ATKINS v. PARKER

In 1981, Congress amended the Food Stamp Act to reduce from 20 percent to 18 percent the earned-income disregard used in computing eligibility for food stamps. Thereafter, the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare (Department) mailed a notice to all food-stamp recipients in the State with earned income advising them that the reduction in the earned-income disregard might result in either a reduction or termination of their benefits, that they had a right to request a hearing, and that their benefits would be reinstated if a hearing was requested within 10 days of the notice. Petitioners in No. 83-6381 (hereafter petitioners), recipients of the notice, brought a class action in Federal District Court, alleging that the notice was inadequate and seeking injunctive relief. After the court issued a temporary injunction, the Department sent a second notice similar to but somewhat more extensive than the first notice. Petitioners also attacked the adequacy of this notice. The court again ruled in petitioners' favor and held that the notice violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court of Appeals agreed.

Held:

1. The second notice complied with the statute and regulations. The relevant language of 7 U.S.C. § 2020(e)(10) — which does not itself mandate any notice at all but merely assumes that a hearing request by a household aggrieved by a state agency's action will be preceded by "individual notice of agency action" — cannot be fairly construed as a command to give notice of a general change in the law. The legislative history does not suggest that Congress intended to eliminate the distinction between requiring advance notice of an "adverse action" based on the particular facts of an individual case and the absence of any requirement of individual notice of a "mass change" in the law. And the notice in question complied with the applicable regulation requiring individual notices of a "mass change" but not an adverse action notice when benefits are reduced or terminated as a result of a "mass change." Pp. 123-127.

2. The second notice did not violate the Due Process Clause. Pp. 127-131.

(a) Even if it is assumed that the mass change increased the risk of erroneous reductions in benefits, that assumption does not support the claim that the notice was inadequate. The notice plainly informed each household of the opportunity to request a fair hearing and the right to have its benefit level frozen if a hearing was requested. Pp. 127-128.

(b) This case does not concern the procedural fairness of individual eligibility determinations, but rather involves a legislatively mandated substantive change in the scope of the entire food-stamp program. The procedural component of the Due Process Clause does not impose a constitutional limitation on Congress' power to make such a change. A welfare recipient is not deprived of due process when Congress adjusts benefit levels; the legislative process provides all the process that is due. Here, the participants in the food-stamp program had no greater right to advance notice of the change in the law than did any other voters. Because the substantive reduction in the level of petitioners' benefits was the direct result of the statutory amendment, they have no basis for challenging the procedure that caused them to receive a different, less valuable property interest after the amendment became effective. As a matter of constitutional law, there can be no doubt concerning the sufficiency of the notice describing the effect of the amendment in general terms. Pp. 128-131.

STEVENS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and WHITE, BLACKMUN, POWELL, REHNQUIST, and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in Part I of which MARSHALL, J., joined, post, p. 132. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 157.

JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom JUSTICE MARSHALL joins as to Part I, dissenting.

When the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare (Department) implemented the 1981 statutory reduction in food stamp benefits for persons with earned income, it sent out form notices telling over 16,000 recipients that their benefits would be "reduced . . . or . . . terminated" without specifying which. App. 5. The notices contained no information about any particular recipient's case. The District Court declared the notices unlawful under the Due Process Clause as well as the relevant regulation and statute "because . . . [they] did not contain the individual recipient's old food stamp benefit amount, new benefit amount, or the amount of earned income that was being used to compute the change." The Court of Appeals agreed, finding the notices statutorily and "constitutionally deficient" because they "failed to inform." Foggs v. Block, 722 F.2d 933, 940 (CA1 1983). The Court today reverses, finding that "individual computations" are not required by regulation, statute, or Constitution. Ante, at 126. I disagree with the Court's interpretation of all three authorities. Accordingly, I dissent.

Title 7 C.F.R. § 273.12(e)(2)(ii) (1985) requires that "when a household's food stamp benefits are reduced or terminated as a result of a mass change . . . [s]tate agencies shall send individual notices to households to inform them of the change." When Congress reduced the statutory earned-income deduction in 1981, the Secretary of Agriculture ordered state agencies implementing the change to provide the "individual notices" required by this regulation. 46 Fed. Reg. 44722 (1981). Both courts below held, however, that the vague form notices in this case failed to fulfill the "individual notice" requirement. 722 F.2d, at 940; Pet. App. 98. Although the phrase apparently has never been administratively defined, I believe the logic of the regulation, as well as its history and evident function in the administrative scheme, requires inclusion of precisely the sort of individualized information found necessary by the District Court.

First, the sentence in § 273.12(e)(2)(ii) that requires "individual notices" of mass changes is immediately followed by a second requirement:

"If a household requests a fair hearing [after receiving a mass change notice], benefits shall be continued at the former level only if the issue being appealed is that food stamp eligibility or benefits were improperly computed." 7 C.F.R. § 273.12(e)(2)(ii) (1985) (emphasis added).

The Court quotes this language, ante, at 126, and then ignores it. It seems apparent, however, that an aggrieved food stamp recipient cannot possibly contend in good faith, let alone demonstrate, that his request for a hearing is based on a claim that his benefits have been "improperly computed" if the only notice he receives tells him nothing at all about the computation or new amount of the benefit. Moreover, state agencies cannot possibly exercise their discretion under this regulation to decide not to continue benefits if the requestor cannot rationally specify his appeal grounds. Unless this final provision of the mass change regulation at issue is to be rendered effectively meaningless, the individual notices mandated for a mass change must include the minimum of individualized data necessary for a recipient to surmise, at least, that his benefits have been miscalculated. That minimum amount of data is all that the District Court required in these cases.

A careful examination of the history of § 273.12(e)(2)(ii) also suggests that "individual notices" mean notices containing some individualized information. The Secretary's food stamp regulations originally required that, "[p]rior to any action to terminate or reduce a household's program benefits," state agencies had to give each household "in detail the reasons for the proposed action." 7 C.F.R. § 271.1(n) (1972) (emphasis added). This notice requirement made no exception for "mass changes" in the law. In 1974, however, the Secretary granted state agencies the option of providing "general notice" of mass changes, either by a notice "mailed to all recipients," 39 Fed. Reg. 25996 (1974), or by pervasive publicity. The form notice used in these cases presumably would have met this "general notice" requirement if general notice had been all that was required in 1981. In 1978, however, the Secretary subdivided the mass change regulation to address different types of changes. 43 Fed. Reg. 47915-47916 (1978). Subsection (e)(1) paralleled the 1974 mass change regulation, permitting notice of certain state and federal adjustments by pervasive publicity, "general notice mailed to households," or "individual notice." Subsection (e)(2) was new, however, and required "individual notices to households to inform them of the change." Although the difference between "general notices mailed to households" and "individual notices" was never defined by the Secretary, he directed that notice of the 1981 earned-income deduction change be given pursuant to subsection (e)(2), thereby requiring "individual" as opposed to "general" notice.

In the absence of some contrary indication, normal construction of language requires the conclusion that the Secretary employed different terms in the same regulation to mean different things. See Crawford v. Burke, 195 U.S. 176, 190 (1904); R. Dickerson, The Interpretation and Application of Statutes 224-225 (1975). And it is clear that the difference between the two types of notice must lie in their informational content, "general" versus "individual," because both types of notice must be mailed to individual households. "General notices mailed to households" required no more than a form letter of identical content mailed to each of a large number of affected households; in contrast, "individual notice" going to many households must imply some more particularized, "individual" content.

Finally, the Court argues that the regulatory decision not to require a "notice of adverse action" for mass changes "surely implies" a decision to forgo "individual computations" as well. Ante, at 126. No such implication is logically required, however. The Court apparently fails to understand that "notice of adverse action" is a technical term of art used in the food stamp regulations to describe a special type of notice containing other information besides "the reason for the proposed action." Thus when the Secretary proposed § 273.12(e)(2)(ii) in 1978, he distinguished "individual" mass change notice from a "notice of adverse action" by noting the information that a mass change notice need not contain:

"Although households are not entitled to a notice of adverse action for mass change[,] the regulations propose that States send households an individual notice which informs the household of the change but does not grant the household continuation rights if the household appeals the State agency action. In this way, households are advised of the change and can adjust household budgets accordingly." 43 Fed. Reg. 18896 (1978).

Nothing was said to suggest that individual computations were not required in either type of notice. Indeed, by stating a purpose of providing affected households sufficient information so that they could adjust their budgets, the plain implication is to the contrary: each household was to be notified of mass changes in individual terms. It is difficult to imagine how one could otherwise adjust one's household budget "accordingly."

As far as I can tell, there has been no contemporaneous or consistent administrative interpretation of the regulation at issue; indeed, there has been no interpretation at all. Based on the language, function, and history of the regulation itself, however, any logical implication to be drawn is that the "individual notice" required by § 273.12(e)(2)(ii) comprehends some amount of individualized benefit data. Conscious as well of the constitutional questions otherwise raised, I would affirm the judgment below on this ground alone.

I can agree with the Court that the relevant statutory section, 7 U.S.C. § 2020(e)(10), may not of itself require "individual computations." The Court goes beyond this holding, however, to suggest that § 2020(e)(10) permits no notice at all of reductions based on legislated changes in benefit levels. Ante, at 126. Because all parties concede that some form of notice was required, the Court's broader statutory discussion is unnecessary to its decision. I find the Court's suggestion to be an erroneous reading that will cause needless confusion for food stamp administrators and recipients alike.

Although the Food Stamp Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 703, as amended, 7 U.S.C. § 2011-2029, is federally supervised, it is administered largely by separate agencies of the States. Thus reductions in food stamp benefit levels, even if federally mandated, can be implemented only by state agencies. Section 2020(e)(10) requires that when a state agency acts, it must provide "for the granting of a fair hearing and a prompt determination thereafter to any household aggrieved by the action of the state agency under any provision of its plan of operation . . ." (emphasis added). It further mandates continuation of the prior level of food stamp benefits pending decision for "any household which timely requests such a fair hearing after receiving individual notice of agency action reducing or terminating its benefits" (emphasis added). As the Secretary acknowledges, the plain language of § 2020(e)(10) " presupposes the existence of notice." Reply Brief for Federal Respondent 11. The Court's conclusion that § 2020(e)(10) "does not itself mandate any notice at all," ante, at 125-126, is thus true only in the formalistic sense that words of command are not used. A congressional presupposition that notice will be sent, expressed in a statute directed to state agencies, can have no different legal effect than would a straightforward command.

No distinction between types of "agency action" — mass or individual — appears in the language of § 2020(e)(10), and the statute's legislative history demonstrates that no distinction was intended. The controlling House Report explained that after Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970), fair hearings would be required in all cases where a food stamp claimant will be "aggrieved" by any agency action, "whether it be a termination or reduction of benefits, a denial of an application for benefits, or other negative action. . . ." H.R. Rep. No. 95-464, p. 285 (1977). The Report went on to recite Congress' understanding that notice of all such "negative actions" was normally provided in all cases, and indeed, such was the administrative practice in 1977. Although "notices of adverse action" were not always required, the 1977 regulations required some form of notice even for "mass changes." 7 C.F.R. § 271.1(n)(2) and (3) (1977). Congress was thus well aware of, and legislated on the basis of, the contemporaneous administrative practice of providing notice of mass changes, and must be presumed to have intended to maintain that practice absent some clear indication to the contrary. Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 297-298 (1981).

Aside from language and legislative history, the logic of the statutory scheme is distorted by the Court's suggestion that notice is not required when mass reductions result from legislation. Notice is, of course, "an element of the fair hearing requirement" of § 2020(e)(10), ante, at 124, because it allows recipients whose benefits will be reduced or terminated to determine whether or not to request a fair hearing. Cf. Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 171-172 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) ("No better instrument has been devised for arriving at truth than to give a person in jeopardy of serious loss notice"). Congress expressed its view in 1977 that there would be little occasion to claim a fair hearing when legislative changes in benefit levels were implemented: "Hearings would, of course, be unnecessary in the absence of claims of factual error in individual benefit computation and calculation." H.R. Rep. No. 95-464, at 289 (emphasis added). Similarly, Congress directed that if in the course of a fair hearing "a determination is made that the sole issue being appealed is . . . not a matter of fact or judgment relating to an individual case," then benefits need not be continued under the proviso of § 2020(e)(10). Id., at 286 (emphasis added). These very statements, however, demonstrate Congress' understanding that households affected by mass changes could request a fair hearing, and were entitled to a hearing if their claim was, among other things, miscalculation of benefits. The Court does not discuss these legislative remarks. But congressional discussion of guidelines for winnowing appeals simply makes no sense if no notice at all of mass reductions was intended.

Notice of reductions in benefit levels is thus the necessary predicate to implementation of the statutory fair hearing requirement. Indeed, the Court apparently accepts this view, stating that "whenever a household is entitled to a fair hearing, it is appropriate to read the statute as imposing a requirement of individual notice that would enable the household to request such a hearing." Ante, at 124. It is clear, however, that Congress intended and the regulations guarantee that mass reductions rightfully may be appealed if the claim is miscalculation. Yet the Court concludes there is no statutory "command to give notice of a general change in the law." Ante, at 126. This conclusion may generally be correct with regard to enactment of changes in the law, see Texaco, Inc. v. Short, 454 U.S. 516 (1982), but the plain terms of § 2020(e)(10) require notice of "agency action" taken to implement the law, if that action will result in "reduc[tion] or terminat[ion] of . . . benefits." Because legislated mass changes, like any other changes, can be implemented only by the action of state agencies, the notice requirement of § 2020(e)(10) is fully implicated in the mass change context.

The unambiguous purpose of the fair hearing and benefit continuation requirements of § 2020(e)(10) is to prevent erroneous reductions in benefits until a claim of error can be resolved. General changes in the law, no less than individual exercises of caseworker discretion, are likely to result in error when implemented, as the facts of these cases indicate and the Court acknowledges. Ante, at 127 ("[E]rrors . . . can occur in the administration of any large welfare program"). Timely and adequate notice permits the affected recipient to surmise whether an error has been made; if the recipient invokes the statutory right to a fair hearing, the agency then determines whether the recipient is correct. That reductions are implemented massively rather than on a case-by-case basis alters not at all this sensible administrative scheme, operating as intended under § 2020(e)(10). By reading the statute not to require any notice at all when reductions or terminations of benefits are the result of agency implementation of a "general change in the law," the Court finds an exception not indicated by the statute, its legislative history, or relevant regulations, and not supported by any logical view of the food stamp administrative process. Federal administrators have required state agencies to give some form of notice of mass changes since before § 2020(e)(10)'s enactment until today. The Court's contrary suggestion, offered in cases where the discussion is unnecessary to the result, will disrupt an administrative scheme that appears to work smoothly without the Court's help.

Because food stamp benefits are a matter of statutory entitlement, recipients may claim a property interest only in the level of benefits to which they are entitled under the law, as calculated under whatever statutory formula is provided. Congress may reduce the entitlement level or alter the formula through the normal legislative process, and that process pretermits any claim that Congress' action constitutes unconstitutional deprivation of property. See Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 432-433 (1982).

Arguing from similar premises, the Court concludes that the food stamp recipients in these cases had no special right to "advance notice of the legislative change" in the earned-income deduction in 1981. Ante, at 130. The recipients, however, have never contended that they had a right to "advance notice" of the enactment of congressional legislation, and I do not intend to argue for that proposition here. "It is plain that sheer impracticality makes it implausible to expect the State itself to apprise its citizenry of the enactment of a statute of general applicability." Texaco, Inc. v. Short, supra, at 550 (BRENNAN, J., dissenting) (emphasis in original).

Instead, these cases involve the implementation of Congress' decision by its agents, the various state agencies that administer food stamp programs across the country. Owing to factors unique to the state agency and having nothing to do with Congress, implementation of the change in Massachusetts resulted in the erroneous reduction of food stamp benefits for a number of households. Ante, at 127; see infra, at 151, and n. 27. Because recipients have a constitutionally cognizable property interest in their proper statutory entitlement levels, it is deprivation of those interests by the state agency, and not the passage of legislation by Congress, that requires our constitutional attention in this case.

By focusing primarily on the "red herring" notice-of-legislative-change issue, the Court avoids explicit application of the multifactored interest-balancing test normally applied in our due process precedents. I understand the Court to make two basic arguments, however, in dismissing the recipients' constitutional claim to individualized notice of the Department's action. The first is to suggest that no notice at all is required when "inadvertent errors" are involved; such errors simply may be "put . . . to one side." Ante, at 127, 128. The second is that the form notice employed here sufficed to "adequately protect" the recipients' interests in any case, because recipients can be presumed to know the law regarding the earned-income deduction change and the notice told them how to appeal. Ante, at 130-131.

My consideration of these arguments is informed by two unchallenged facts. First, although not mentioned by the Court, when the Department sent its form notice and implemented the earned-income deduction change in December 1981, its officials knew that a substantial data entry backlog in its computerized record system meant that its food stamp files contained inaccurate earned-income information for a number of recipients. App. 85-89 (testimony of the Department's Systems Director); id., at 214 (testimony of the Deputy Director of the Department's computerized file system); see also 722 F.2d, at 938-939; Pet. App. 77-80. Thus the Department knew full well that when it took action to implement the legislative change, the food stamp benefits of a number of recipients were likely to be erroneously reduced or terminated. While the absence of such clear foreknowledge might not make a constitutional difference, its presence here surely sharpens the constitutional analysis.

Second, the officials in charge of the Department's computer systems testified without contradiction that it was "not a problem" to generate a notice containing the individualized information ordered by the District Court, since that information was already contained in the computers, and that the necessary programming might have taken "a few hours." App. 224; see id., at 80-84, 217-227. Thus the District Court's finding, unquestioned by the Court today, was that it was likely that individualized notices could have been provided in December 1981 "without causing any delay" or any "real hardship" to the Department. Pet. App. 74-75, 94.

In my view, the Court's offhand discussion of "inadvertent errors" is fogged by an unspoken conceptual confusion in identifying the constitutional deprivation claimed in these cases. In traditional cases arising under the Due Process Clause, a governmental deprivation of property is not difficult to identify: an individual possesses a set amount of property and the government's action either does, or does not, deprive the individual of some or all of it. Where "new" property interests — that is, statutory entitlements — are involved, however, claimants have an interest only in their benefit level as correctly determined under the law, rather than in any particular preordained amount. Thus, while any deprivation of tangible property by the State implicates the Due Process Clause, only an erroneous governmental reduction of benefits, one resulting in less than the statutorily specified amount, effects a deprivation subject to constitutional constraint. It is the error, and not the reduction per se, that is the deprivation.

Keeping this point in mind, it is readily apparent that this Court's application of the Due Process Clause to governmental administrative action has not only encompassed, but indeed has been premised upon, the need for protection of individual property interests against "inadvertent" errors of the State. Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970), Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), and Memphis Light, Gas Water Division v. Craft, 436 U.S. 1 (1978), to name but a few examples, all involved administrative decisionmaking presumed to operate in good faith yet subject to normal and foreseeable, albeit unintentional, error. Properly applied, regulations that govern administrative decisions in such cases cannot deprive recipients of property, because a welfare or utility service recipient whose entitlement should be reduced or terminated under relevant statutes can claim no valid interest in continuation. Administrative decisions that affect statutory entitlements may often be correct. But when administrative error — that is, the deprivation — is foreseeable as a general matter and certain to occur in particular cases, constitutional procedures are interposed to ensure correctness insofar as feasible.

"[A] primary function of legal process is to minimize the risk of erroneous decisions," Mackey v. Montrym, 443 U.S. 1, 13 (1979). Consequently, a foreseeable action that may cause deprivation of property must be " preceded by notice." Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 313 (1950) (emphasis added). As we made clear in Goldberg, 397 U.S., at 267, in statutory entitlement cases the Due Process Clause normally requires "timely and adequate notice detailing the reasons" for proposed adverse administrative action. Such process is constitutionally required whenever the action may be "challenged . . . as resting on incorrect or misleading factual premises or on misapplication of rules or policies to the facts of particular cases." Id., at 268.

Thus, in my view, it is a novel and ill-considered suggestion to "put . . . to one side" unintended but foreseeable administrative errors that concededly had adverse effects on valid property interests. Such errors are at the heart of due process analysis. If the Constitution provides no protection against the visiting of such errors on statutory entitlement claimants, then the development of this Court's "new property" jurisprudence over the past 15 years represents a somewhat hollow victory. The fact that errors inevitably occur in the administration of any bureaucracy requires the conclusion that when the State administers a property entitlement program, it has a constitutional obligation to provide some type of notice to recipients before it implements adverse changes in the entitlement level, for the very reason that "inadvertent" erroneous reductions or terminations of benefits — that is, deprivations of property — are otherwise effected without any due process of law.

Because the errors in these cases cannot merely be ignored, I turn to the central constitutional inquiry: what process was due in light of "the practicalities and peculiarities of the case"? Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank Trust Co., supra, at 314. Experience demonstrates that balanced consideration of a number of factors is required: the importance of the private interest affected, the risk of erroneous deprivation under the system challenged, the protective value of the different procedures proposed, and the government's interests, including any "fiscal and administrative burdens" created by different procedures. Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S., at 434; Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S., at 334-335. These interests are relevant to determining the "content of the notice" as well as its timing and other procedural claims. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 579 (1975). Although the interests normally relevant to the constitutional due process inquiry are often characterized as "competing," e. g., Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 542 (1985), the record makes clear that the Department failed to demonstrate any countervailing interest in not providing individualized notices in this case.

1. Importance of the Interest. The importance of the correct level of food stamp benefits to eligible households cannot be overstated. Designed "[t]o alleviate . . . hunger and malnutrition" and allow poverty level families "to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet," Pub.L. 91-671, § 2, 84 Stat. 2048, the food stamp program by definition provides benefits only to those persons who are unable to afford even a minimally adequate diet on their own. An erroneous reduction or break in benefits, therefore, may literally deprive a recipient "of the very means by which to live." Goldberg, supra, at 264.

2. Risk of Error. Both courts below found that the likelihood of error by the Department in implementing the earned-income deduction change was substantial. 722 F.2d, at 939; Pet. App. 88-95. The Court does not challenge that evaluation, and it is amply supported by the record. The existence of implementation errors was unchallenged at trial. Because of a severe data entry backlog in the Department's computers during the fall of 1981, an undetermined number of food stamp recipients' files contained erroneous earned-income figures. Thus, although the mathematical operation necessary to implement the statutory change was theoretically simple, its actual performance in Massachusetts necessarily carried with it a high risk of error.

The Department did not challenge the recipients' proof regarding the risk of error at trial, but instead argued as it does here that any such risk was caused not by the statutory change but by its ministerial implementation based on preexisting data in the files. As indicated above, however, it is precisely that implementation, and not the statutory change, that the recipients have challenged throughout. The foreseeable risk of the Department's errors stands unrefuted.

3. Value of Additional Procedures. Adequate notice under the Due Process Clause has two components. It must inform affected parties of the action about to be taken against them as well as of procedures available for challenging that action. Memphis Light, 436 U.S., at 13; Mullane, 339 U.S., at 314. These requirements serve discrete purposes: adequate notice of the action itself permits the individual to evaluate its accuracy or propriety and to determine whether or not to contest it; notice of how to appeal ensures that available error-correction procedures will be effective. In Memphis Light, supra, the second component was examined, and I have no doubt that the Court today correctly concludes that recipients of the mass change notice here were adequately informed of the "procedure for protesting." 436 U.S., at 15; see ante, at 128.

These cases are the converse of Memphis Light, however, and the subtle yet vital failure of the notice here is that it completely failed to inform recipients of the particular action proposed to be taken against them by the Department. The notice included only a single vague statement about some impending impact on food stamp benefits: due to Congress' action, recipient's benefits would "either be reduced . . . or . . . terminated." App. 5. The defendant in this lawsuit, however, is the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare, not Congress, and the action of which notice was required was, it bears repeating, not Congress' decision to change the law but rather the Department's application of that changed law to individual recipients. "Central to the evaluation of any administrative process is the nature of the relevant inquiry." Mathews, 424 U.S., at 343. In these cases the administrative inquiry was uncomplicated: what was the current earned income of each recipient, and what should his reduced food stamp benefit be after Congress' change was applied to that figure? The obvious value of notice of those simple factual determinations is that they were the only data that would have enabled each recipient to "choose for himself whether to . . . acquiesce or contest," Mullane, supra, at 314, by filing a benefit-preserving appeal.

The Court ultimately brushes aside any value that individualized notice may have had, stating that "citizens are presumptively charged with knowledge of the law," and asserting that "[s]urely Congress can presume that [a form] notice relative to a matter as important as a change in a food-stamp allotment would prompt an appropriate inquiry if not fully understood." Ante, at 130, 131. This reasoning is wholly unpersuasive. First, I am unwilling to agree that "[t]he entire structure of our democratic government," ante, at 131, rests on a presumption that food stamp recipients know and comprehend the arcane intricacies of an entitlement program that requires over 350 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations to explain and voluminous state manuals to administer. I am more certain that the premises of our polity include minimal protections for the property interests of the poor.

Moreover, in Memphis Light, the Court flatly rejected the argument that the poor can protect themselves without process. The dissent there argued that "a homeowner surely need not be told how to complain about an error in a utility bill." 436 U.S., at 26 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). The Court ruled, however, that "skeletal notice" was constitutionally insufficient because utility customers are "of various levels of education, experience and resources," and "the uninterrupted continuity of [utility service] is essential to health and safety." Id., at 14-15, n. 15. See also Mathews v. Eldridge, supra, at 349 ("[P]rocedures [must be] tailored . . . to `the capacities and circumstances of those who are to be heard'") (citation omitted). In this case, over 45% of affected food stamp recipients in Massachusetts had not completed high school. App. 127. In such circumstances recipients must be "informed clearly." Memphis Light, 436 U.S., at 14-15, n. 15.

Additionally, this record reveals that the Court's reliance on the protective value of an "appropriate inquiry" is misplaced. The notice here did indeed state that recipients should call their local welfare office if they had "questions concerning the correctness of [their] benefits computation." App. 5. Putting aside the fact that the notice did not inform any recipient of his "benefits computation," the testimony of the representative named plaintiffs at trial was uniformly that the local welfare workers they called about the notice were either unaware of it or could not explain it. Id., at 131 (Zades), 139 (Parker), 149 (Johnson). With no help forthcoming at the local level, the 10-day appeal period was virtually certain to expire before even those recipients who called would receive a specific explanation enabling them intelligently to decide whether or not to appeal.

Finally, the Mathews inquiry simply does not countenance rejection of procedural alternatives because a court finds existing procedures "adequate" in some ad hoc sense, without evaluation of whether additional procedures might have been more protective at little or no cost to the government. Yet the Court discusses neither the protective value of individualized notice in this context nor the burden, if any, that it would impose on the Department.

4. Governmental Interests. The District Court concluded that only four simple facts were necessary to transform this vague notice into one that adequately informed affected individuals about the Department's action in their particular cases: "whether [their benefits] were being reduced or terminated" and "the individual recipient's old food stamp benefit amount, new benefit amount, [and] the amount of earned income that was being used to compute the change." Pet. App. 100. These data were already contained in the Department's computerized files, and the computers could have been programmed to print the individualized information on the form notices with little additional time or effort. The District Court's finding, not questioned by the Court today, was that programming the computer to provide such individual information is "neither a difficult nor burdensome procedure," id., at 75-76, and that had the Department requested that such individualized data be printed on the December 1981 notices, it was likely that it could have been accomplished "without causing any delay . . . ." Id., at 74, 75. This record, therefore, can support no argument that individualized notice would have been a burden for the Department.

The Court's regulatory conclusion is unconvincing, and its statutory dictum is unfortunate. But I am most troubled by the Court's casual suggestion that foreseeable "inadvertent" errors in the administration of entitlement programs may be ignored in determining what protection the Constitution provides. Such administrative error all too often plagues governmental programs designed to aid the poor. If well-meaning mistakes that might be prevented inexpensively lie entirely outside the compass of the Due Process Clause, then the convenience of the administrative state comes at the expense of those least able to confront the bureaucracy. I respectfully dissent.

JUSTICE MARSHALL, dissenting.

I share JUSTICE BRENNAN's view that the logic of the relevant regulation, 7 C.F.R. § 273.12(e)(2)(ii) (1985), requires the sort of notice that the lower courts ordered here. The regulation contemplates a notice that allows families to "adjust household budgets" according to changes in benefit levels, 43 Fed. Reg. 18896 (1978), and I fail to see how a notice that does not inform recipients of their new benefit levels can serve this purpose. Given that this interpretation of the regulation disposes of the cases, I find no need to reach the other issues addressed by the Court or by the dissent. I therefore join Part I of JUSTICE BRENNAN'S dissent.