The Changing Face of Welfare: Tracing the Supreme Court’s Welfare Reform Jurisprudence

“Welfare reform punishes the poor for being poor. Our responsibility…is to end poverty as we know it, not welfare.” – S. Clara Kim, 2001.

Since the early 20th century, the Supreme Court has played an intrinsic role in shaping welfare rights jurisprudence, particularly through its interpretation of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses. Welfare reform, as framed by the Court, is policy, not principle—a question of legislative discretion, not judicial concern [1]. As the doctrine denying welfare as a fundamental constitutional right stalls in development, vulnerable populations remain fixed in systemic inequities [2].

Legislative welfare reform functions as an essential tool for guaranteeing individual dignity, promoting substantive equality, and safeguarding democratic participation [3]. Yet the Supreme Court has never recognized welfare as a fundamental right. Instead, it has approached welfare claims through an intent-based Equal Protection framework, one that demands a smoking gun to prove discriminatory purpose [4]. The result is a judiciary that observes rather than intervenes, reinforcing systemic inequities by deferring to legislative discretion.

This essay argues that the Supreme Court should abandon its deferential posture and recognize welfare as a constitutional right grounded in the principles of Equal Protection and Due Process. The Court’s current framework, which treats welfare as a matter of legislative discretion rather than judicial concern, fails to confront the racial and economic disparities embedded in the American welfare state. A doctrinal shift toward substantive review would allow the judiciary to play an active role in dismantling systemic inequities and affirming the foundational promise of dignity and equality under the law.

The origins of welfare policy in the United States trace back to the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) when the nation saw growing advocacy and accountability for government intervention to mitigate economic instability. Spurred by the rise of industrial capitalism, urbanization, and labor unrest, these movements laid the ideological groundwork for federal welfare initiatives [5].

It took the Great Depression to force a reckoning [6]. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms, institutionalized federal responsibility for economic security through programs including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and aid for dependent children. Roosevelt imagined how the government could provide for those no longer capable of working, stimulate demand in the economy, and decrease the supply of labor [7]. In 1934, he tasked the Committee on Economic Security with developing an old-age pension program, an unemployment insurance system, and a national health care program. The federal objective of the Social Security Act of 1935 (SSA) was to assist all eligible poor through a newly-established payroll tax, collected from employers by the states [8]. As a part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, the SSA, which contributed to a dramatic decline in poverty among older people, formally inaugurated the American welfare state as we now know it [9].

The Social Security Act also established an unemployment insurance program administered by the states and the Aid to Dependent Children program, later renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which provided aid to families spearheaded by single mothers [10]. Domestic and agricultural workers, who were disproportionately Black, were excluded from the Social Security Act’s protections, denying close to 65 percent of the African American workforce access to unemployment insurance and retirement benefits [11].

Mid-20th century America continued to witness a significant expansion of federal welfare support in the social contract under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s waging of the War on Poverty [12]. Embracing the liberal optimism of the post-World War II era, Johnson’s ambitious legislative effort sought to combat racialized poverty in America through landmark legislation like the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Medicaid, Medicare, and the Food Stamp Act of 1964 [13]. This agenda targeted at antipoverty and civil rights demonstrated growing American ideological and racial tensions [14]. The federal government began to feel discomfort with the growing realization that, despite its professed commitment to equality, systemic racial and economic disparities persisted—revealing that some citizens were, in practice, “more equal” than others. Under the initiation of the War on Poverty agenda, many states were encouraged to experiment with regulations to control the growth and cost of their welfare programs [15].

States were able to administer these welfare standards in the ways they deemed appropriate, inducing ambiguity over how welfare was defined [16]. The original SSA failed to specify whether welfare was either 1) a substantive right (which the poor could demand in desperate times) and thus entitled to due process protection or 2) a privilege (which could be restricted at the whim of federal and state governments) [17]. If welfare benefits were declared a substantive right, procedural due process required that the beneficiary receive a “fair hearing” before they could be removed from the program. In reality, though, under most circumstances, procedural due process was not set in motion when a welfare beneficiary’s continued eligibility was subjectively evaluated, and most procedures did not meet the degree of due process required by the Fourteenth Amendment [18]. While the original Act did not specify whether welfare was a right or a privilege, that absence of language has functioned as a de facto exclusion. Rights must be affirmatively recognized—either by the legislature or through judicial interpretation. Without such recognition, welfare has remained a conditional benefit, not a constitutional guarantee.

Even in the face of these advancements, in the late 20th century, government assistance programs became stigmatized in public discourse. Notably, Ronald Reagan popularized the trope of the “Welfare Queen” during his 1976 presidential campaigns, casting Black and low-income welfare beneficiaries as emblematic of governmental dependency and fraud. During this period, the racial composition of those benefiting from welfare was increasingly African American, and social welfare became even more exclusively tied to public metaphors of behavioral laziness and promiscuity, coinciding with a moment of national fiscal insecurity [19]. This racialized rhetoric carved a path for sweeping welfare reform under President Bill Clinton’s administration, with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996 [20]. PRWORA framed welfare reform as a matter of personal responsibility rather than a product of structural inequality—marking a transition in welfare structure from an entitlement-based system to one that conditioned benefits on work participation. The act imposed strict work requirements, lifetime benefit limits, and greater state control over welfare program administration [21].

The Court first framed welfare as a matter largely within the legislative domain, not subject to rigorous judicial oversight, in Helvering v. Davis (1937). Helvering first arose as a challenge to the Social Security Act of 1935. George Davis, a shareholder of the Edison Electric Company, sued, arguing that the Social Security payroll tax imposed on his company was unconstitutional. Davis contended that the Act was an illegitimate use of Congress’s power to tax and spend under the General Welfare Clause of the U.S. Constitution [22]. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the Social Security Act, ruling that the federal government retained broad authority under the General Welfare Clause to levy taxes and create programs for social and economic stability*.* Rather than foreclosing judicial review, the decision marked the Court’s adoption of a deferential stance—affirming that questions of social welfare policy would be treated primarily as matters of legislative judgment rather than subjects for constitutional intervention. Justice Benjamin Cardozo, writing for the majority, made a strong case for the federal government’s power to address economic insecurity:

“Congress may spend money in aid of ‘general welfare’ . . . There have been great statesmen in our history who have stood for other views (Madison, Story, Hamilton) . . . The line must still be drawn between one welfare and another, between particular and general. Where this shall be placed cannot be known through a formula in advance of the event ... The discretion belongs to Congress, unless the choice is clearly wrong, a display of arbitrary power, not an exercise of judgment.” – Justice Benjamin Cardozo, 1937 [23].

The Court’s ruling established the constitutionality of Social Security, reinforced Congress’s broad powers to tax and spend for the public good, and legitimized federal intervention in economic and social welfare issues. While Helvering v. Davis marked the early acceptance of welfare programs as legitimate federal policy, the Court remained cautious about expanding constitutional protections for welfare recipients. However, by the time of Shapiro v. Thompson in 1969, the Court began to experience a shift, addressing not just the existence of welfare programs, but the conditional rights of those who relied on them. In Shapiro, the Court took a significant step toward recognizing that government-imposed restrictions, including residency requirements for welfare assistance, could violate constitutional protections, particularly the Equal Protection Clause [24].

The Supreme Court was asked in Shapiro v. Thompson to determine the constitutionality of conditioning receipt of welfare aid on residency restrictions. Under their welfare policy, respective states denied single mothers benefits under AFDC if they resided in the state for less than one year. Congress authorized this residency restriction, and as a result, the states’ welfare policies complied with federal law. The Supreme Court granted a victory to the welfare rights movement, when, in a 6-3 decision, the Court struck down state residency requirements for welfare benefits on the grounds that the restrictions unconstitutionally violated the Equal Protection Clause and the fundamental right to travel. The Court found that conditioning welfare benefits on residency requirements “create[d] a classification which constitute[d] an invidious discrimination denying... [welfare recipients] equal protection of the laws” and impinged upon their fundamental right to travel [25].

While the Supreme Court recognized the state’s interest in preserving the integrity of its programs, the Court ruled that residency requirements were unconstitutional because they failed to meet the “stricter standard of whether it promotes a compelling state interest,” and served “‘no other purpose…than to chill the assertion of constitutional rights by penalizing those who chose to exercise them…” In applying a more heightened level of review, the Supreme Court considered the socioeconomic context where the modernization of agricultural labor forced many unskilled farm laborers to urban, northern communities in search of employment, and when jobs were unavailable, their only means of subsistence was the local welfare program. In Shapiro, the Supreme Court was unwilling to apply a lower level of scrutiny and refused to accept the states’s argument that their objectives justified imposing a residency restriction [26].

The shift in Shapiro set the stage for a more expansive understanding of the rights of welfare recipients. While the Court did not declare that welfare entitlement a “fundamental interest” under Supreme Court case law, access to welfare benefits later became a legal entitlement in Goldberg v. Kelly (1970) a year later which guaranteed some constitutional protection for welfare recipients.

In Goldberg v. Kelly, welfare mothers in New York challenged the procedures used to terminate welfare benefits where a caseworker’s trivial doubts as to a welfare recipient’s eligibility were sufficient enough to suspend or terminate the benefits. The recipient was afforded no safeguard against the arbitrary denial of benefits. At a recipient’s request, they could review the caseworker’s official justifications for the termination of welfare benefits and ask for a hearing to contest the allegations, but only once the benefits were discontinued. The Supreme Court considered whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment required that welfare mothers receive an evidentiary hearing before their benefits were terminated, providing for the continuation of benefits pending resolution of eligibility concerns. In order to resolve this question, the Supreme Court was tasked with determining whether welfare was “more like ‘property’ [or more like] a ‘gratuity’” [27]. If welfare was to be considered as property, the Constitution required that the government provide due process of law before the property could be taken. Prior to ruling in Goldberg, welfare benefits were considered a privilege. In an earlier decision in Board of Regents v. Roth, the Supreme Court declared:

“[T]he requirements of procedural Due Process apply only to the deprivation of interests encompassed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of liberty and property. When protected interests are implicated, the right to some kind of prior hearing is paramount” [28].

Consequently, procedural safeguards were only required when an analysis of “whether the nature of the interest is one within the contemplation of the ‘liberty or property’ language of the Fourteenth Amendment” is violated. In a 5-3 decision, the Burger Court declared that entitlement to receive welfare was a property right, rather than a privilege, and as such, meaningful procedural safeguards consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment must be implemented before taking that property. The Court weighed welfare recipients’ need for procedural due process against the competing considerations of the potential harm they might suffer from discontinuation or the government’s interest in summary adjudication. Concluding that state interests in conserving administrative costs were not sufficient to override public aid recipients’ interest in procedural due process, the Court found New York’s newly implemented hearings deficient. They did not permit recipients to present evidence, be heard orally in person or through counsel, or cross-examine adverse witnesses [29].

While the Court in Goldberg acknowledged welfare as a “property interest” protected by procedural due process, it stopped short of recognizing welfare as a substantive constitutional right. This limited conception reduces constitutional protection to procedural fairness, rather than affirming a broader entitlement to economic security. Only weeks later, in Dandridge v. Williams (1970), the Court took an additional step back in terms of judicial intervention.

In Dandridge v. Williams, the Court upheld the state-imposed welfare cap on benefits for large families, applying a deferential “rational basis” test rather than heightened “strict scrutiny”—a rejection of the idea that welfare limits violated the Equal Protection Clause. Under the rational basis standard—the most lenient form of judicial review—the Court asks only whether the law is reasonably related to a legitimate government interest. In contrast, strict scrutiny, applied in cases involving fundamental rights or suspect classifications like race, requires the law to be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. By applying the lower standard, the Court effectively rejected the idea that welfare benefit caps infringed upon a fundamental right or constituted unlawful discrimination. In Dandridge, the state of Maryland provided welfare benefits for families based upon calculating their “standard of financial need.” The “family cap” rule was used to discourage mothers from continuing to have children supported by welfare. The plaintiffs, Linda Williams and Junius Gary each had eight children and were financially destitute. These welfare recipients charged that the maximum grant regulation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [30].

In the Court’s ruling, they ruled that the “family cap” law, although discriminatory, did not violate the Equal Protection Clause and was permissible social and economic legislation. The Court reasoned:“[T]he Constitution does not empower this court to second guess state officials charged with the difficult responsibility of allocating limited public welfare funds among the myriad of potential recipients” [31]. This decision reaffirmed the Court’s position that welfare policy falls under the jurisdiction of legislative decision-making as opposed to judicial scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court declined to hold in Dandridge v. Williams that welfare was a fundamental right and therefore welfare recipients were not a suspect class entitled to special constitutional protection, showing a clear preference for judicial restraint, applying a more lenient rational basis test rather than subjecting the policy to stricter scrutiny. Dandridge illustrated the tension between expanding protections for welfare recipients, as seen in Goldberg, and the Court’s continued deference to state and legislative discretion in welfare matters [32].

The primary limitation of the Supreme Court’s Equal Protection doctrine in the welfare context is its strict requirement that plaintiffs prove intentional discrimination, instead of focusing on the disparate impact of policies. This doctrinal choice—solidified in Washington v. Davis—requires direct evidence that policymakers deliberately designed welfare limitations to harm a specific group. But in practice, such a burden is exceptionally hard to meet which has enabled the insulation of a wide range of welfare policies from constitutional scrutiny, even when there are demonstrably adverse effects on racial minorities and low-income populations. Moreover, intention is often diffuse or institutional rather than attributable to any one actor: a policy may emerge from bureaucratic decision-making or budgetary constraints, rather than from clear animus. While the Constitution does not require that each citizen be treated identically to satisfy the Equal Protection Clause, the level of judicial scrutiny will vary based on whether a right is considered fundamental or a social group is a suspect class (such as race). However, it is extremely difficult for a social group to be identified by the Supreme Court as a suspect class.

The question then remains: Should the Supreme Court exist as a “social engineer,” correcting systemic inequities through constitutional interpretation? Or should it defer to the political branches, as conservative jurisprudence often contends?

Addressing racial and economic inequities in welfare policy requires a doctrinal shift—moving beyond intent-based discrimination and recognizing disparate impact as constitutionally significant to adopt a more substantive Equal Protection framework. A more expansive approach, similar to the doctrinal shift in Brown v. Board of Education, would acknowledge that laws can reinforce inequality even in the absence of explicit racial classifications [33].

Substantive due process offers a constitutional pathway for acknowledging economic security as fundamental to individual autonomy and civic engagement. Without adequate access to foundational resources, including education, healthcare, and financial stability, individuals are essentially excluded from full civil engagement. Propelling substantive due process as a means to achieve economic rights is not new for the Court. During the Lochner era, the Court invoked substantive due process to protect economic liberties—notwithstanding in a way that favored business interests over workers’ rights [34]. It is not a stretch to contend that the Court should do the same for individuals dependent on welfare programs for survival.

The persistent counterargument is that expanding the reach of welfare protections through judicial intervention would constitute “legislating from the bench.” Yet, in Goldberg v. Kelly, the Court already played a role in overseeing procedural fairness in welfare administration [35]. Extending the scope of substantive protections is both a logical extension of already existing doctrine and a necessary step forward to dismantle welfare policies that perpetuate systemic racial and economic disparities.

Concerns over judicial overreach must be weighed against the Court’s historical role in safeguarding fundamental rights. Given that economic security is central to equal citizenship, a more engaged judicial role is not only doctrinally justifiable but also normatively imperative.

From Helvering to Shapiro to Goldberg to Dandridge, the Supreme Court has shaped the trajectory of welfare rights in the United States, deciding how much, if anything, the government owes to the poor. The Court does not lead—it responds. It gestures toward progress, then retreats. In the wake of the Great Depression, the Court seemed, for an instant, inclined toward protecting equal rights and due process, working within existing frameworks of governance. In Shapiro and Goldberg, the Court’s rulings neared nationalizing Aid to Families with Dependent Children, inching toward the establishment of welfare as a right. But this inclination did not last. By the 80s, the Court’s stance vastly differed, concluding in DeShaney v. Winnebago that “the Due Process Clauses generally confer no affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests of which the government itself may not deprive the individual.” The Court continued to reject constitutional mandates for “necessities of life” or declaring these “necessities” as “fundamental interests” of the individual. By the twenty-first century, the idea of welfare as a federal obligation feels long abandoned. Poverty remains a political question, one judged on the fractures of race, gender, and class. The Court’s reluctance to recognize welfare as a fundamental right is not neutral; it is a reinforcement of systemic racial and economic inequality.

The sweeping implications of this issue raise fundamental questions about the nature of democracy: Should a just society ensure basic economic security, or leave it to the impulses of political majorities? The Court does not answer. It avoids and interprets. And yet, its rulings determine not only legal doctrine but also the material conditions of millions of Americans.

As history shows, judicial recognition of evolving societal needs is essential for progress. Welfare should be no exception. Originalist or social engineer, no matter how Justices’ interpret the law, the Court’s hand is always there, shaping the silence, defining what the government owes Americans.

Footnotes

[1] Bridgette Baldwin, In Supreme Judgment of the Poor: The Role of the United States Supreme Court in Welfare and Policy, 23 Wis. J.L. Gender & Soc’y 1 (2008),
https://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=\&httpsredir=1\&article=1004\&context=facschol.
[2] Ibid.; DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189 (1989).
[3] Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton University Press, 2001), http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s5p3; Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty 7 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/quadagno-the-color-of-welfare-how-racism-undermined-the-war-on-poverty.pdf.
[4] DeShaney, 489 U.S. 189 (1989); Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229 (1976).
[5] O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge.
[6] David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), 257–58, 371, https://archive.org/details/freedomfromfeara0000kenn\_f4c7.
[7] Library of Congress, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, Sep 28, 2020, https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/great-depression-and-world-war-ii-1929-1945/franklin-delano-roosevelt-and-the-new-deal/; George McJimsey, The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Univ. Press of Kan. 2000), 107, https://archive.org/details/presidencyoffran00mcji; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear.
[8] McJimsey, The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
[9] Kennedy, Freedom from Fear.
[10] Library of Congress, Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear; McJimsey, The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
[11] Quadagno, The Color of Welfare.
[12] Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (Harper & Row, 1984), https://archive.org/details/unravelingofamer0000matu; Quadagno, The Color of Welfare; O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge.
[13] Matusow, The Unraveling of America.
[14] Ibid.; Quadagno, The Color of Welfare; O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge.
[15] Quadagno, The Color of Welfare; O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge.
[16] Baldwin, In Supreme Judgment of the Poor; O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge.
[17] Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471 (1982); Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564 (1972).
[18] Baldwin, In Supreme Judgment of the Poor; O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge.
[19] Gene Demby, The Truth Behind the Lies of the Original “Welfare Queen,” NPR, Dec. 20, 2013, www.npr.org/2013/12/20/255819681/the-truth-behind-the-lies-of-the-original-welfare-queen; Quadagno, The Color of Welfare; Judith E. Koons, Motherhood, Marriage, and Morality: The Pro­Marriage Moral Discourse of American Welfare Policy, 19 Wis. J.L. Gender & Soc’y 1 (2004),
https://repository.law.wisc.edu/s/uwlaw/media/32815.
[20] Office of the Assistant Sec’y for Plan. & Evaluation, U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996,
https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/personal-responsibility-work-opportunity-reconciliation-act-1996.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937); U.S. Constitution. art. 1, sec. 8.
[23] Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937).
[24] Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 627 (1969).
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970).
[28] Roth, 408 U.S. 564 (1972).
[29] Ibid.
[30] Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471 (1970).
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). [34] Legal Information Institute, “Lochner Era & Economic Substantive Due Process,” Oct 14, 2021, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-5/lochner-era-economic-substantive-due-process; Steven J. Eagle, Substantive Due Process and Regulatory Takings: A Reappraisal, 51 Ala. L. Rev. 977, 979-80 (2000),
https://www.law.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/archive/law-review-articles/Volume%2051/Issue%203/Eagle.pdf.
[35] Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970).