The federal law required that applicants who qualify receive aid within 30 or 45 days, depending on their condition, but the Illinois agency was taking up to four months to disburse aid, and when such aid was distributed, it was not paid retroactively to the time when the state should have started paying it, according to the federal guidelines.

Specifically, Jordan claimed that the Illinois administrators were applying their own guidelines, which ignored federally-mandated time limits and so did not get aid to applicants fast enough. He alleged that the program's money had been administered in a way that violated both federal laws and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. The plaintiff, John Jordan, in a class action suit, sued Illinois officials who administered federal-state of Aid to the Aged, Blind, or Disabled (AABD). 651 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that the sovereign immunity recognized in the Eleventh Amendment prevented a federal court from ordering a state from paying back funds that had been unconstitutionally withheld from parties to whom they had been due. Rehnquist, joined by Burger, Stewart, White, PowellĮdelman v. 332 (1979).īecause of the sovereign immunity recognized in the Eleventh Amendment, a federal court could not order a state to pay back funds that had unconstitutionally withheld from parties to whom they had been due.Ĭhief Justice Warren E.

Retrospective relief