In Maher, Commissioner of Social Services of Connecticut v. Doe et al., the U.S Supreme Court ruled that a state regulation requiring residency for at least one year before receiving welfare benefits was unconstitutional. The case involved two women who had recently moved to Connecticut and were denied Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) because they hadn't met the one-year residency requirement. They sued on behalf of themselves and others in similar situations, arguing that this rule violated their constitutional right to travel from state to state. The court agreed, stating that while states have a legitimate interest in preserving their resources, they cannot do so by inhibiting migration into the state through discriminatory classifications.

In the dissenting opinion for Maher v. Doe, Justice Brennan argued that the majority's decision was a violation of equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. He contended that Connecticut's policy to provide welfare benefits only to United States citizens and permanent residents, excluding aliens temporarily residing in the country, created an unjust classification based on alienage - a characteristic which bears no relation to an individual’s ability or willingness to contribute meaningfully towards society. Brennan believed this discrimination against non-permanent resident aliens failed both strict scrutiny and rational basis review tests used by courts when evaluating whether laws violate equal protection rights. Furthermore, he asserted that such classifications should be subjected to close judicial scrutiny because they are inherently suspect and prone to abuse by those with political power at expense of minority groups without it.