ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
A LAW CENTER wants to bar the state from cutting off welfare for Virginia children with unidentified fathers until the lawsuit is decided.
In December 1991, she got drunk at a party and passed out.
The next thing she knew, a man was on top of her.
She asked the next morning if anyone knew the man. No one knew.
She considered it rape. But scared and in shock, she never reported it to police.
Later, she discovered she was pregnant.
After the child was born, she married. Her husband didn't adopt the child.
They separated. She went on welfare a year ago.
But her welfare benefits - Aid to Families with Dependent Children - were cut off six months later because she couldn't provide the Roanoke County Department of Social Services with the name of her child's father.
Since July 1, 1995, women in Virginia have been required to identify the fathers of their children to receive AFDC benefits - the nation's primary form of welfare.
But this woman maintains that she has no way of finding out who the father might be. She can't remember the full names of the people who were at the party.
She appealed the benefit cutoff to the state Department of Social Services. She lost.
The woman's case - with name deleted - is included in a thick binder of exhibits that accompany the Virginia Poverty Law Center's suit against Social Services. The lawsuit - filed specifically against Clarence Carter, the department's commissioner - asks the court to overturn the nearly year-old policy.
The law center, an advocacy group for the poor, was in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville on Monday to ask that the court issue an injunction that would bar the state from enforcing the policy until the case has been decided. The group also asked the court to certify the suit as a class action.
U.S. District Judge James H. Michael is expected to rule today on both requests.
The law center initially filed the lawsuit in federal court in Harrisonburg on behalf of three anonymous welfare recipients - one in Christiansburg, another in Smyth County and a third in Winchester - whose AFDC benefits were cut off because they couldn't provide enough identifying information on their children's fathers. The Winchester woman withdrew from the suit last week because she feared her anonymity could not be protected, said Steven Myers, a law center attorney.
But there are others whose benefits have been cut off or whose applications for benefits have been turned down because they couldn't identify their children's fathers, the law center maintains: the woman in Roanoke County, one in Fairfax County, another in Wythe County - 358 families total from July of last year to May, Myers said in court Monday.
"The purpose of AFDC is family preservation," Myers said. "But that purpose is thwarted by this irrational rule."
The policy is intended to help parents "get their act together, get back on track, without taxpayer dollars," and to encourage child support by absent fathers, said Elizabeth Riopelle, an assistant attorney general. Twenty-three percent of mothers whose AFDC benefits were cut off or whose applications have been turned down for failure to identify fathers have come forward with identifying information after they were sanctioned, she said.
"There's no perfect solution," she said. "The option is to try to find out who really does know. And if they don't know, they don't get benefits."
Michael said that argument troubled him.
"That stumbles on the thrust of AFDC - that is to benefit children," he said. "It's a strange advocation of the purpose of AFDC. What happens to the children involved? How do you get around that?"
Riopelle argued that children unfortunately must bear the consequences of their parents' irresponsibility.
"This is how the world works," she said. "That's what the child learns."
Monday's hearing comes a week after President Clinton made an executive order requiring mothers on welfare to identify the fathers of their children.
Gov. George Allen criticized the initiative as "just another example of the president playing `catch-up' with the states when it comes to welfare reform."
Under Virginia welfare policy, failure to provide identifying information is interpreted as "noncooperation."
The law center contends that the policy violates a federal welfare regulation. That regulation requires that AFDC applicants and recipients cooperate in identifying the father and define cooperate as "attesting to lack of information, under penalty of perjury."
The state last year asked the federal government for a waiver from that regulation. The state was told it didn't need one, said William Hurd, deputy attorney general. The state now is waiting for confirmation of that, he said.
Commissioner Carter said after Monday's hearing that the state is committed to creating an environment "where we don't have children here and we don't know who the father is."
"We are simply saying that in order to receive benefits you have to say who that is. We think it is inappropriate behavior not to know who the father of your child is. Therefore, the Commonwealth is not going to subsidize not knowing who the father of the child is."
But, said Myers, "this is not a complicated case."
"As a result [of the policy], women and children are losing benefits even though they were cooperating with the state within the meaning of the federal law. The harm they will suffer will be actual and irreparable."
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