Doe v. Shapiro’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 federal appellate · 13 district · 7 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 70 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Under the Social Security Act, a child is eligible for and entitled to AFDC assistance if he is both ‘needy’ and ‘dependent.’ A child is ‘needy’ if he ‘does not have the income and resources sufficient to assure economic security’ when measured against standards of need established by the individual states. HEW, Handbook of. Public Assistance, Part IV, § 3120. A child is ‘dependent’ if a parent is continually absent from the home. 42 U. S.C. § 606(a). These are the only two eligibility requirements which Congress has imposed, * *”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Doe v. Schmidt · Perillo v. Commonwealth

2. ““[The state’s] regulations provide that court action is an eligibility requirement for assistance, * * * and that if the person refuses to take court action, assistance is discontinued for those members of the assistance unit for whom the relative is legally responsible, * * *. It is this assistance unit, however, that is the essential element of the AFDC program, 42 U.S.C. § 601 . These regulations affect the entire family unit, including the children in the household, and penalize the whole unit * * *. As a result, individuals in the unit who are needy and dependent and thus otherwise eligible for assistance are denied it by the imposition of an additional requirement for eligibility. The primary obligation of the AFDC program is to provide assistance to the family unit to encourage the care of dependent children in their own homes or in the homes of relatives. This obligation is not met if an otherwise eligible child is deprived of AFDC funds because of parental misconduct. * * * ” Id., at 513-514 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Doe v. Schmidt

3. ““Although the state argues with considerable force that the Social Security Act requires it to take affirmative steps to ascertain paternity in the case of illegitimate children receiving AFDC assistance, we do not think that 42 U.S.C. § 602 (a) (17) (A) (i) was ever intended to allow a state to disqualify an otherwise eligible child on the basis of its mother’s refusal to name the father, and we do not think that a close reading of that provision will support the interpretation urged by the state. We hold, therefore, that the challenged regulation is invalid on the ground that it imposes an additional condition of eligibility not required by the Social Security Act.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 364 F. Supp. 953 - Doe v. Flowers