High Court to Review Ruling on Child-Support Lawsuits

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would review a ruling which would allow more than 2.2 million custodial parents in California to sue state or county officials who fail to collect child-support payments.

The announcement is good news for state and county officials who have said that they should not have to spend their time and money battling lawsuits.

It is bad news, at least for the moment, for hundreds of thousands of parents who maintain that county employees have failed miserably in collecting the money they are owed by former spouses.

Legal aid lawyers in Los Angeles have threatened to bring a class-action suit against the district attorney’s office, which receives federal funding to collect support payments.

They argue that the state’s tax collectors could do a better job. But Monday’s decision to review an Arizona case likely will block new lawsuits for now.

Twenty-one years ago, Congress passed the Child Support Enforcement Act to help collect payments from “deadbeat dads.” These days, the deadbeats are not all dads but parents continue to complain that the collection system is ineffective.

The lower courts are split, however, on whether this federal funding law gives individuals a right to sue.

In December, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for the Western states ruled that parents could sue, but lawyers for 36 states urged the justices to reverse that decision.

The case (Blessing vs. Freestone, 95-1441) will be argued in the fall.