Top court rules nonpayment of disability benefits constitutional

TOKYO, Oct. 6 Kyodo - The Supreme Court made yet another ruling Monday declaring constitutional the government's refusal to provide three handicapped people with disability pension benefits because of their non-membership in the program while they were students.

The top court's Second Petty Bench dismissed the appeals filed by the
plaintiffs -- a man and a woman in Kyoto Prefecture and a man in Okayama
Prefecture in their 40-50s -- against appellate rulings that threw out their
demands for the benefit payments.
The three had asserted that the state violated the Constitution by not making
it mandatory for students aged 20 or older to join the ''kokumin nenkin''
national pension program until law revisions in 1991 and by not taking relief
measures for them thereafter.
All three plaintiffs became handicapped when they were students.
In Monday's ruling, Presiding Justice Osamu Tsuno said the government's refusal
to pay the benefits to the plaintiffs ''did not violate the Constitution and
the high courts' judgments were reasonable,'' drawing on legal precedents
regarding pension benefit payments.
In a ruling in September last year, the Supreme Court said for the first time
that the government's refusal to pay disability pension benefits to handicapped
people in similar circumstances was constitutional.
Lawsuits of this kind have been filed with nine district courts nationwide.
Plaintiffs have lost in all three previous cases on which the top court has
ruled.
The plaintiffs in Monday's case were a 57-year-old man in the city of Kyoto who
became visually impaired in a traffic accident, a 45-year-old woman in Kyoto
Prefecture with mental illness and a 47-year-old man in Okayama Prefecture who
became severely disabled in a traffic accident.
Their demands had been dismissed by both district and high courts.