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.

At the time, I gave this run­down of the case:

Robert and Karen Cap­ato were mar­ried in New Jer­sey in 1999. Shortly after their mar­riage, Robert was diag­nosed with esophageal can­cer. Know­ing that chemother­apy might ren­der him ster­ile, he banked his sperm before under­go­ing treat­ment. Mean­while, the cou­ple had a child by nat­ural meth­ods who was born in August 2001.

Sadly, Robert Cap­ato died in March 2002 in Florida. His will made pro­vi­sions for the infant son and two chil­dren from a pre­vi­ous marriage.

The Cap­atos always wanted their infant son to have a sib­ling, but Robert’s health had dete­ri­o­rated before another son could be con­ceived nat­u­rally. There­fore, Karen used Robert’s banked sperm to con­ceive, giv­ing birth to twins on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2003. She applied for Social Secu­rity sur­vivor ben­e­fits for the twins.

Sec­tion 202(d) of the Social Secu­rity Act cov­ers who is eli­gi­ble to receive benefits:

(d)(1) Every child (as defined in sec­tion 216(e)) of an indi­vid­ual enti­tled to old-​​​​age or dis­abil­ity insur­ance ben­e­fits, or of an indi­vid­ual who dies a fully or cur­rently insured indi­vid­ual, if such child—

(A) has filed appli­ca­tion for child’s insur­ance benefits,

(B) at the time such appli­ca­tion was filed was unmarried …

(C) was depen­dent upon such individual— …

(ii) if such indi­vid­ual has died, at the time of such death…

Sec­tion 216(e), then, defines “child”:

The term “child” means (1) the child or legally adopted child of an individual…

Also, the Social Secu­rity Admin­is­tra­tion (SSA) has rou­tinely applied Sec­tion 216(h) to deter­mine eli­gi­bil­ity. This sec­tion relies on state law regard­ing those who are eli­gi­ble to receive ben­e­fits if some­one dies with­out a will (i.e. intes­tate) to deter­mine who qual­i­fies for benefits.

The lower courts decided that Robert Cap­ato was a res­i­dent of Florida at the time of his death, so Florida intes­tancy law applies. Under Florida law, a child who is born to a deceased par­ent is only eli­gi­ble to inherit the parent’s prop­erty if he is specif­i­cally pro­vided for in the parent’s will. There­fore, the admin­is­tra­tive law judge who first heard the case decided that 1) Cap­ato was a Florida res­i­dent at the time of his death; and 2) that the twins did not qual­ify for Social Secu­rity ben­e­fits, since they were not pro­vided for in Robert Capato’s will.

The Third Cir­cuit over­turned the admin­is­tra­tive law judge’s deci­sion, not on the basis of res­i­dency (they seemed to agree that Cap­ato was a Florida res­i­dent at the time of his death) but rather on the Social Secu­rity Act’s def­i­n­i­tion of a “child”. The deci­sion said that sec­tion 216(e) super­sedes sec­tion 216(h). That is, the def­i­n­i­tion of a “child” is clear, accord­ing to the Act, and does not need clar­i­fi­ca­tion using the rather com­pli­cated guide­lines set forth in 216(h).

(Michael Astrue, the claimant, is the cur­rent Com­mis­sioner of Social Security.)

The prin­ci­ple applied here is called Chevron def­er­ence: in the 1984 case Chevron USA Inc. v. Nat­ural Resources Defense Coun­cil Inc., the Court held that the law as inter­preted by admin­is­tra­tive agen­cies (such as the SSA) would take prece­dence unless the agency had some sort of crazy read­ing of the statute. In this case, the SSA’s inter­pre­ta­tion appeared saner to the court than Karen Capato’s.

While this resolves dis­crep­an­cies between the lower courts in the inter­pre­ta­tion of what con­sti­tutes a “child”, there is still a huge prob­lem with the Social Secu­rity Administration’s pro­ce­dures in decid­ing who can access sur­vivor ben­e­fits. The SSA’s reliance on state law works for this case, which con­cerned a Florida res­i­dent, but there is a patch­work of state laws regard­ing eli­gi­bil­ity for survivor’s ben­e­fits in intes­tacy, and some states have no laws ref­er­enc­ing Social Secu­rity for the pur­pose of deter­min­ing eli­gi­bil­ity. Per­haps this case will aid state leg­is­la­tures in right­ing this inconsistency.

Another tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ment that has rev­o­lu­tion­ized crime detec­tion and jurispru­dence is the avail­abil­ity of DNA evi­dence. Maryland’s high­est court, the Court of Appeals, has refused to hear an appeal of lower court rul­ings that keeps Mary­land police from obtain­ing DNA evi­dence from per­sons who have been arrested. The Com­mon­wealth has indi­cated it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Because of dis­crep­an­cies in lower court deci­sions, expect the Supreme Court to grant cer­tio­rari.

Did the Court get it hor­ri­bly wrong? Is Robert Capato’s DNA eli­gi­ble for sur­vivor benefits?

Do you think being arrested auto­mat­i­cally makes you eli­gi­ble to give a DNA sam­ple to police agencies?

It’s your DNA, you tell us what you want done with it.

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