Civil Rights Lawyers File Suit in U.S. District Court to Protect Elderly, Blind and Disabled Immigrants from Losing SSI Benefits


For Immediate Release: March 26, 1997

Charging that the "welfare reform" bill passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in August, 1996 violates the constitutional rights of indigent legal immigrants who are disabled, blind and elderly by unfairly barring them from receiving SSI (Supplemental Security Income), a coalition of civil rights attorneys filed a class action in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on March 26.

The suit will affect hundreds of thousands of legal permanent residents who receive subsistence-level SSI benefits because their age or disabilities prevent them from working. More than forty per cent of those affected live in California. The lawsuit, Sutich v. Callahan, Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, is asking the federal court to issue an injunction to halt the aid cut-off (scheduled for August 22 of this year) by barring enforcement of Section 402 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, because it violates the constitutionally guaranteed rights of indigent legal resident immigrants.

"This anti-immigrant legislation is beyond the constitutional pale," said Judith Z. Gold of Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe. "It will jeopardize the very survival of poor legal residents with disabilities or who are elderly, and who are full-fledged members of our society, pay taxes and have been welcomed to reside permanently in the United States."

The named plaintiffs are legal permanent residents who will have their SSI benefits terminated under the new welfare reform law; they have all resided in this country since prior to the passage of the 1996 welfare reform act. The named plaintiffs represent a class of hundreds of thousands of elderly, blind or disabled legal residents who are being denied SSI benefits or who will be soon purged from the SSI rolls.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that people are at risk of dying because of this legislation," said Dr. Anita Friedman, executive director of Jewish Family and Children's Services. "The elderly are especially hard hit. People in their 80s and 90s face hunger and homelessness because they have no other resources available to them."

Plaintiff Ivo Sutich has been a resident of the U.S. for over forty years. After escaping for political reasons from Yugoslavia, he entered this country under the U.S. Department of State's Escapee Program in 1956. He worked for almost eight years before being involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric care. He has been diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia. Sutich was recently discharged from a nursing facility and for the first time in several years, he is living in the community with the help of caseworkers. Sutich is 65 years old and has severe visual impairment. Without SSI, Sutich will be evicted from the board-and-care facility where he is currently living and become homeless or returned to a psychiatric institution.

Sixteen-year old Washington High School sophomore Saman Muy uses a wheelchair because she had a spinal cord injury when she was a child. Over the past eleven years, the Cambodian-born Muy has undergone major surgery three times, has had extensive physical therapy and takes medication every day; she receives SSI and Medi-Cal. Muy's family came to the U.S. from war-torn Cambodia in 1982 when she was two years old. She lives with her mother, step-father and four younger siblings in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco's Tenderloin District. As even her own apartment building is not fully wheelchair accessible, her mother spends a good deal of time helping Saman, including administering her nine different medications and assisting her in the bathroom.

Muy, who won an Outstanding Youth Award in 1993 from the Delinquency Prevention Commission, loves school and hopes to be the first in her family to attend university. She is worried about what will happen to her and her family if she loses her SSI check which is used to cover a share of the rent, food, utilities and transportation. Her father has a physical disability and also has depression and anxiety from his days in Cambodia. Her mother, a former rice farmer with little formal education, was turned down for citizenship two years ago because her English was not good enough; she does not work outside the home as she must spend a good deal of time assisting Saman and looking after her younger children. Muy is planning to become a U.S. citizen but cannot do so until she is 18. "If I lose my SSI support it will be very difficult for me to get by in the next year and a half," she said.

Plaintiff Wing Yim Chan is a 60-year old widow from Hong Kong who began working as a seamstress in California shortly after her arrival here in 1988. The work caused her to gradually lose her vision; in 1995, after cataract surgery was unsuccessful, she became blind. "I went back to my employer after the surgery and asked him if I could work for the company in any job that did not require the use of my eyes. My employer said that he had no use for a blind person and fired me even though I had worked for the company for seven years," said Chan. When she could not find another job, Chan applied for SSI, which she has been receiving for a little over a year. She lives with her youngest daughter who goes to high school. Chan, who is trying to study English to become a citizen, said, "It is very difficult for me to learn as most classes are not set up to teach the blind. I am very depressed because I would like to be able to take care of myself and not burden the family."

"These plaintiffs and thousands of other legal residents like them face discriminatory, unconstitutional denial of critically necessary benefits to which they are rightfully entitled. Plaintiffs are suffering and will suffer great deprivation and severe hardship because of this so-called welfare reform," said Gold.

The lawsuit charges that denying SSI to needy individuals based solely on their citizenship status is in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which protects all residents from discrimination at the hands of the government.

"While lawfully resident noncitizens can be denied certain privileges, such as the right to hold certain kinds of public office, it is patently outside our constitutional norms to discriminate against legal immigrants in a manner that threatens their very ability to exist, as this does," explained Gold.

The law denies most legal immigrants access to SSI, which previously was available to all indigent people living in this country for more than five years who are elderly, blind or disabled. "To single out this group who are already living in this country and who are unable to work because of their disabilities and advanced age, does not further any legitimate governmental purpose. It is cruel, arbitrary and irrational -- and a clear example of invidious discrimination in violation of equal protection guarantees," said ACLU-NC Managing Attorney Alan Schlosser.

SSI provides a minimal income for people who are elderly, have disabilities or are blind, and who have no assets and no ability to work. The monthly payments -- in 1997, the national base amount is $484 per individual, and is $640 in California -- cover only the very basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. Eligibility for SSI has always been strictly need-based and never distinguished between citizens and lawful permanent non-citizens and their dependents. All legal resident immigrants are subject to the new restrictions except for those who fit into such narrow categories as having proof of legally working in the country for over 40 quarters (10 years), are veterans or are certain recent refugees.

Ironically, those affected by this legislation came to this country under United States' national immigration policies like family unification, worker recruitment, and refugee asylum.

"These are the political refugees and asylees which America welcomed and promised to shelter. These are the hardworking immigrants who have sacrificed everything to come to this country, but who have become disabled. These are the grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and fathers who have come here under a U.S. policy of encouraging the reunification of families. These are the children like Saman Muy who will be punished because she spent the first two years of her life in a refugee camp instead of being born in the United States," said attorney Victor Hwang of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.

"A great many of the plaintiffs will become homeless as a result of the legislation, and many others will be institutionalized at many times the cost of continuing their SSI benefits." Hwang said.

ACLU-NC attorney Schlosser, added "This arbitrary cut-off of benefits will cause inestimable hardship to legal immigrants who due to their age or disability cannot work to support themselves -- it reflects an unfortunate historical tradition in this country of singling out immigrants because of racial antipathy and their political powerlessness."

The case is being brought by attorneys Judith Z. Gold, Paul W. Sugarman, Roger W. Doughty, Thomas P. Brown, Robert Mahnke and Jeff Hessekiel of the San Francisco law firm Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe; ACLU-NC attorneys Alan Schlosser and Edward Chen; Yolanda Vera and Linton Joaquin of the National Immigration Law Center; and Victor Hwang and Gen Fujioka of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium; Gerald A. McIntyre and Herbert Semmel of the National Senior Citizens Law Center; Melinda Bird and Gioconda R. Molina of Protection and Advocacy, Inc.; Robert Rubin of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights; and ACLU National Immigrants' Rights Director Lucas Guttentag; A similar case, Abreu v. Callahan, is being brought in U.S. District Court in New York seeking a similar injunction on behalf of legal permanent residents.