ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701060123
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PHOENIX
SOURCE: LUNA I. SHYR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
What Judith Burdick wanted when she went to court 15 years ago was child support from her son's father. What she got was a judge who hinted she was promiscuous and a state agency she claims gave her the brushoff.
Frustrated and financially strapped, Burdick joined four other women in 1993 to sue the Arizona agency responsible for getting deadbeat parents to pay up.
The women claim the agency failed to help them collect child support. One woman is owed more than $22,000; another's ex-husband halted payments after six years.
When the U.S. Supreme Court hears the case Monday, it will consider whether individuals may sue states for not doing enough to collect child support. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia want such lawsuits barred.
The Arizona women contend the state Department of Economic Security violated a law that ties federal funding of Aid to Families with Dependent Children to state efforts toward enforcing child support payments.
The law requires state agencies to offer services to help collect payments owed by deadbeat parents and to go after parents who disobey court orders to pay up. It also requires the agencies to establish paternity, through blood tests if necessary.
That isn't what happened in Burdick's case, the plaintiff claims.
Burdick asserts a California man fathered her son, Michael, now 20. She first went to court in 1981, seeking to collect part of the man's Social Security benefits of about $350 a month.
According to Burdick, a judge questioned the identity of the father and suggested Burdick had multiple sex partners.
``It's very frustrating to know you're telling the truth and to have someone say, `Well, you're not telling the truth' and ask, `Did you sleep with other men?''' Burdick said.
The Arizona DES stepped into the case in 1989 after Burdick applied for help. Burdick says both the agency and the judge overseeing her request told her they could not contact the California man without violating his rights.
DES counters that it tried for five years to find the man but never could because he moved frequently and because Burdick was uncooperative. The agency says Burdick failed to fill out documents that would have allowed California authorities to find the man and take legal action there.
Burdick maintains she gave DES all the information it requested. The alleged father is named on Michael's birth certificate and signed paternity papers in California, where the couple lived before separating, she says.
``He was abusive and I was very young, but I had enough sense not to marry him,'' she said. ``That's one thing Arizona and the judge held against me - well, like, `You must have been a loose person.'
``I think in [the judge's] mind, I was just a slut who had a baby, and I should pay the consequences.''
Burdick does not recall the name of the judge involved in her case. DES, while conceding the California man is indeed identified as Michael's father on the birth certificate, insists Burdick hobbled its good-faith efforts to find him.
DES closed Burdick's case in 1994 after asking Burdick several times to file the interstate papers, says Kim Gillespie, chief counsel of the child support section of the state attorney general's office, which is representing DES.
Burdick, 49, says she stopped working about 10 years ago because of failing health caused by stress and heart problems. She lives in a small house in rural Arizona and cares for her daughter's two young children.
``I'm stuck here. Financially, I can't leave here,'' she said. ``I hope something will come out of this case so Michael can go to college.''
DES contends that parents should not be allowed to sue states over child support efforts because the agencies already are accountable to the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
``HHS has the authority to punish us. If you add in these third parties, you create two sources of enforcement when only one was intended,'' said Carter Phillips, a Washington, D.C., lawyer representing DES.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit were picked by child advocates to represent the range of problems faced by some 300,000 custodial parents in Arizona.
A federal judge threw out the lawsuit, ruling that Congress, when writing the law about states' responsibilities regarding AFDC, didn't intend to provide a judicial remedy for private citizens.
But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the suit in October 1995, saying the women could use civil rights law to sue over alleged noncompliance, amounting to a deprivation of rights provided under the AFDC program.
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