Brennan Center for Justice

Anderson v. Roe

Voting Rights & Elections

This 1998 case challenged a California statute limiting public benefits available to otherwise eligible families living in California for less than a year to the amount of assistance the family would have received in the state where they previously resided. The Center’s amicus brief argued that the law is a product of a classic democratic failure: “insiders” have imposed discriminatory burdens on “outsiders” whose interests were not fairly represented—indeed not represented at all—in legislative decision-making. The U.S. Supreme Court held the statute unconstitutional.