1960s court rulings federalized welfare and gutted its punitive behavioral rules

Evidence

The institutional and judicial environment of the 1960s was extraordinarily conducive to such ambitious social reform agendas. Public-interest litigators who sought to reform welfare found an unusually receptive audience in the progressive Warren Court and the even more liberal California Supreme Court. Their strategy of test-case litigation turned state public assistance into a federal issue, forcing the Supreme Court to pass judgment on matters it would rarely have encountered in the past. The outcome of these decisions was both to federalize (and thus liberalize) control of welfare and to align its provisions with recent changes in family law. In the King v. Smith case of 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that Alabama’s substitute father rule violated the terms of the Social Security Act and was out of touch with family law, which no longer sought to punish extramarital relations and no longer recognized any valid status distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. In another decision, Justice Brennan opposed child support enforcement as an invasion of privacy. As a result of these rulings, the number of welfare applicants who refused to cooperate with district attorneys in child support matters rose dramatically. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 225

Categorization

• XREF: This radical jurisprudential moment is the foil for the book’s probable argument that neoliberals later dismantled welfare. — connects to: Warren Court rulings federalized welfare and removed punitive behavioral rules — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 225; Court-era welfare made poor women’s dependence public rather than mediated by men — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 226; Clinton’s welfare reform federalized old poor law family-responsibility principles — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 211 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Warren Court rulings federalized welfare and removed punitive behavioral rules #corroborates (1.00) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 225
• Court-era welfare made poor women’s dependence public rather than mediated by men #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 226
• Clinton’s welfare reform federalized old poor law family-responsibility principles #complicates (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 211
• Pandemic welfare measures reversed fifty years of U.S. policy retreat from mutual obligation. #complicates (0.72) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 766