Goldberg v. Kelly: Holding, Hearing Rights, and Due Process

Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970), is the Supreme Court decision that requires the government to hold a full evidentiary hearing before terminating a person’s welfare benefits. Decided 5–3 on March 23, 1970, the ruling treated public assistance as a form of property protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, not a privilege the state could revoke at will.¹ The decision reshaped administrative law and still governs how federal and state agencies handle benefit terminations today.

The Dispute Behind the Case

Twenty New York City residents, with John Kelly as the lead plaintiff, challenged the termination or pending termination of their public assistance under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Under the city’s procedures, payments could be stopped first and a hearing offered afterward. Recipients received a short written notice, but they had no opportunity to appear before a decision-maker, present evidence, or challenge the information the agency was relying on. For people whose only income was a welfare check, the interval between losing benefits and eventually winning an appeal could mean weeks or months without money for rent, food, or medical care.

Jack R. Goldberg, Commissioner of Social Services of the City of New York, defended the city’s procedures on appeal.² The question before the Court was narrow: does a state violate the Due Process Clause when it terminates public assistance payments without first giving the recipient an evidentiary hearing?

What the Court Held

Justice Brennan, writing for the majority, held that due process requires a hearing before welfare benefits are terminated, not after. Timing was the whole point. A post-termination hearing, however fair, comes too late for someone with no savings and no other income. Cutting off a welfare recipient in the face of “brutal need” without a prior hearing, the Court wrote, “is unconscionable, unless overwhelming considerations justify it.”³

The reasoning was practical. Large bureaucracies processing thousands of cases make mistakes, and eligibility errors are inevitable. When an agency wrongly cuts off benefits, the recipient may not be able to feed themselves while waiting for the error to be corrected. The government’s interest in saving money by avoiding hearings does not outweigh the individual’s interest in staying alive. If a recipient prevails at the hearing, funds erroneously withheld are paid retroactively, but back payments cannot undo the harm of going without food or shelter in the meantime.

What the Hearing Must Include

The Court did not simply require some kind of hearing. It laid out specific procedural protections that the hearing must include to satisfy due process:

Timely and adequate written notice explaining the specific reasons for the proposed termination. The Court noted that New York City’s seven-day notice period was not “constitutionally insufficient per se,” but left open the possibility that fairness could require longer in some cases. No universal minimum was set.¹
An opportunity to appear in person and present evidence and arguments orally. Written submissions alone are not enough, because many recipients may struggle to express themselves effectively on paper.³
The right to confront and cross-examine any witnesses whose testimony or reports the agency used to justify the termination.³
An impartial decision-maker who did not participate in the initial termination decision. General prior awareness of the case does not automatically disqualify someone; direct involvement does.¹
A written decision stating the reasons for the determination and the evidence relied on. A full formal opinion is not required, but the explanation must be enough for the recipient to understand the outcome.³

The decision must rest solely on evidence introduced at the hearing, not on outside information the recipient never had the chance to dispute.

Welfare Benefits Reclassified as Property

The most far-reaching part of Goldberg was its treatment of welfare benefits as property. Before this case, courts drew a sharp line between “rights” and “privileges,” and government benefits fell on the privilege side, meaning the state could grant or revoke them with few procedural strings attached. The Court rejected that framework. Justice Brennan wrote that welfare benefits “are a matter of statutory entitlement for persons qualified to receive them,” and quoted the observation that they were “fully deserved, and in no sense a form of charity.” He added that it “may be realistic today to regard welfare entitlements as more like ‘property’ than a ‘gratuity.'”³

Once welfare counted as property, the Due Process Clause applied automatically: the government could not take it away without proper procedures. The same logic would eventually extend to government employment, professional licenses, public education, and other benefits created by statute.

Right to Counsel at the Hearing

The Court held that the government does not have to provide or pay for an attorney, but it must allow the recipient to bring one.³ A recipient who can find a legal aid organization or pro bono lawyer gains a real advantage in cross-examination and in interpreting agency regulations, but someone who cannot afford counsel is not entitled to a court-appointed one. Many states and federal programs like SNAP and Medicaid have since allowed non-attorney representatives such as friends, family members, social workers, or advocates to speak on the recipient’s behalf.

Justice Black’s Dissent

Justice Black wrote a pointed dissent. He argued the majority was legislating from the bench, creating procedural requirements out of the Due Process Clause that the constitutional text does not mandate. “I know of no situation in our legal system in which the person alleged to owe money to another is required by law to continue making payments to a judgment-proof claimant,” he wrote, questioning why the government should be forced to keep paying someone whose eligibility was in doubt.²

Black also predicted a practical consequence: if agencies must hold full hearings before terminating anyone, they would respond by making it harder to get on the rolls in the first place. He wrote that “the inevitable result of such a constitutionally imposed burden will be that the government will not put a claimant on the rolls initially until it has made an exhaustive investigation to determine his eligibility.”² He criticized the majority’s balancing methodology as subjective and warned that “there is nothing that indicates what tomorrow’s balance will be.”

How Mathews v. Eldridge Limits Goldberg

Goldberg does not apply to every government benefit. Six years later, in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the Supreme Court held that Social Security disability benefits could be terminated without a prior evidentiary hearing, as long as adequate written procedures existed before the cutoff and a full hearing was available afterward.⁴

Mathews established a three-factor balancing test that has governed procedural due process analysis ever since: the private interest at stake, the risk of an erroneous deprivation under existing procedures and the value of additional safeguards, and the government’s fiscal and administrative interest.⁴

The Court distinguished disability from welfare on two grounds. Disability eligibility turns largely on documented medical records, which are more objective than the subjective assessments often involved in welfare eligibility. And disability recipients are not necessarily destitute; welfare recipients, by definition, have no other resources. The need is not the “brutal need” Goldberg described. Mathews did not overrule Goldberg. Welfare terminations still require a pre-termination hearing with all the safeguards the 1970 decision laid out. But other programs are evaluated case by case under the three-factor test, and many end up requiring less process than welfare does.

How the Ruling Shapes Benefit Programs Today

Goldberg’s principles are embedded in the federal regulations governing major safety-net programs, even where the case is not cited by name.

Medicaid recipients are entitled to a fair hearing before coverage is terminated or reduced. Federal regulations require the state agency to grant a hearing to any beneficiary who believes the agency acted in error, and if the beneficiary requests that hearing before the effective date of the termination, the agency generally cannot reduce or cut off services until a decision is rendered.⁵

SNAP follows a similar framework. Every state must provide a fair hearing to any household aggrieved by an agency action affecting participation. If a household requests a hearing within the time provided in the adverse action notice and the certification period has not expired, benefits continue at the prior level until the hearing decision comes down.⁶ If the agency’s decision is ultimately upheld, it can establish a claim for any overpayment.

Beyond public benefits, Goldberg’s reasoning has influenced due process requirements for public employees facing termination, students facing expulsion from public schools, and individuals facing revocation of professional licenses. Wherever a government-created entitlement exists, the question Goldberg first answered applies: what process is due before the government takes it away?

1
Justia. Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970)
2
Cornell Law Institute. Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254
3
Supreme Court of the United States. Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254
4
Justia. Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976)
5
eCFR. 42 CFR Part 431 Subpart E – Fair Hearings for Applicants and Beneficiaries
6
eCFR. 7 CFR 273.15 – Fair Hearing