PSJD Public Interest News Digest – February 22, 2019
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! Major news this week includes investigative reporting from Bloomberg revealing a surge in student-loan delinquencies, British Columbia’s decision to provide amnesty for student loan interest, and a vigorous debate in Canada over recent comments by the Chief Justice indicating his interest in exploring mandatory pro bono strategies. Also, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously to curtail civil forfeiture practices by state governments. And lots more besides! To see what I mean, read below.
See you around,
Sam
Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Issues
- In Manitoba, the Winnipeg Free Press reported on how “[t]he influx of asylum seekers [has] disproportionately affected Manitoba [relative to other provinces]” in the past year.
Workplace Discrimination and Harassment
Nonprofit Management
- In Missouri, a state appeals court ruled that “[a] nonprofit organization’s sole employee in the state of Missouri is entitled to unemployment benefits…[a] ruling that departs from decades of state interpretation of the Missouri Employment Security Law.”
- In Nevada, “lawmakers [are considering a bill that] aims to authorize county commissioners to form a nonprofit corporation to “aid the county in providing certain governmental services.”
- Professors Kuehn & Joy of Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Student Debt
- In British Columbia, “the provincial government has eliminated interest charges on all BC student loans effective immediately.”
- Using the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s quarterly household-debt report, Bloomberg News calculated that “[s]tudent-loan delinquencies surged last year, hitting consecutive records of $166.3 billion in the third quarter and $166.4 billion in the fourth.“
- In Colorado, the State Higher Education Executive Officers’ Association officially responded to “a letter [Sens. Jones, Warren, Harris, and Masto] produced regarding racial disparities in student debt and broader challenges faced by students of color in college and career training.“
- NonProfit Quarterly reacted to the recent audit released by the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, which sharply criticized the Department’s oversight of student loan servicers.
- MarketWatch summarized “[w]here the 2020 [Presidential] candidates stand on student debt and college affordability.”
- In Pennsylvania, The Beaver County Times reported that U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, while speaking about a town hall “said the nation’s student debt is about the same as the tax breaks given to corporations and the wealthiest Americans last year by Republicans so it is a ‘solvable problem.’”
Electoral Reform
- In Connecticut, the Yale Law School Rule of Law Clinic and the NAACP survived a motion to dismiss in their ongoing lawsuit alleging that “Connecticut’s 2011 Redistricting Plan reflects neither electoral nor representational equality [because it] count[s] the bodies of incarcerated persons in a place they have not chosen to live, to the political benefit of the people who live near prisons.“
Legal Technology
- In an episode of the Lawyerist podcast, Judge Dillard of the Court of Appeals of Georgia discusses “how judges have mostly been inaccessible to the public and how quite a few judges are now going against the grain and taking residence on Twitter.“
- According to the Washington Post, “[t]he Federal Trade Commission and Facebook are negotiating over a multi-billion dollar fine that would settle the agency’s investigation into the social media giant’s privacy practices…the largest the agency has ever imposed on a technology company.“
- In Illinois, the National Law Review called attention to a recent State Supreme Court Decision (Rosenbach v. Six Flags Entertainment Corp.), establishing strict liability for violations of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, holding that “when a private entity fails to comply with one of [the] requirements, that violation constitutes an invasion…sufficient to support the individual’s or customer’s statutory cause of action.” The National Law Review believes that “the court’s reasoning…focused heavily on the nature of biometric information, which unlike a social security number or password can’t be changed.“
Environmental Justice
Access to Justice – Civil
- In Canada, Chief Justice Wagner recently predicted in an interview that “you will see more and more law societies who will require that part of being a lawyer is also give some pro bono work.” Since his remarks earlier this month, a number of attorneys have provided arguments against the idea of “mandatory pro bono,” including statements this week from the President of the Canadian Bar Association.
- In Alberta, Legal Aid Alberta released its three-year strategic plan.
- In Alaska, Gov. Dunleavy proposed a budget for the 2020 fiscal year that would eliminate funding for the Alaska Legal Services Corporation, a move the ALSC estimates will force them to “turn away an additional 1,363 applicants for legal help, impacting 2,809 Alaskans.”
- In New York, “[t]wo-thirds of legal service providers…that offer free counseling on foreclosure prevention for struggling homeowners could be forced to stop offering that aid in April,” following Govenor Cuomo’s failure to including such funding in his amended executive budget proposal.
- Also in New York, “Hofstra University has launced a program to help pro se litigants with civil issues at the Eastern District of New York’s Central Islip courthouse.”
- In Detroit, Michigan, the State Bar of Michigan, the ACLU of Michigan, several Michigan law schools, Ford Motor company, and other prominent institutions announced a “Detroit Eviction Right to Counsel Summit” [to] be held March 12 and include local and national experts along with tenants facing evictions.”
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In Bonneville County, Idaho, Chief Public Defender Crane reacted to “legislation under consideration [that] would limit public defenders to 210 felony cases, requiring counties with higher caseload averages to hire more attorneys,” saying that “the county’s public defense office would have to see if the state would volunteer funds to help counties cover the cost of hiring additional attorneys.“
- In Wisconsin, “Republicans in [the] state Assembly are supporting raising the pay for attorneys who represent poor defendants as the state faces a class-action lawsuit over the issue.“
- In Saginaw County, Michigan, the county “is creating a public defender’s office to comply with new state mandates to provide legal counsel for indigent people[, composed of] a director and eight attorneys.“
- In Travis County, Texas, the county’s Indigent Legal Services work group “has composed a draft letter indicating their intent to apply for a Texas Indigent Defense Commission grant in May, but the Commissioners Court is concerned that moving too fast could be a mistake.” (Key members of the work group departed earlier this month, as previously mentioned in this digest.)
- In Coweta County, Georgia, new data related by the District Attorney’s Office indicated that “felony caseloads…have jumped nearly 40 percent since 2015.” District Attorney Cranford “recently proposed the possibility of a circuit split for the five-county Coweta Judicial Circuit.“
Criminal Justice Reform
- In Louisiana, State Public Defender Dixon explained to a legislative subcommittee that a significant amount of the Louisiana Public Defender Fund is “spent propping up local public defenders who otherwise rely on ‘unstable and inadequate’ local sources like traffic tickets”–a strategy that has become complicated as “police in many jurisdictions aren’t writing as many tickets as they used to.”
- Also in Louisiana, “Orleans Parish Public Defender Laura Bixby on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the city of New Orleans for refusing to turn over records showing the locations of hundreds of crime cameras it has installed since 2017.” (See Bixby v. New Orleans.)
- In Philadelphia, NPR interviewed reform-minded District Attorney Krasner.
- In Santa Clara County, California, the District Attorney’s Office released a “Race and Prosecutions” report. According to The Mercury News, “[b]esides chronicling an ongoing over-representation of Latino and black residents in felony and misdemeanor cases, the [report] highlights how prosecutors are paying close attention to the county’s most crime-affected neighborhoods, and are being tested with experimental “race-blind” case evaluations.”
- In New York, the state’s intermediary court (Appellate Division) “ruled [that] footage from police body cameras should be subject to New York’s public disclosure laws.” (See In re Patrolmen’s Benevolent Ass’n. of the City of New York v. De Blasio)
- In Washington DC, the Supreme Court unanimously “ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause to the states.” (See Timbs v. Indiana)
- In addition to the new precedent, court watchers remarked on how Justice Gorsuch agreed with Justice Thomas, who reached the same result as the majority but through the Privileges and Immunities Clause.
- Others are circumspect of the ruling’s impact: “how much it will matter will depend on how the court applies it in the future. After all, the Eighth Amendment has applied to federal civil forfeitures for more than two decades and yet, during that period, ‘the federal government took in $36.6 billion in assets police seized from people on America’s roads and in its poorer neighborhoods, many of whom never were charged with a crime or shown to have drugs.“