A federal judge\u00a0ruled\u00a0Friday in\u00a0Schaller v. U.S. Social Security Administration\u00a0that the exclusion of Guam residents from the federal Supplemental Security Income benefits program for the blind, elderly, and disabled constitutes unconstitutional discrimination.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The decision, if upheld on appeal, would mean that Katrina Schaller, a resident of Guam who suffers from a debilitating genetic disorder, would receive the same federal SSI benefits as her twin sister, Leslie, who lives in Pennsylvania and receives $755 a month in SSI payments. Leslie has filed a companion case in Pennsylvania, wanting to be able to visit her family in Guam for more than 30 days or move to Guam without loss of her benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis important victory highlights both the arbitrariness and the real-world harms when federal laws discriminate against citizens in U.S. territories simply because of where they live,\u201d said Neil Weare, president and founder of Equally American, which advocates for equality and civil rights for the nearly 4 million Americans living in U.S. territories. \u201cNo American should have to choose between receiving the benefits they need to survive and being able to live near their family support network. It\u2019s refreshing to see a federal judge rule that this kind of discrimination is not just wrong, but unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s ruling adds momentum to a building wave of court decisions ruling that federal laws that discriminate against residents of U.S. territories are unconstitutional. In April, the First Circuit Court of Appeals\u00a0ruled\u00a0in\u00a0United States v. Vaello Madero\u00a0that the SSI law\u2019s exclusion of Puerto Rican residents violated the Constitution, setting up a likely Supreme Court battle between the United States and territorial residents like Katrina Schaller who are denied much-needed SSI benefits simply because of where they happen to live in the United States.\u00a0The deadline for the United States to appeal the\u00a0Vaello Madero\u00a0decision to the Supreme Court is Sept. 7, 2020. The Supreme Court typically grants review when a court decision rules a federal statute unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s District Court of Guam decision was in the case\u00a0Schaller v. U.S. Social Security Administration, Civil Case No. 18-00044 (D. Guam June 19, 2020). (PR)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge\u00a0ruled\u00a0Friday in\u00a0Schaller v. U.S. Social Security Administration\u00a0that the exclusion of Guam residents from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":325179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-325171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-guam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}