PSJD Public Interest News Digest – September 14, 2018
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! Major news this week includes changes to Apple’s approach to dealing with data requests from government authorities, ABA plans for disaster aid to regions affected by Hurricane Florence, and the ACLU’s release of 50-state policy blueprints for reducing mass incarceration. There’s lots more besides, though! Read on below.
See you around,
Sam
General Interest
- The Pacific Legal Foundation’s VP for Litigation called out Senator Whitehouse (D-RI), via an op-ed in The Hill, for a line of questioning during Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that seemed to question the legitimacy of impact litigation: “They … look for cases around the country that they believe they can use to bring arguments before the court … to hire a client whose case they could take to the Supreme Court with a purpose to make a point … and it causes me to think that sometimes the true party in interest is actually not the named party before the court, but rather the legal group that has hired the client and brought them to the court more or less as a prop in order to make arguments trying to direct the court in a particular direction… .” (As quoted in The Hill.)
- Nonprofit Quarterly discussed the latest internal controversy within the ACLU, over its decision to file an amicus brief in support of the NRA’s First Amendment lawsuit against the State of New York in the context of how “nonprofits [must] navigat[e] a new world of donor activism and political upheaval.” (The NPQ piece draws heavily on a more in-depth article on the ACLU’s internal debate published last month in Slate.)
Immigration & Refugee Issues
- In Virginia, the Legal Aid Justice Center filed a class-action federal lawsuit “challeng[ing] the sheriff’s policy of honoring…requests from U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement to hold immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally after they were due to be released on state charges.”
- In Washington, DC, “Mayor Bowser announced that her Administration will provide Immigrant Justice Legal Services (IJLS) grant funding to 15 community-based organizations that offer legal services for immigrants in Washington, DC.”
- In Florida, “[t]he University of Central Florida Legal Services Department, which is known for helping students with speeding tickets and underage drinking charges, plans to add immigration services to its list of legal troubles it can aid students with.”
- The LA Times reported on the difficulties the Trump Immigration’s asylum policies are creating for Christians from the Middle East.
Legal Technology
Disaster Legal Aid
- The ABA Young Lawyers Division’s Disaster Legal Services Program announced plans to work with FEMA and local legal aid offices to provide legal assistance to disaster victims in the path of Hurricane Florence.
- In California, “a legal hotline is now available for people impacted by the Mendocino Complex fire.”
Student Loans
- The US House of Representatives passed the “Empowering Students through Enhanced Financial Counseling Act, H.R. 1635, which provides annual financial counseling for student loan borrowers.”
Access to Justice – Civil
- In Rhode Island, Operation Stand Down Rhode Island, an organization that provides social services to veterans, announced a full-time, year-round legal service…Legal Assistance for Warriors, or LAW.
Criminal Justice Reform
- The ACLU released “Smart Justice 50-State Blueprints” with policy recommendations that “show how each state can cut the number of people behind bars by half.”
- In Louisiana, an appeals court upheld a ruling below that the DeSoto Parish district attorney’s office acted unconstitutionally when it funded the public defender’s office with money from a pretrial diversion program.
- In Brooklyn, NY, the District Attorney announced “an initiative to help up to 20,000 New Yorkers wipe away pass records for marijuana convictions.”
- In Florida, two ACLU staff attorneys criticized a recent decision by the Chief Judge of Florida’s Fifth Judicial Court to remove two judges from Marion County Criminal Court after receiving a complaint from the county prosecutor asserting that the judges in question behaved favorably toward defendants. In the words of the ACLU, “[r]uling for the defense, or not doling out sufficient ‘punishment,’ is not legitimate grounds for removal. This would be true even if the judges were consistently getting it wrong on the facts or the law–but they weren’t. Florida’s appellate courts regularly affirmed these judges over [the county prosecutor]’s objections.”