Could the Federal government say that if you are not vaccinated against Covid then you lose your welfare benefits? Would it be constitutional?
What I am asking is, would a federal law (passed by congress) requiring people on welfare to be vaccinated be constitutional?
Could the Federal government say that if you are not vaccinated against Covid then you lose your welfare benefits? Would it be constitutional?
What I am asking is, would a federal law (passed by congress) requiring people on welfare to be vaccinated be constitutional?
For the most part yes. Arguably, a religious exemption might be required. But the federal government absent other countervailing considerations, generally has the power to mandate vaccination and other responses to a contiguous disease in cases where the vaccination would affect interstate commerce.
All manner of things can be established as conditions to federal spending and federal programs. In cases where the program is purely federal, that discretion is almost unlimited (except for individual liberty considerations like freedom of religion). In cases where state cooperation is required, as noted in the answer by user6726, this discretion isn't absolutely unbounded if the state objects.
"Welfare" is a fairly broad concept. Some benefits, e.g. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, are funded by the federal government and administered by states. Some are entirely state-run. There may be some federal-only programs. As far as state programs are concerned (including TANF), there are limits on the extent to which the federal government can command states to enact particular laws (a 10th Amendment question). The relevant question from Dole v. South Dakota is whether where the federal requirement would be coercive. The anti-coercion doctrine is one of the issues investigated in this report on federalism and Congressional power. In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 SCOTUS indicated that cutting off a large-enough federally-supported program – over 10% of a state's budget – is coercive.
The Federal government would not have the power to directly prevent state welfare payments to un-vaccinated individuals e.g. by arresting them for receiving funds, or arresting state officials for disbursing funds. At most, they could declare that a state is ineligible to receive funds unless... and then there is the question of what the state is indirectly commanded to do.
Congress may generally condition direct federal assistance on any basis it chooses, provided that no suspect classification is used, and that the law passes rational basis scrutiny. That is, congress must assert, or the courts must find, some plausible connection between the restriction and the purposes of the act.
Funds distributed through the states, and particularly ones partly funded by the states, are subject to different and stricter constraints. Congress does not have as free a hand in those cases.
In this case, it is valid a purpose of welfare legislation to encourage beneficiaries to find and accept paying jobs when possible and as soon as possible. Congress might think that being vaccinated makes that more likely.
However, no such federal law has been passed, and politically I think it is unlikely that one would be. Until and unless such a law is passed and then challenged, one cannot be sure if it would be found constitutional.
