Statutes: The State Pays for Welfare

Under the laws of California and most other states, close relatives of a person confined in a state mental institution may be held responsible for part of the hospital expenses—provided they can afford to pay. But last week the status of all such laws was put in doubt.

An elderly woman had been committed to a state institution for mental incompetence. Her only close relative, a daughter, died in 1960, leaving a small estate to a niece. When the state claimed part of the estate to cover the costs of taking care of the old lady, the niece refused to pay. She fought the state's claim all the way to the California Supreme Court.

Any law holding relatives responsible for costs, said the court, discriminates against those financially capable of paying and violates the equal-protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment. "The mere presence of wealth or lack thereof in an individual citizen cannot be the basis for valid class discrimination."

Under the modern conception of governmental responsibilities, the court continued, care of the mentally ill has come to be regarded as one of the "public welfare programs to which all citizens are contributing through presumptively duly apportioned taxes."

For stunned state officials, the decision raised the troubling prospect that persons now maintaining mentally ill relatives in private hospitals or at home may try to have them committed to already overburdened state institutions. "This decision," complained California's Deputy Attorney General John C. Porter, "means they won't have to pay. It is a complete reversal of what we thought was law."