by Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

 

Happy Friday, everyone! Let’s begin by addressing the elephant: I am not Christina Jackson. As her successor and NALP’s new Director of Public Service Initiatives I’ll be taking over the PSJD Public Interest Digest. I hope I’m able to continue providing useful and timely summaries of news related to our community and our work.

To paraphrase Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes, folks), these days the days are just packed. I’d like to experiment with a slightly denser, more synoptic approach to the Digest. Please let me know what you think. I want to make sure this document remains useful. Feel free to reach out to me by phone or email on this issue or anything else related to my transition here.

Disaster Legal Aid

As Christina noted last week, the need for pro bono legal services in areas hit by storms and fires continues. (For additional opportunities to help, stay tuned to the PSJD Blog, follow PSJD on Twitter (@PSJDTweets) and Facebook, or contact your local legal service providers.)

A number of organizations have stepped up to coordinate efforts–especially in response to the storms battering the Caribbean and the Southeastern US:

• The Houston Bar Association has announced that it will extend its hotline service through the end of October.
  
• The ABA has established a hotline for U.S. Virgin Islander disaster legal assistance, and another ABA hotline for Florida.
  
• Several Florida legal services organizations (Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, St. Johns County Legal Aid, and Clay County Legal Aid) have created a joint hotline for Irma victims. (In at least one case, these efforts seem to be shaping the broader narrative concerning legal aid; a local paper in Jupiter, Florida has reported on the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County’s efforts in their community to help Irma victims while also promoting the society’s more general legal services.)
  
• It may be too soon after Hurricane Maria to see established efforts to help Puerto Rico, but forward-thinking folks have pointed out that there will be an urgent need for attorneys who are able to draft court documents in Spanish, as local law in the territory is conducted bilingually. In related news, the judges overseeing the territory’s bankruptcy proceedings have suspended their work indefinitely in response to this new emergency.

DACA/Immigration

The Trump Administration’s recent announcement that it will be ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has provoked responses from a wide variety of groups:

• Politico summarizes the various lawsuits brought by DACA recipients and state governments challenging the administration’s ability to change policy concerning DACA recipients in the manner in which it has.
  
• State and local governments such as Arlington County, VA; Dane County, WI; and San Francisco, CA have been working to secure funding–sometimes in partnership with non-profits and law schools–to provide emergency immigration legal aid services in a variety of contexts (including but not limited to DACA renewal efforts); the Governor of Rhode Island has forged partnerships with individual and organizational donors to pay renewal fees for every DACA recipient in the state.
  
• Finally, the Canadian Minister of Immigration held a roundtable with NYC organizations working with immigrant communities as part of the Canadian government’s efforts to correct misinformation concerning how the Canadian asylum process works.

Transgender Military Service Ban — Evolving Response from Law Schools

As military recruiters interview law students for potential JAG careers, more law school administrators and student groups are taking positions concerning the Trump Administration’s transgender military service ban:

• The Dean of Columbia Law school welcomed JAG recruiters with “vociferous objection”.
  
• The Dean of Harvard Law addressed the ban by saying he “regret[ted] this exception to our antidiscrimination policy,” while student groups HLS Lambda and Queer/Trans People of Color staged a sit-in at the offices in which JAG recruiting was taking place.

Civil Access to Justice

In a couple of places, civil access to justice is expanding:

• The Nevada legislature recently created a right to counsel for children in cases involving abuse or neglect and the termination of parental rights.
  
• In Maryland, the District Court created a fourth walk-in self-help resource center.

Elsewhere, key figures and institutions are expressing an interest in improving access to civil legal services:

• Chief Judge Janet DiFiore of the New York Court of Appeals held a hearing on civil legal services for the poor where she emphasized the “moral and ethical obligation” for the legal profession to provide effective access to counsel in situations involving deportation; she also expressed interest in the idea of a “Medium Claims Court.”
  
• An independent body commissioned by the Delaware Supreme Court released a report finding state legal aid organizations only have enough funding to serve ⅛ of Delaware’s low-income population.
  
• Judge Posner, now formerly of the Seventh Circuit, expanded in an interview on how his concern for the treatment of self-represented litigants precipitated his decision to retire.

A few other noteworthy A2J-related developments:

• In Texas, the Texas Access to Justice Foundation made a major change this week when it withdrew its support for the Texas Civil Rights Project, which lost nearly half its budget.
  
• In Congress, the House and Senate offered counterproposals to the Trump Administration budget’s suggestion to eliminate all funding for the Legal Services Corporation (the Senate proposal left LSC funding at its previous level of $385m; the House proposal reduced funding by $85m).
  
• Finally, Ontario-based Action Group on Access to Justice launched a podcast, “Architects of Justice,” to shed light on A2J concerns in Canada.

Criminal Justice

Government attorneys for both the prosecution and the defense are struggling with structural issues in a number of jurisdictions:

• In Humboldt County, CA, the PD office has lost four out of six attorneys over a two-month period; the office staffing crisis is related to one judge’s decision to delay a murder trial by a year.
  
• In Missouri, the state Supreme Court has stayed the licensure suspension of a public defender who pleaded that his inadequate representation resulted from an unsustainable caseload.
  
• Indiana has established an independent Public Defender Commission to study the problem of providing adequate indigent defense in that state; the commission continued its business this week, appointing a new member.
  
• In Michigan, Oakland County is challenging recent standards for indigent defense promulgated by a similar Governor-appointed panel in that state on the grounds that under the State Constitution only the Supreme Court can regulate attorneys.
  
• Meanwhile, prosecutors in Kentucky warned that proposed budget cuts there would force them to completely shutter their operations.

Generally Noteworthy Items

• In New York State, courts have recently ruled a four-year-old agency charged with protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities under state custody lacks the authority to prosecute cases independently.
  
• In Minnesota, a St. Paul lawyer has donated $2mil to establish the “Zero Abuse Project” at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, training professionals in child-abuse prevention and establishing a child advocacy clinic.
  
• In North Dakota, local judges have asked the Supreme Court to end temporary provisions relaxing typical pro hac vice requirements for attorneys assisting with cases related to the Dakota Access pipeline protests.
  
• And lastly, in Washington DC a former State Department attorney and Obama Administration whistleblower has founded “Whistleblower Aid,” a non-profit which intends to provide free legal advice to individuals who wish to explore lawful options for whistleblowing.

Music Bonus!

Yours, with irony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1_69AAX-OY