Goldberg v.

Kelly
Facts: John Kelly contested the legitimacy of processes for notification
and termination of the public assistance payments program without a
previous chance for a hearing to present evidence. The appellant does
not assert that the procedural due process does not apply to the cessation
of welfare payments. Such benefits are a legal right for those who are
eligible to receive them. Their termination is the result of governmental
action that adjudicates significant rights.

Issue: Whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is

violated when a state denies a recipient procedural due process by
terminating his public assistance payments without providing him with a
chance for a hearing to present evidence prior to termination?

Rule: The basic need of legal due process is the right to be heard. The
hearing must occur at a significant moment and in a significant way.
These principles demand that a receiver be given timely and sufficient
notice of the grounds for a planned termination, as well as an effective
chance to defend himself by facing any opposing witnesses and verbally
presenting his own arguments and facts. In circumstances where
receivers have contested planned terminations on the grounds that they
are based on inaccurate or misleading factual premises or the improper
application of rules or policies to specific facts, these rights are crucial.

Application: The court ruled that terminating and stopping services

without prior warning or a hearing to contest the decision has the
potential to deprive a qualified recipient of their sole means and
resources to survive. The financial support a person receives from these
programs may be their sole means of acquiring food, housing, and
clothes, which are essentials for survival. Consequently, the court
concludes that a person's capacity to seek remedy from the social
bureaucracy would be hindered by the necessity to focus on securing
daily means of subsistence. The court specifies the degree to which a
person must be afforded procedural due process in order to sustain
catastrophic loss. If a person suffers a catastrophic loss at the cost of a
federally or state-funded assistance program, the individual's interests in
avoiding such a loss (i.e., having access to financial help to live in the
modern world) trump government interests. In addition, the court
emphasizes that granting a person a pre-termination evidentiary hearing
serves an essential government interest in striving to give equal
opportunities to all U.S. residents.

Conclusion: Upon examination, the Court determined that procedural

due process required a pre-termination evidentiary hearing to obtain a
first decision of the legitimacy of the termination. The Court determined
that welfare beneficiaries who lacked independent resources were
deprived of life-sustaining resources if their payments were terminated
while the case was pending. The court acknowledged that the necessity
to focus on securing daily sustenance impeded the capacity to seek
remedy for the termination, and that the preservation of due process
outweighed the cost of a pre-termination hearing and ongoing benefits
awaiting outcomes.

Synthetic: The case at hand is comparable to the one we studied in the

prior lesson (Hawkins v. Masters Farms, Inc.). This is due to the fact that
each of these cases investigates what the federal government can and
cannot ascertain. In addition, the cases go into the topic of which part of
the government should eventually decide the matter at hand in each of
these instances.