grants to needy aged persons from funds to be raised by county governments. Washington adopted this act in 1933 and by the end of the following year 28 states …