The Supreme has decided to hear an appeal from the Department of Justice that would maintain the exclusion of U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico from receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. "Wait," you might say, "the Department of Justice? Like, President Joe Biden's Department of Justice?" Sort of. The appeal was made in September 2020 by the Trump administration. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit had agreed with the plaintiff in the case, Jose Luis Vaello-Madero, who had been receiving SSI while he lived in New York, and who was cut off when he returned to Puerto Rico to care for his ailing wife.
When the Trump administration filed its appeal, then-candidate Biden tweeted "Time and again, the president has refused to provide Puerto Rico with much-needed resources. He's repeatedly insulted Puerto Ricans and this latest action is another example of his disrespect for the island. This ends when I'm elected president." Unfortunately, his DOJ did not get that appeal withdrawn, and now the Supreme Court has granted it a hearing. Biden's DOJ can still ask the Court to dismiss the case, but for now it's moving forward, infuriating Puerto Rican activists and advocates.
At issue is about $2.3 billion in annual SSI payments that could be going to more than 300,000 poor, blind, and disabled citizens in Puerto Rico. Congress created SSI in 1972, providing assistance to low-income Americans who are older than 65, blind, or disabled but only in the 50 states and D.C. It later extended the program to the Northern Mariana Islands, but not to other territories including Puerto Rico. Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or American Samoa. Instead, residents of those islands remain under an older program, Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled (AABD), which provides matching grants to states and territories. The number of people in these territories who can receive assistance from the AABD is limited because the funds are limited, whereas SSI is an open-ended entitlement from the federal government—it's there to help whoever needs it when they need it. Puerto Rico gets roughly $36 million for AABD, as well as other adult assistance programs, a figure that hans't changed since fiscal year 1997.
The Government Accountability Office estimated a decade ago, in 2011, that federal spending for the program in Puerto Rico was less than 2% of what it would have been if all eligible people were getting SSI. Which means a lot of vulnerable people are not getting the assistance their counterparts in the states are receiving. Puerto Rico's nonvoting representative to Congress, Republican Jenniffer González, pointed that out to President Biden in a letter sent on his Inauguration Day, pleading for him to drop the Trump case.
"Of all the disparities Americans living in the territories face, none is as shocking to the conscience as the disparity in assistance available to the most vulnerable citizens," wrote González. She cited that 10-year old GAO report which estimated that the average monthly payment for needy Puerto Ricans would have been $422 under SSI instead of $74 through AABD, and that 354,000 residents, rather than 37,500, would have been eligible.
Others have chimed in, including the heads of U.S. and Puerto Rico Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, United Church of Christ, Christian (Disciples) and Evangelical churches, and leaders of the National and Puerto Rico Council of Churches, Catholic Charities, the General Bible Society and Jubilee USA Network. They wrote to Biden last week, urging him to "immediately instruct the Department of Justice to withdraw the suit, filed by the previous administration, that blocks $2.3 billion in annual Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments." Five Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York, have also requested Biden drop the petition.
Biden's September tweet is right: Trump was insulting Puerto Ricans and disrespecting the island. His DOJ petition said that ruling from the D.C. Circuit "threatens to impose billions of dollars in costs on the United States," of which Puerto Rico is a part, as much as "$23 billion over the next ten years." Having to provide these benefits to the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico, Trump's Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote, could make Puerto Rico residents think they could get more federal benefits, like money for a school lunch program and Medicaid.
On the same day the Supreme Court said it would take the SSI case, House members including González introduced bipartisan statehood legislation, which would establish a process for the territory to have a federally-binding election to determine whether it wants to be a state. If the islands residents choose statehood, it would be done. "Puerto Rico has been part of this nation since 1898, when through the Treaty of Paris, we passed from the Spanish government to the American government," González said in introducing the bill. "On a day like today in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson gave us American citizenship. Yet to this day, it is still a second-class American citizenship."
The Justice Department and the White House have not yet commented on the Supreme Court action.