| Summary: | My aim is to understand more fully the impact of welfare reform on welfare rights litigation. I begin by providing an overview of legal claims in public assistance before and after welfare reform in 1996, and then by examining how these cases have been decided. This survey of the judicial development of welfare rights indicates that prior to the reform, federal cases set a federal minimum of welfare rights that states will not deviate from post-reform. After the Personal
Responsibility Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (1996) increased the role of states in the administration of welfare in the United States, state courts began to receive more cases from welfare claimants challenging different aspects of the new program. The literature on the new judicial federalism suggests that some state courts, relying on the unique provisions in their own state constitutions, will begin to find new substantive and procedural protections for welfare rights. In
this research, I seek to determine the extent to which state courts have turned to state constitutions to protect the poor whose benefits are at risk. I present the following research questions: (1) how has the 1996 Act affected welfare litigation in the United States, (2) how have these cases been decided, and (3) how have state courts responded to the challenge of their expanded role in deciding the outcome of welfare litigation and policy? This research seeks to inform the new
judicial federalism literature by describing the variety of state court responses to welfare rights claims being brought in the post-TANF era.
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