Ann Hansen v. Patricia Roberts Harris, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare

By dispensing with compliance with an admittedly valid regulation, 20 C.F.R. § 404.601(d), which requires a written application on the appropriate form for a wide variety of social security benefits, the majority opens the door of the federal fisc not simply to Mrs. Hansen, whom we at least know to have visited the HEW office and said something, but to thousands who merely will make a detailed claim that they have done so and whom there is no effective means of rebutting. Millions of dollars will have to be expended simply to ascertain whether conditions of eligibility claimed in a subsequent…