The Court Grants Summary Judgment to the Plaintiffs in Teytelman v. Wing

April 1, 2005

Author: Barbara Weiner

On February 5, 2005, Judge Diamond of the Supreme Court, New York County, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in Teytelman v. Wing (Index No. 402767/02.) The Teytelman plaintiffs challenged various immigration related restrictions in the State’s Food Assistance Program (FAP), including the requirement that, to be eligible, the applicant must have been residing in the U.S. on August 22, 1996. (See Social Services Law §95.10.) The plaintiffs are elderly immigrants and immigrant victims of domestic violence who entered the country after that date.

FAP was enacted by the New York Legislature in 1997 to provide state and locally funded food stamp benefits to the most vulnerable groups among the immigrants who had lost access to the federal food stamp program as a result of the 1996 federal welfare reform. Initially FAP was available only to elderly and disabled immigrants and to immigrant children. The program was later expanded to include immigrant victims of domestic violence who meet the definition of “qualified alien” under 8 USC §1641(c).1 See Endnote on page 2. Local social services districts were not required to participate but initially many did.[1]

Over the years, two factors have operated to radically shrink program participation. First was the 1998 and 2002 restoration of federal food stamp eligibility to substantial numbers of immigrants who had been receiving benefits under FAP. Pursuant to these changes in federal law, immigrant children and disabled immigrants became eligible for federal food stamps without regard to their date of entry, as long as they have a qualifying immigration status. Other immigrants with qualifying status, including the elderly and immigrant victims of domestic violence, become eligible for the federal program after five years.

Because elderly immigrants and domestic violence victims must wait for five years before becoming eligible for federal food stamps, FAP could still serve an important purpose. So why are so few immigrants participating? This is primarily because of the requirement challenged in Teytelman that, to be eligible, the applicant must have resided in the U.S. on August 22, 1996. Most elderly immigrants and immigrant victims of domestic violence who would be eligible for FAP because they were living here in August of 1996 - which is now almost nine years ago - have been in the country long enough to be back in the federal program. However, there are many immigrants who are elderly or who have been victimized by family violence who arrived in the U.S. after August 22, 1996 and who desperately need the nutritional assistance that FAP could provide. They are barred from access to FAP because of the residence restriction.

The decision in Teytelman would remove that barrier to participation, by eliminating the date of residency restriction as well as several other restrictions related to immigration status and not to need. The Teytelman Court rested its decision squarely on the Court of Appeals decision in Aliessa, which held that the State’s exclusion of immigrants from the state Medicaid program based only on their immigration status and date of residence violated the immigrants’ rights to equal protection. See Aliessa v. Novello, 96 N.Y.2d 418 (2001).
Nevertheless, this good news is tempered by the very sobering prospect of the FAP program’s imminent demise. FAP sunsets again in September of this year. The program has been extended twice by the Legislature, though the restrictions making the program more and more irrelevant have never been removed. Now, in an odd twist of logic, the State has been arguing to the Legislature that the lack of participants in FAP indicates that the program is no longer necessary. Ignored is the fact that the dearth of participants is directly the result of the unconstitutional restrictions on access to its benefits. Nevertheless, without the active and vocal support of advocates who work with elderly immigrants and with immigrant victims of domestic violence, FAP may well disappear before most needy immigrants can get the benefits of the Teytelman Court’s invalidation of the program’s unconstitutional eligibility restrictions.

Endnote

1.  It should be noted that New York’s limited program stands in stark contrast to the state food stamp replacement programs enacted in several other states - including California, Maine