Elderly Immigrants and Immigrant Victims of Domestic Violence Score Win in Challenge to State’s Food Stamp Program

December 1, 2003

Author: Barbara Weiner

In a stunning decision issued on December 8, 2003, Judge Marilyn Diamond of the Supreme Court, New York County, ruled that the State’s restrictions on the access of lawful, qualified immigrants to the State’s Food Assistance Program (FAP) violate state and federal Equal Protection guarantees.

The case, entitled Yankel Teytelman, et al. v. Brian J. Wing, Index No. 402767/02 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co.), challenges the constitutionality of several provisions in the law establishing FAP that: (A) entirely exclude immigrants who arrived in the U.S. after 8/22/96 from eligibility for benefits; and (B) require those who are eligible for benefits to apply for naturalization as a condition of receiving them. A third provision, also challenged by the Teytelman plaintiffs, denies access to benefits to any immigrant who would otherwise be eligible but who had been out of the U.S. for more than 90 days in the 12 months preceding application. The Court granted a preliminary injunction and restrained the State from withholding FAP benefits from the named plaintiffs on any of the challenged grounds during the pendency of the case.

By way of background, the Food Assistance Program was established in 1997 to provide state and locally funded food stamp benefits to certain particularly vulnerable groups of immigrants who were no longer eligible for the federal program because of welfare reform. FAP initially provided assistance to children, the elderly and the disabled. Two years ago, FAP was amended to provide state-funded food stamp benefits to victims of domestic violence. Local social services districts are not required to operate the program and currently only ten do so. Among them is New York City, where the majority of the state’s immigrants currently reside.

Two of the groups FAP originally served, children and the disabled, are now eligible for Federal food stamp benefits without regard to their date of entry into the U.S. because of immigrant restorations enacted by Congress two years ago. However, even under the federal restoration, non-disabled adults must still wait in a qualified immigrant status for five years before becoming eligible for the federal program. Thus, the decision is a big victory for two groups of New York immigrants: survivors of domestic violence and the elderly who have been in a qualified immigrant status for less than five years. The Court, “compelled”, as it said, to follow the Court of Appeals decision in Aliessa v. Novello, 96 N.Y.2d (which struck down the State’s law denying Medicaid to certain lawful residents) subjected FAP’s residency and travel restrictions, and its application for citizenship requirement, to a strict scrutiny test, which will ultimately spell their doom.

Plaintiffs are represented by GULP attorneys Barbara Weiner and Amy Schwartz; Jennifer Baum of the New York Legal Aid Society; Connie Carden of the New York Legal Assistance Group; Sister Mary Ellen Burns of the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation and Rebecca Scharf of the Welfare Law Center.