Something seems grotesquely out of proportion when you punish someone for failing to appear in a court by cutting off his or her primary or only source of income. But this is what the Bush Administration’s Social Security Administration is doing. And not to just a small handful of people. Well over 100,000 recipients of social security and SSI (Supplemental Security Income, the federal government’s disability support program) have lost their benefits as a result of the policy summarized in the title above.

How could our government engage in such an injustice? How did this happen?

About a decade ago, Congress amended the statute relating to SSI and later the Social Security program, to provide that persons “fleeing to avoid prosecution” would not be entitled to benefits. Since felons serving time in jail have long been excluded from Social Security and SSI benefits, this extension of an established principle seemed at the time a small, routine and rather unimportant addition to existing policy. And nothing noteworthy happened for a number years in connection with this small adjustment. As you can imagine, a very small number of disabled Americans or people over the age of 65 are on the lam running from the law.

Now comes the George W. Bush administration, which has staffed the top echelons of government agencies with conservative true believers who would like to roll back the reforms of the New Deal, particularly the programs of the Social Security Administration. The new ideologues looked at the relatively unused authority to terminate benefits for people fleeing prosecution as a means to reduce SSI and Social Security rolls, and they came up with an outlandish interpretation or assumption that anyone with an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court is “fleeing prosecution,” even if the person never knew there were charges to flee.

What are these warrants for failure to appear in court? These are orders routinely issued to “no show” defendants by state courts around the country. Defendants in serious cases are either in jail before trial and are brought to trial by the authorities, or they have to forfeit bail if they don’t show in court.

So we are talking typically about low-income people caught up in minor criminal matters. The warrant is a notice by the court that they expect the absentee to come to court or be subject to arrest. Police and court officials know how hit-and-miss is the system of serving and enforcing these warrants. Some people lose or don’t understand notices. Other people--particularly those in the bottom rungs of the economic ladder--move or fail to receive notices because methods of delivery through sheriff’s office or process servers or other means are sometimes shoddy or highly unreliable. Some people routinely ignore official summonses and official notices of all kinds. The numbers of these warrants are so enormous and are considered by police of such little consequence (except where the warrant becomes grounds to arrest a high priority criminal suspect) that courts rarely formally report these numbers.

Little or no data exists on the number of outstanding warrants, but the numbers are probably in the millions. The National Center for State Courts, for example, the group that collects national information on the activities of state courts, has no information reported to it from states about outstanding warrants for failure to appear. Every experienced court watcher, however, knows that the leakage in our criminal justice system through “no shows” is massive. For example, the main criminal trial court in Baltimore, a city of 636,000 people, carries on its books over 200,000 outstanding warrants for failure to appear.

As Social Security began cutting off SSI and Social Security benefits to people with outstanding warrants for failure to appear in court (they acknowledge they have terminated benefits thus far for over 100,000 people), it became immediately clear that the only people being denied benefits are those not fleeing prosecution. Most people are found living somewhere in another part of the country from the location where the warrant was issued. These warrants are years, if not decades old, and police have no interest in pursuing these cases.

So Social Security is busily terminating benefits to individuals settled in place who are not going, let alone fleeing, anywhere. In fact, in Macon, Georgia, Social Security has suspended benefits for at least three people who were determined to have fled to nursing homes. One of these cases involved a 25-year-old charge of failing to pay a motel bill. The nursing home resident never even knew that charges had been filed against him. He was able to get his benefits restored after a year through the assistance of a legal services program in Georgia and a public defender in Seattle. Not everyone is so lucky. An Iowa man, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and physically unable to travel, was denied benefits because of an old shoplifting charge in California. He became homeless as a result and not long afterward his bloodied and battered body was found in an abandoned garage in Des Moines. In a current case in California’s Central Valley, a woman who is blind and in a wheelchair had her benefits suspended last year and has been unable to pay her rent. The landlord was sympathetic and held off on taking action, but has now commenced eviction proceedings against her for nonpayment. She has nowhere to go.

Our organization, the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC) has sued the Social Security Administration to prevent denial of social security and SSI benefits, arguing that the assumption made by Social Security (that an outstanding warrant presumes flight) clearly violates the standard established by Congress. Three federal district courts and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (covering NY, Connecticut, and Vermont), in a case argued by Gerald McIntyre of NSCLC, agree with us and have ruled against Social Security and insisted on some showing of intent to flee prosecution. Rather than appeal these cases and suffer a loss at the Supreme Court, Social Security continues, illegally, to deny benefits (except in NY, Connecticut and Vermont) to people all over the country with old warrants for failure to appear.

Why wouldn’t Social Security, an agency that has in the past enjoyed a fine reputation, quickly reverse a decision that is clearly improper and could not withstand scrutiny in any court? The only plausible explanation is that ideology trumps a sense of fair play and decency in the Bush Administration. Perhaps, too, the bureaucrats at Social Security have been fearful of the budgetary clout and entitlement cost-cutting ambitions of conservative political leaders in the U.S. Congress. NSCLC must now reluctantly—we sat down with Social Security to try to settle this problem--prepare a national class action lawsuit to prevent termination of basic income support to thousands of older and impaired Americans to prevent an injustice to these citizens that serves only to enforce stale warrants that are of no interest to courts, police or prosecutors.