durational residence requirements

California participates in the federal AFDC program under the Social Security Act. In 1992 California enacted section 11450.03 of its Welfare and Institutions Code. That statute limited the maximum AFDC benefits payable to any family that had resided in California for less than twelve months to the amount the family would have received in its state of prior residence. In one year the AFDC program served an average of 2,645,814 persons per month at an annual state cost of $2.9 billion. The full monthly grant for a family of two was $456, compared with $275 in Arizona. Three California residents who had recently moved from Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Colorado filed suit in the Eastern District of California. They alleged that their grants would be reduced from $641 or $504 to $190, $341, or $280 for the first year. The district court issued a temporary restraining order and later a preliminary injunction. The Ninth Circuit summarily affirmed. The Supreme Court vacated the judgment in Anderson v. Green because the Secretary of Health and Human Services had not yet determined whether the statute complied with federal requirements. After the Secretary issued a waiver the case was dismissed. In 1996 Congress enacted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. That statute replaced AFDC with TANF and expressly authorized states to apply the benefit rules of a family’s prior state for the first twelve months of residence. California then announced that enforcement of section 11450.03 would begin April 1, 1997. On that date two new plaintiffs, one who had moved from Oklahoma and one from the District of Columbia, filed the present action in the Eastern District of California. They acted on behalf of a certified class of all present and future TANF applicants who would be denied full California benefits because they had not resided in the state for twelve consecutive months. The district court again issued a temporary restraining order and, after hearing evidence, a preliminary injunction. The evidence showed that California’s benefits ranked sixth highest in absolute terms but eighteenth when housing costs were considered. New residents from forty-three states would face higher living costs. The statute would save the state approximately $10.9 million annually. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction without finally deciding the merits. The Supreme Court granted certiorari. The All County Letter implementing the statute provided that even lifelong California residents who left the state for part of a year would have their benefits calculated under the law of the other state for that period. The lower benefit level applied regardless of whether the family had received welfare in the prior state or the motive for moving. Families arriving from another country were exempt. The district court noted that other programs such as homeless assistance and an extra food-stamp allowance partially offset the disparity. The state did not dispute that the statute created significant differences between newcomers and longer-term residents.

Carol Sosna married Michael Sosna on September 5, 1964, in Michigan. They lived together in New York between October 1967 and August 1971, after which they separated but continued to reside there. In August 1972 Sosna moved to Iowa with her three children. The following month she petitioned the District Court of Jackson County, Iowa, for dissolution of her marriage. Michael Sosna was personally served when he visited Iowa and made a special appearance to contest jurisdiction. The Iowa court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction under Iowa Code § 598.6 because Sosna had not resided in the state for one year preceding the filing. Instead of appealing, Sosna filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa seeking injunctive and declaratory relief on constitutional grounds. A three-judge court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281 and 2284. While the federal action was pending, the Iowa Supreme Court decided In re Marriage of Williams, 217 N.W.2d 202 (1974), and upheld the statute's constitutionality. The three-judge court upheld the residency requirement. This Court noted probable jurisdiction. During the appeal Sosna obtained a divorce in New York, though custody and support issues remained unresolved from the Iowa proceeding. She returned to Iowa to prosecute the appeal. Sosna sought class certification under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 to represent Iowa residents who had lived in the state less than one year and wished to initiate divorce actions but were barred by the residency requirement. The parties stipulated that numerous people were similarly situated, joinder was impracticable, her claims were representative, and she would adequately protect class interests. The district court approved the stipulation in a pretrial order.

Tuan Anh Nguyen was born on September 11, 1969, in Saigon, Vietnam, to a Vietnamese mother and Joseph Boulais, a United States citizen employed by a corporation in Vietnam. Boulais and Nguyen's mother were not married. After their relationship ended, Nguyen lived for a time with the family of Boulais's new Vietnamese girlfriend. In June 1975, when Nguyen was almost six years old, he came to the United States with his father. He became a lawful permanent resident and was raised in Texas by Boulais. In 1992, at age 22, Nguyen pleaded guilty in a Texas state court to two counts of sexual assault on a child and was sentenced to eight years in prison on each count. Three years later, the Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated deportation proceedings against him as an alien convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude and an aggravated felony. At his deportation hearing Nguyen testified that he was a citizen of Vietnam. The Immigration Judge found him deportable. Nguyen appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. In 1998, while the appeal was pending, Boulais obtained an order of parentage from a Texas court based on DNA testing that showed a 99.98 percent probability of paternity; Nguyen was then 28 years old. The Board dismissed the appeal because Nguyen had failed to establish compliance with 8 U.S.C. §1409(a). Nguyen and Boulais appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which rejected their constitutional challenge to §1409(a). The Supreme Court granted certiorari.