The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday additional two new instances to its docket to another semester, such as one dealing with the constitutionality of excluding Puerto Rico residents from receiving Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI) and yet another, more specialized case regarding whether or not a civilian army technician’s retirement is payment based on serving”as a member of a uniformed service”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit struck down the exclusion this past year, reasoning that the omission of this unincorporated U.S. land failed to pass the rational basis scrutiny test.
“The categorical exclusion of otherwise qualified Puerto Rico inhabitants from SSI isn’t rationally related to some legitimate government interest. Along with the record created by the parties, we’ve considered even possible theoretical grounds for its differential treatment conceded by the authorities,” that the First Circuit composed , confirming a lower district court’s judgment. “Having discovered no group of facts, nor Appellant having alleged some extra theory, demonstrating a logical basis for its exclusion of Puerto Rico inhabitants from SSI policy, such exclusion of those inhabitants of Puerto Rico is declared invalid.”
Based on that conclusion, a district court judge from June dominated that denying a handicapped U.S. taxpayer in Guam SSI benefits also failed the rational basis test. If that’s the circumstance, a Pennsylvania girl suffering from myotonic dystrophy–a degenerative genetic disorder–transferred to Guam and ceased getting SSI while her twin sister in Pennsylvania who endured the exact same malady continued getting the payments.
The Trump government appealed the judgment in September, noting the expansion of SSI benefits to Puerto Rico alone would cost roughly $23 billion over the following ten years, according to the Social Security Administration.
The next instance the Court will hear will be Babcock v. Saul, centres around the Social Security benefits accrued by David Babcock, who had been a”dual status” civilian military tech and National Guard flight teacher. The question is if his contributions to the Civil Service Retirement System are subject to lower gains due to the so-called Windfall Elimination Provision, or if his job falls under the exclusion of this reduction for men whose obligations are”based entirely on service as a member of a uniformed service”
Many circuit courts ruled that the exclusion isn’t related to dual status technicians, whereas a circuit court, the Eighth Circuit, found that the exclusion did apply.
