PSJD Public Interest News Digest – December 15, 2017
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! We’re headed into a photo-finish for 2017, with a flurry of activity related to student loans, a new report from the Canadian federal government with potentially huge implications for the practice of individual rights law in that country, and additional developments in New York City legal services organizations ongoing attempts to prevent ICE from conducting arrests at local courthouses. Read below for additional details, as well as a few other juicy stories.
Until next week,
Sam
Student Loans
First, the context:
- The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of student loan defaults has doubled over the last four years, even as the economy has recovered.
Legislators have a variety of ideas about how to handle the situation:
- A bipartisan group of senators introduced the “Empowering Student Borrowers Act.” This act “would require colleges to send a letter to students every year about their total loan debt, monthly repayment amounts, and the estimated interest rate for each loan.”
- In the House of Representatives, the “Student Security Act of 2017” proposes offering students loan forgiveness in when they agree to delay their receipt of Social Security benefits, providing $550 in relief for each month’s delay up to a maximum of six years and one month.
- Alan Collinge, founder of StudentLoanJustice.org, advocated in an opinion piece on insidehighered.com in favor of the “Discharge Student Loans in Bankruptcy Act”.
- In Wisconsin, the state assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities held a public hearing to discuss bills related to a student loan repayment pilot program that would allow attorneys to get $20,000 a year in student loan relief if they took at least 50 public defender cases in sparsely-populated counties.
Meanwhile, state and federal agencies continue their work:
- The California Attorney General sued the US Department of Education, alleging it failed to process the debt-relief claims of students who took out loans to pay for a now-defunct for-profit school.
- Citing cybersecurity concerns, Interim CFPB Director Mulvaney suspended a consumer complaint database concerning student loans. As studentloans.net noted, “[s]everal legal actions have been taken after analyzing patterns of complaints in the database, so it’s easy to assume that the CFPB will have a diminished capacity in finding and prosecuting faulty loan programs and bad actors in the servicing and student loan industries.”
Legal Technology
- In New York City, New York, The Legal Aid Society sued the Manhattan district attorney after the DA’s office refused to divulge whether it purchases social media information as a way to track civil rights protesters.
Access to Justice – Civil
- The Canadian federal government released its first national housing strategy, which included an acknowledgement that housing rights are human rights. Commentary on rabble.ca suggests that “this acknowledgement opens up a very real path to push for recognition that positive rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms exist.”
- According to the National Catholic Reporter, “[i]mmigration experts say that perhaps more than a million people don’t know they are eligible for legal residency…without the right to a provided attorney.”
- Mississippi planned a roll call in January, 2019, to see which districts will participate in a new statewide initiative to expand on free clinic programs offered in its first chancery district.
- In Missouri, the Attorney General announced a Military Legal Assistance Team that will work with attorneys on military bases in the state to find pro bono assistance for service members with certain legal needs.
Access to Justice – Criminal
- The acute indigent defense crisis in Missouri–and its relationship to broader trends–continues to climb the news cycle. This week, it earned attention from NBC’s main site.
- A public defender in the Bronx, New York, argued in the Huffington Post that ICE policy of making immigration-related arrests of individual appearing before local courts is threatening his clients’ constitutional rights to defend themselves in court; a coalition of legal groups, including The Legal Aid Society, and defenders in New York County, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem jointly called on New York’s Chief Judge Janet DiFiore to issue rules addressing the practice.
- The Indiana Lawyer profiled the ongoing work of the state’s Task Force on Public Defense, which was created earlier this year and has met four times thus far.
- Meanwhile, an ineffective assistance of counsel case in Indiana may provide the basis for a court-driven systemic reform of the state’s system.
Music Bonus!
Who doesn’t like to watch a virtuoso?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFcPlv9RhEY