Jus­tice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

In March, we pre­viewed Astrue v. Cap­ato, in which Karen Cap­ato attempted to col­lect Social Secu­rity survivor’s ben­e­fits for twins con­ceived after the death of the father, based on the father’s income.

The court ruled unan­i­mously that no good def­i­n­i­tion of a sur­viv­ing child exists, given tech­no­log­i­cal changes which came into effect since Con­gress passed the orig­i­nal Act. How­ever, writ­ing for the Court, Jus­tice Ruth Bader Gins­burg says the Social Secu­rity Administration’s inter­pre­ta­tion of what is a “child”, while not per­fect, makes more sense and is more con­sis­tent with the Act than Karen Capato’s.

Kris­tine Knaplund, over at SCO­TUS­blog, gives this plain Eng­lish analy­sis of the Court’s decision:

The United States Supreme Court decided unan­i­mously that a child con­ceived and born after a parent’s death can­not rely solely on a genetic con­nec­tion to the deceased par­ent in order to qual­ify for Social Secu­rity sur­vivors ben­e­fits.  Sid­ing with the Social Secu­rity Administration’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the law, the Court held that all chil­dren, includ­ing those born via assisted repro­duc­tion tech­nol­ogy,  must either demon­strate that they would be eli­gi­ble to inherit from their late par­ent under state law or sat­isfy one of the statu­tory alter­na­tives to that require­ment.  The SSA’s inter­pre­ta­tion was more con­sis­tent with the core pur­pose of the Act, which is to pro­tect fam­ily mem­bers who depend on another fam­ily member’s income from hard­ship if that fam­ily mem­ber dies.

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