Photo/Illutration Members of the plaintiffs’ lawyer team hold up banners, one of which reads “complete victory,” after the high court decision in Nagoya was announced on Nov. 30. (Reo Komeda)

NAGOYA--The government has been ordered to pay compensation to 13 public assistance recipients in Aichi Prefecture who sued over welfare benefit cuts from 2013 to 2015, saying it put them under "severer financial strain."

The Nagoya High Court on Nov. 30 also ordered the government to revoke the benefit cut decision and criticized the methods used to arrive at the reduction figures. 

Presiding Judge Yasuhiro Hasegawa said that the revision to the standard amounts of welfare benefits “lacked rational correlation with statistics and other figures.”

“(The welfare minister) committed serious negligence,” he said.

The high court ordered the government to pay 10,000 yen ($67.50) in compensation to each of the 13 plaintiffs.

In response to the ruling, Hironori Mori, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said, “We demand an apology to all welfare recipients and retroactive payment of the unpaid amounts, with the condition that the benefit levels be restored to what they were before 2013.”

In its ruling, the high court overturned a 2020 lower court decision, which ruled the revision to the welfare benefit system was legal.

Thirty similar lawsuits have been filed across the country.

This is the second appeal court decision and the first to show the illegality of the revision.

In addition, this is the first ruling in this series of lawsuits to award state compensation.

The government lowered the standard amount of livelihood assistance within the welfare benefits by up to 10 percent between 2013 and 2015. The assistance covers food and other necessities for daily life.

The revision resulted in a total reduction of roughly 67 billion yen.

The lawsuit focused on the appropriateness of two “adjustments” used in the revision.

One is “distortion adjustment,” which reviews the living expenses of welfare recipient households by comparing them to those of low-income households.

The court ruled that the government halved the range of increase or decrease without disclosing it to the public and experts when reflecting the figures presented by the expert panel in charge of verifying standard amounts.

The other is “deflation adjustment,” which was calculated based on falling prices from 2008 to 2011.

The court said the welfare minister used the ministry's own figures, leading to a rate of decrease far removed from the actual consumption situation of recipients.

“(It) lacks consistency with expert opinions,” the court said.

The court ruled that both adjustments were illegal.

It also criticized the corrective action of these adjustments as “significantly lacking in rationality.”

The court said these adjustments constituted an illegal revision exceeding the discretion of the welfare minister. It concluded they were a violation under the Law concerning State Liability for Compensation.

The ruling also referred to the extent of damage suffered by the recipients as a result of the revision, saying, “For more than nine years, they have been forced to live under severer financial strain. 

“Even if (the reduction decision) is nullified, it will not fully compensate them for their losses,” it said.

The welfare ministry acknowledged that the revision at that time was not deemed as lawful.

“After examining the court decision and discussing with relevant ministries and local governments, we would like to respond appropriately,” a senior ministry official said following the high court ruling.

The government is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, considering the government’s victory in a similar case at the Osaka High Court in April.

In fiscal 2013, around 1.59 million households, or 2.16 million people, were receiving welfare benefits.

The government lowered the standard amount by an average of 6.5 percent over the three years until 2015.

For a household with a couple and one child living in an urban area, the revision meant a reduction of 16,000 yen per month.

(This article was written by Toshinari Takahashi, Shinichi Sekine and Takashi Kiyokawa, senior staff writer.)

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