The Social Security Act of 1935 is a law enacted by the 74th United States Congress and signed into law by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The law created the Social Security program as well as insurance against unemployment. The law was part of Roosevelt's New Deal domestic program.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a means-tested program that provides cash payments to disabled children, disabled adults, and individuals aged 65 or older who are citizens or nationals of the United States. SSI was created by the Social Security Amendments of 1972 and is incorporated in Title 16 of the Social Security Act. The program is administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA) and began operations in 1974.
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court holding that a New York State statute that prescribed maximum working hours for bakers violated the bakers' right to freedom of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The decision has been effectively overturned.
According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are 1,138 statutory provisions in which marital status is a factor in determining benefits, rights, and privileges. These rights were a key issue in the debate over federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal government was prohibited from recognizing same-sex couples who were lawfully married under the laws of their state. The conflict between this definition and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule DOMA unconstitutional on June 26, 2013, in the case of United States v. Windsor. DOMA was finally repealed and replaced by the Respect for Marriage Act on December 13, 2022, which retains the same statutory provisions as DOMA and extends them to interracial and same-sex married couples.
Substantive due process is a principle in United States constitutional law that allows courts to establish and protect certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if only procedural protections are present or the rights are unenumerated elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. Courts have asserted that such protections come from the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Substantive due process demarks the line between those acts that courts hold to be subject to government regulation or legislation and those that courts place beyond the reach of governmental interference. Whether the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments were intended to serve that function continues to be a matter of scholarly as well as judicial discussion and dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas has called on the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its rulings that were based on substantive due process.
A Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibit the deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the federal and state governments, respectively, without due process of law.
Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires an evidentiary hearing before a recipient of certain government welfare benefits can be deprived of such benefits.
Steward Machine Company v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937), was a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the unemployment compensation provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935, which established the federal taxing structure that was designed to induce states to adopt laws for funding and payment of unemployment compensation. The decision signaled the Court's acceptance of a broad interpretation of Congressional power to influence state laws.
Social Security Disability Insurance is a payroll tax-funded federal insurance program of the United States government. It is managed by the Social Security Administration and designed to provide monthly benefits to people who have a medically determinable disability that restricts their ability to be employed. SSDI does not provide partial or temporary benefits but rather pays only full benefits and only pays benefits in cases in which the disability is "expected to last at least one year or result in death." Relative to disability programs in other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the SSDI program in the United States has strict requirements regarding eligibility.
Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682 (1979), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided an issue of Federal statutory hearing rights.
The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution creates several constitutional rights, limiting governmental powers regarding both criminal procedure and civil matters. It was ratified, along with nine other articles, in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment applies to every level of the government, including the federal, state, and local levels, in regard to any "person". The Supreme Court furthered the protections of this amendment through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that held that Social Security was constitutionally permissible as an exercise of the federal power to spend for the general welfare and so did not contravene the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. 636 (1975), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which unanimously held that the gender-based distinction under 42 U.S.C. § 402(g) of the Social Security Act of 1935—which permitted widows but not widowers to collect special benefits while caring for minor children—violated the right to equal protection secured by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Lyng v. Castillo, 477 U.S. 635 (1986), reversed a lower court's decision that the change in the statutory definition of a household violated the appellee's due process rights. The program rules for food stamps were changed in 1981 and 1982 which changed the definitions of households. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the District Court erred in using heightened scrutiny to analyze the validity of the household definition.
Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498 (1998), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act constituted an unconstitutional regulatory taking of property which required the Act to be invalidated. The import of this decision is that it was made in the context of a purely economic regulation. The plurality examines the statute and its resultant harm as an ad hoc factual inquiry based on factors delineated in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, such as the economic impact of the regulation, its interference with reasonable investment backed expectations, and the character of the governmental action. The decision thereby moved beyond the traditional notions of equal protection which had been applied to economic regulation since the time of Lochner v. New York, requiring extreme deference to Congress, and applied a regulatory takings analysis to the problem resulting in a much less deferential result. While the plurality recognizes that this is not a traditional takings case where the government appropriates private property for public use, they also state this is the type of case where the "Armstrong Principle" of preventing the government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole. However, while the plurality seems to invalidate this particular law on takings grounds, the concurrences and the dissents warn of such an analysis as this should actually be examined under substantive due process or ex post facto theories.
A limited form of the Social Security program began as a measure to implement "social insurance" during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when poverty rates among senior citizens exceeded 50 percent.
Montanile v. Board of Trustees of the National Elevator Industry Health Benefit Plan, 577 U.S. ___ (2016), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States clarified subrogation procedures under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act ("ERISA"). The Court held that healthcare plan fiduciaries cannot demand reimbursement for medical benefits from a plan member's general assets if the beneficiary's general assets cannot be traced back to the original payment from the fiduciary. Although some scholars suggested that the court's ruling would have little impact, others suggested the case places "significant restrictions" on the rights of ERISA benefit plan providers.
Lockhart v. United States, 546 U.S. 142 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning whether the United States government can offset Social Security benefits to collect on student loan debt over 10 years old. In a unanimous decision, the Court affirmed the lower court's decision that allowed the offset by the government.
Califano v. Goldfarb, 430 U.S. 199 (1977), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that the different treatment of men and women mandated by 42 U.S.C. § 402(f)(1)(D) constituted invidious discrimination against female wage earners by affording them less protection for their surviving spouses than is provided to male employees, and therefore violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case was brought by a widower who was denied survivor benefits on the grounds that he had not been receiving at least one-half support from his wife when she died. Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the court, ruling unconstitutional the provision of the Social Security Act which set forth a gender-based distinction between widows and widowers, whereby Social Security Act survivors benefits were payable to a widower only if he was receiving at least half of his support from his late wife, while such benefits based on the earnings of a deceased husband were payable to his widow regardless of dependency. The Court found that this distinction deprived female wage earners of the same protection that a similarly situated male worker would have received, violating due process and equal protection.
