Sneed

Plaintiffs Lidia Sneed and Cheryl Bell appeal a judgment in favor of defendants California Department of Social Services and its director, Rita Saenz, (together Department) after the court denied Sneed and Bell’s petitions for ordinary and administrative mandamus and request for declaratory relief. In those proceedings, Sneed and Bell challenged Department’s interpretation and implementation of the maximum family grant (MEG) statute (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 11450.04) as applied to their families’ ability to receive welfare cash assistance under the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids Act (CalWORKs) program (Stats. 1997 ch. 270, § 50).

In essence, the MEG statute denies an increase in the maximum aid cash payment, a dollar amount that ordinarily correlates with family size, if additional children are bom to a family that has been on welfare for the previous 10 months. (§ 11450.04, subd. (a).) Sneed and Bell contend the court should have granted mandamus and declaratory relief because Department’s regulations interpreting the MEG statute sanction families like theirs, who have additional children while on welfare but who also have nonwelfare income to…