Cite as: 519 U. S. 102 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
can exercise even fundamental rights." Brief for Respondents 12; see, e. g., Lyng v. Automobile Workers, 485 U. S. 360, 363, n. 2, 370-374 (1988) (rejecting equal protection attack on amendment to Food Stamp Act providing that no household could become eligible for benefits while a household member was on strike); Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 543-544, 550-551 (1983) (rejecting nonprofit organization's claims of free speech and equal protection rights to receive tax deductible contributions to support its lobbying activity); Harris v. McRae, 448 U. S. 297, 321-326 (1980) (Medicaid funding need not be provided for women seeking medically necessary abortions). A decision for M. L. B., respondents contend, would dishonor our cases recognizing that the Constitution "generally confer[s] no affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests of which the government itself may not deprive the individual." DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Servs., 489 U. S. 189, 196 (1989).
Complainants in the cases on which respondents rely sought state aid to subsidize their privately initiated action or to alleviate the consequences of differences in economic circumstances that existed apart from state action. M. L. B.'s complaint is of a different order. She is endeavoring to defend against the State's destruction of her family bonds, and to resist the brand associated with a parental unfitness adjudication. Like a defendant resisting criminal conviction, she seeks to be spared from the State's devastatingly adverse action. That is the very reason we have paired her case with Mayer, not with Ortwein or Kras, discussed supra, at 114-116.
Respondents also suggest that Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229 (1976), is instructive because it rejects the notion "that a law, neutral on its face and serving ends otherwise
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