The Flemming Rule of 1960 was an administrative ruling which decreed that U.S. states could not deny

income assistance Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance pr ...

eligibility through the U.S.

Aid to Families with Dependent Children Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was a federal assistance program in the United States in effect from 1935 to 1997, created by the Social Security Act (SSA) and administered by the United States Department of Health and Human Ser ...

program on the basis of a home being considered unsuitable per the woman's children being termed as

illegitimate Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as ''b ...

, a term for the status of a child born to parents who are unmarried to one another. It was named after

Arthur Flemming Arthur Sherwood Flemming (June 12, 1905September 7, 1996) was an American government official. He served as the United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1958 until 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. ...

, who at the time was the head of the United States

Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the US federal government created to protect the health of the US people and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...

. In 1960, the U.S. state of Louisiana expelled 23,000 children from its welfare program in what became known as the "Louisiana Incident." This was done because the children had been born outside of wedlock, and were considered illegitimate by the state. Similar types of welfare denial had occurred in other states. In response to this, the Louisiana Department of Health, Education and Welfare, administrator of the income assistance program, implemented the Flemming Rule. A 1997 article by Claudia Lawrence-Webb claimed that the child welfare system had problems fairly representing children of

color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...

and signified this problem was due to the Flemming Rule. Webb suggested that the rule was implemented poorly, which led to unnecessary negative consequences for African American children. In the article, Webb also discusses how the Flemming Rule may have influenced future policies.Lawrence-Webb, Claudia (January–February 1997)
"African American Children in the Modern Child Welfare System: A Legacy of the Flemming Rule"
Child Welfare, volume 76, no. 1. pp 9–30.

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Further reading