Supreme Court upholds denial of federal benefits to Puerto Rico in Equal protection challenge
On Thursday, April 21, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Puerto Rican residents do not have a Constitutional right to receive certain federal benefits that the government provides to residents living in the 50 states.
United States v. Vaello Madero involved Supplemental Security Income, which provides cash assistance to poor, disabled and elderly Americans. Congress statutorily excluded residents of Puerto Rico and three other territories. The 8-1 decision, authored by Justice Kavanaugh, ruled that the denial does not violate the Equal Protection clause because “The Constitution affords Congress substantial discretion over how to structure federal tax and benefits programs for residents of the Territories.” Relying on precedent, he applied rational review.
Justice Sotomayor argued in her dissent that “there is no rational basis for Congress to treat needy citizens living anywhere in the United States so differently from others. To hold otherwise, as the Court does, is irrational and antithetical to the very nature of the SSI program and the equal protetion of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution.” She notes the particularly significant need for income supplements in Puerto Rico, and also that the majority’s reasoning could endanger poor residents in other states that do not pay sufficient taxes. Notably, her opinion concedes the use of rational review as a standard of review, saying it is not “toothless,” which departs from her suggestion during oral argument that strict scrutiny ought to apply because Puerto Ricans do not receive representation in Congress.
Justice Gorsuch raised the stakes in a concurrence calling on the Court to overturn a series of early-20th century cases, known as the Insular cases (e.g. the infamous Downes v. Bidwell), in which the court relied on “ugly racial stereotypes” to justify excluding Puerto Rico and “unincorporated territorities” from some constitutional rights that were extended to “incorporated territories.” He notes that the distinction reflects an imperialist and social Darwinist perspective that is no longer in keeping with modern beliefs, such that the court has strained to reach just results in lieu of overturning Downes. (A prior immigrationprof blog post on this line of questioning and related scholarship is here.)
A separate concurrence by Justice Thomas suggested that the Fourteenth Amendment citizenship clause would be a better vehicle for prohibiting racial discrimination by the federal government than the continuing presumption that the Fifth Amendment due process clause (which applies to the federal government) contains an equal protection component that is “precisely the same” as the Fourteenth Amendment (which applies to states). The interpretation that equal protection is incorporated against the federal government, which Thomas is challenging, is rooted in civil rights era cases such as Bolling v. Sharpe; overturning would be a significant reworking on equality protections.
Responding to civil rights groups critical of the exclusion, President Joe Biden has urged Congress to end the exclusion of the territories from the SSI benefit, though he stood behind the opinion based on existing law. Congress has not indicated whether it would do so for SSI or other federal benefits with similar exclusions.
MHC