October Term 1969 · Decided March 23, 1970

Goldberg v.
Kelly

No. 62 · 397 U.S. 254 (1970) · Read the full case on Oyez ↗

The Holding

The Supreme Court ruled, 5–3, that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to provide a recipient with a meaningful evidentiary hearing before terminating welfare benefits. A post-termination hearing alone does not satisfy due process when the deprivation is this immediate and severe.

In plain terms

New York City was cutting off welfare benefits without holding a real hearing first. Recipients could submit a written statement and then appeal after the money stopped, but by then they had often gone hungry, lost housing, or worse. A group of recipients, led by a man named John Kelly, sued, arguing the Constitution required more. The Supreme Court agreed. Welfare benefits are not charity that the state can revoke at will. They are a statutory entitlement protected by the Due Process Clause. Before the state can cut a recipient off, it must give notice, allow the person to present their case at an oral hearing, let them question adverse witnesses, and decide the matter through an impartial decisionmaker. Goldberg is the foundation of procedural due process in modern benefits law and one of the most consequential public-assistance cases in American legal history.

Section 01

The Question Presented

What was
at stake

In the late 1960s, New York City had a procedure for terminating welfare benefits that looked, on paper, like a kind of process. A caseworker would discuss the matter with the recipient. If they could not resolve the disagreement, the caseworker reported to a supervisor. If the supervisor confirmed the termination, the recipient received a written notice telling them the benefits would end in seven days. The recipient could submit a written statement of protest. After termination, they could request a full hearing, called a "fair hearing," before a state hearing officer.

That was the system. John Kelly, a 29-year-old New York City resident receiving public assistance, was cut off after he failed to follow a job training plan he said was incompatible with his physical condition. Other recipients had similar experiences. The benefits had stopped. Months might pass before a fair hearing could be held. In the meantime, families went without food, housing, and medical care. Some of the original plaintiffs in the case had become homeless before the hearing was even scheduled.

Kelly and other recipients of and New York's Home Relief program brought a class action against the city's welfare commissioner. The legal question for the Supreme Court was specific. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the state from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Was the receipt of welfare benefits a kind of property? If so, did due process require something more than a post-termination hearing, given how immediately devastating the termination was?

Section 02

The Bench

Who joined
which side

Justice Brennan wrote for a five-Justice majority. Three Justices dissented, each writing separately. The ninth seat was vacant at the time the case was decided. Justice Abe Fortas had resigned in May 1969 under pressure from a financial scandal, and Justice Harry Blackmun was not confirmed until May 1970, two months after this decision came down. So Goldberg was decided by an eight-Justice Court during the long interregnum that followed the failed nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell.

The Burger Court · Vote 5–3 (one seat vacant)

Brennan
Author
Douglas
Joined
Harlan
Joined
White
Joined
Marshall
Joined
Burger
Dissented
Black
Dissented
Stewart
Dissented
Vacant
Seat Empty
Majority (5)
Dissent (3)
Seat Vacant
✦ Opinion author

Welfare benefits are a matter of statutory entitlement for persons qualified to receive them.

Justice Brennan, for the Court

Section 03

The Reasoning

Two
positions

The majority and the dissenters disagreed about something fundamental: what kind of thing welfare benefits are, and what the Constitution has to say about how the state takes them away. The majority treated benefits as a form of property protected by due process. The dissenters worried about the Court reading new rights into the Constitution and creating administrative burdens that might shrink welfare programs themselves.

The Majority

Welfare is a statutory entitlement, not a privilege the state can revoke at will. Cutting it off requires a hearing first.

  1. Welfare benefits are property protected by due process. The Court rejected the older idea that government benefits were privileges the state could withdraw freely. When a statute creates an eligibility framework and people meet that framework, they have an entitlement to the benefits. That entitlement is a form of property within the meaning of the Due Process Clause.
  2. The stakes are uniquely severe. Welfare is what keeps recipients alive. Termination immediately affects food, clothing, housing, and medical care. The District Court below had described this as recipients' "brutal need," and the Supreme Court quoted the phrase with approval. A post-termination hearing months later cannot undo the harm of weeks or months without subsistence.
  3. The state's interest does not outweigh the recipient's. New York argued that pre-termination hearings would impose fiscal and administrative burdens and might increase fraud. The Court took those concerns seriously but concluded they did not justify denying a hearing. Erroneous termination of a person who actually qualifies for benefits is the harm the procedure must guard against. The state's interest in summary action did not match the recipient's interest in survival.
  4. The hearing must come before termination. The crucial procedural point. A later hearing, even a fair one, comes too late if the recipient has already lost the means of basic survival. Due process requires that the recipient be heard before the state cuts off benefits, not after the recipient has already gone hungry.
  5. The hearing need not be a full trial. The Court was careful about what it required. The hearing did not need to be a formal judicial proceeding. It did need to include timely notice, an opportunity to be heard orally rather than only in writing, the right to confront adverse witnesses, the right to counsel if the recipient retained one, a decision based exclusively on the evidence at the hearing, and an impartial decisionmaker. These are minimum requirements, not an exhaustive list.
The Dissents

The Court is reading rights into the Constitution that are not there and creating burdens that may shrink the very programs it claims to protect.

  1. The Constitution does not say what the Court says it says. Justice Black argued that the majority opinion read more like a committee report from the House Education and Labor Committee than like a constitutional analysis. The Due Process Clause does not, in his view, contain a guarantee of pre-termination hearings for welfare recipients. The Court was substituting its policy judgment for the political branches.
  2. Today's balance is not tomorrow's. Black pointed out that the majority's analysis depended on a balancing of interests that had no fixed content. What weighs heavily today might weigh differently in a future case. The Constitution should give clearer guidance than a free-floating balance subject to judicial reweighting.
  3. The administrative cost is real and may backfire. Chief Justice Burger and Justice Stewart emphasized the burden on state welfare agencies. Pre-termination hearings, with the right to counsel and confrontation, would consume staff time and money. The dissents worried this could push states to reduce welfare benefits or tighten eligibility, hurting the very people the majority sought to protect.
  4. The policy question belongs to legislatures. The decision of how much process to provide before terminating benefits is, in the dissenters' view, a legislative judgment about how to allocate scarce administrative resources. Federalizing that judgment through constitutional rulings removes it from the democratic process and freezes it in place.
Section 04

What the Hearing Must Include

The
floor

The Court did not require a formal judicial trial, but it laid out specific procedural elements that any constitutionally adequate hearing must include. These are the components that still structure benefits hearings today, whether for TANF, Medicaid, SSI, SSDI, food stamps, or any other government benefits where due process applies.

Required

Timely and adequate notice

The recipient must be told, in language they can understand, what is being proposed, why, and when. Adequate notice means enough time to prepare a response, not a token announcement on the day of termination.

Required

Oral hearing, not just written submissions

The recipient must be able to appear and present their case orally. Many welfare recipients do not have the literacy or composure to make a strong written case, and the Court treated this as a real consideration in requiring an oral hearing.

Required

Right to confront adverse witnesses

If a caseworker or other witness provides information that supports termination, the recipient must be able to cross-examine that person. The hearing cannot be decided on secret information the recipient cannot test.

Required

Right to retain counsel

The recipient may have a lawyer if they can find one. The Court did not require the state to provide counsel at public expense, but it did require that the recipient be allowed to be represented if they choose.

Required

Impartial decisionmaker

The person deciding whether to terminate benefits must not be the same person who initiated or supervised the termination. The decisionmaker has to come to the hearing without a pre-existing stake in the outcome.

Required

Reasoned decision based on the record

The decisionmaker must base the decision exclusively on the evidence and legal standards presented at the hearing, and must provide a statement of the reasons for the decision and the evidence relied upon.

Section 05

What the Court Did Not Decide

Read this
carefully

Goldberg is a foundational case, but it is narrower than the way it is sometimes described. The Court ruled on one specific procedural question for one specific kind of benefit. A great deal of what we now think of as "Goldberg-style" due process actually developed in later cases, and several questions Goldberg did not answer are still being worked out today.

Common misreads to avoid

Goldberg set the framework. Mathews v. Eldridge later refined it.

  • It did not create a right to welfare. The case is about how benefits can be taken away, not whether the state must provide them in the first place. Eligibility rules, benefit levels, and the existence of any particular program remain matters of statute, not constitutional right.
  • It did not apply Goldberg-style procedures to all government benefits. Six years later, in Mathews v. Eldridge, the Court created a three-factor balancing test that allowed lesser procedures for disability benefits because the deprivation is less immediately devastating than termination of welfare. Different programs get different levels of process under Mathews, and Goldberg now stands at the top of a graduated framework rather than as a one-size-fits-all rule.
  • It did not require formal judicial trials. The Court was explicit that the hearing need not be quasi-judicial or follow courtroom procedure. Many benefits hearings today are conducted by administrative hearing officers in relatively informal settings.
  • It did not address denial of initial applications. The case dealt with termination of existing benefits. Whether the same procedures apply when an applicant is denied benefits for the first time is a different question that courts have answered differently in different contexts.
  • It did not establish a right to appointed counsel. The recipient has the right to retain a lawyer, but the state is not required to provide one. Civil legal aid programs fill some of this gap, but coverage varies widely by jurisdiction.
  • It did not address what counts as a benefit reduction versus a termination. The line between cutting benefits off entirely and reducing them has been litigated extensively in the decades since. Whether and what process applies to reductions remains a context-specific question.
Section 06

How It Got Here

The path
to SCOTUS

This case came up through the federal courts on a class action filed by welfare recipients and their lawyers in New York City. It moved relatively quickly. The legal infrastructure that produced the case had been building for years: legal services lawyers, the welfare rights movement, and a scholarly literature that had begun to argue government benefits were a form of property.

1964 · Yale Law Journal
Charles Reich publishes "The New Property"
Yale law professor Charles Reich publishes an influential article arguing that government benefits, licenses, and other forms of state largesse have become a kind of property and should be protected as such. The article does not by itself decide cases, but it provides the conceptual scaffolding that lawyers and judges would draw on through the 1960s.
1968 · Southern District of New York
Class action filed
John Kelly and other welfare recipients, represented by legal services lawyers, file a class action against the New York City welfare commissioner. They argue that the city's procedure for terminating benefits, with no real pre-termination hearing, violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
January 1969 · District Court
District court rules for the plaintiffs
A three-judge district court panel holds that pre-termination hearings are required. The court describes welfare recipients' situation as one of "brutal need" and concludes that a later hearing cannot remedy the immediate harm of cutting off subsistence benefits. New York appeals directly to the Supreme Court.
October 13, 1969 · Supreme Court
Oral argument
The case is argued before an eight-Justice Court. The Fortas-to-Blackmun seat is vacant. Lee A. Albert argues for the welfare recipients. John Loflin Jr. argues for the City of New York.
March 23, 1970 · Supreme Court of the United States
SCOTUS affirms, 5–3
Justice Brennan writes for the Court. The Due Process Clause requires pre-termination hearings before welfare benefits can be cut off. Welfare is a statutory entitlement that qualifies as property under the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Black writes the principal dissent. Chief Justice Burger and Justice Stewart write separately to dissent on more limited grounds. The District Court's judgment is affirmed.
1976 · Supreme Court
Mathews v. Eldridge refines the framework
Six years later, the Court holds that disability benefits can be terminated without a pre-termination hearing in some circumstances. The Mathews decision creates a three-factor balancing test that has since governed nearly every procedural due process case. Goldberg remains good law for welfare benefits, but it is no longer the universal rule for all government benefits.
Section 07

For Practice

The social
work bridge

Goldberg structures the work of every social worker who helps clients with benefits. Eligibility workers, hospital and clinic-based case managers, benefits counselors at community agencies, school social workers helping families access SNAP and TANF, child welfare workers coordinating Medicaid, and advocates at legal services programs are all operating in the procedural framework Goldberg built. Three lenses help.

Notice & Hearing Lens

A termination notice is not the end. It is the beginning of a process.

When a client gets a notice that benefits are being cut off, the notice itself is a procedural document. It triggers rights. The client can request a hearing, often with continued benefits during the appeal if requested quickly enough. Workers who help clients with TANF, SNAP, Medicaid, SSI, and similar programs need to know what the notice triggers and how to help the client respond before the deadline. The first 10 to 15 days after a termination notice are often the most important.

Property Interest Lens

Benefits are an entitlement, not charity.

This is a posture, not a tactic. When clients understand that they have a legal entitlement to benefits they qualify for, they engage with the system differently. They are exercising a right, not begging for a favor. Workers can help clients see themselves that way. The system itself does not always make this clear, and people who feel grateful and intimidated are less likely to enforce their procedural rights than people who understand they have them.

Advocacy Lens

Help the client prepare for the hearing. The hearing is the thing.

Most benefit terminations that are challenged at hearing are overturned, often because the underlying decision was based on incomplete or wrong information. Workers can help clients gather documents, name witnesses, prepare a clear timeline, and know what to expect in the hearing room. The right to confront and cross-examine, which the Court emphasized in Goldberg, only matters if the client knows it exists and knows how to use it. That knowledge is something workers can transmit.

Section 08

A Working Vocabulary

Legal
terms

Goldberg introduced or popularized vocabulary that runs through all of modern procedural due process. The terms below appear in nearly every benefits hearing in the country.

Frequently Used in This Opinion
Procedural due process

The constitutional guarantee that, when the government takes life, liberty, or property, it must follow fair procedures. The substantive justification for the deprivation is one question; the fairness of the procedure used is another. Goldberg is foundational on the procedure side.

Statutory entitlement

A benefit created by statute that an eligible person has a legal right to receive. The Court's recognition that welfare benefits are an entitlement, not a privilege, is the doctrinal heart of Goldberg.

Pre-termination hearing

A hearing held before benefits are cut off. The form of process Goldberg held was constitutionally required, on the theory that a hearing after termination comes too late to prevent the harm of going without subsistence.

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)

The federal cash welfare program at issue in Goldberg. Replaced in 1996 by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which operates as a block grant to states. The procedural protections Goldberg established still apply.

Mathews v. Eldridge balancing

The three-factor test the Supreme Court adopted in 1976 for procedural due process questions. Courts weigh the private interest at stake, the risk of erroneous deprivation under current procedures, and the state's interests. Goldberg sits at one end of the spectrum that Mathews mapped out.

Fair hearing

The term used in many state and federal benefits programs for the formal hearing a recipient can request when benefits are denied, reduced, or terminated. Fair hearings are governed by program-specific rules but must meet the constitutional minimum Goldberg set.