After her husband of less than six months died, a woman sought Social Security insurance benefits for herself and her daughter by a previous marriage. The Social Security Administration denied the request on the basis of a duration-of-relationship requirement in the law, which required that a “widow” and “child” have a relationship with the wage earner for more than nine months before his death. They sued, claiming that the rule violated their rights under the Fifth Amendment. In Weinberger v. Salfi, the U.S. Supreme Court finds that the equal protection guarantees of the 14th Amendment are applicable to the federal government here through the Fifth Amendment, but that social welfare legislation like this is constitutional if Congress acted rationally and there was no arbitrary or invidious discrimination. Here, the duration-of-relationship rule made sense to avoid potentially fraudulent claims.