PSJD Public Interest News Digest – May 3, 2019
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! Student loans continue to create dramatic stories, with the Department of Education releasing new data for March 2019 on Public Service Loan Forgiveness (or, rather, the lack thereof) and a report from the Wall Street Journal that the Trump Administration is considering selling some or all of the federal government’s student loan portfolio. Meanwhile, Legal Aid Ontario began announcing specifically how recent dramatic funding cuts will affect its operations while Illinois considered an access-to-justice bill that would dramatically expand legal representation. Oh, and prosecutors in Massachusetts are suing the federal government to prevent immigration agents from conducting arrests within state courthouses while the federal government is prosecuting a Massachusetts judge and court official for taking actions to frustrate this federal arrest policy. These stories and more are in the links, below.
See you around,
Sam
Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Issues
- In Texas, “[a] 16-year-old boy who traveled to the U.S. from Guatemala has died in U.S. custody in Texas, becoming the third child since early December to die after being detained…Authorities [had] placed him in Southwest Key Casa Padre, a former Walmart that was converted into a facility to house more than 1,000 immigrant children.“
- In Boston MA, “[a] Massachusetts judge was indicted…on charges that she helped a man who was living in the U.S. illegally sneak out a back door of the courthouse to evade a waiting immigration enforcement agent.“
- Also in Boston MA, “[p]rosecutors in Massachusetts sued Monday to block federal authorities from making arrests at courthouses of people suspected of being in the country illegally, arguing the practice is making it harder for them to hold defendants accountable and get justice for victims.“
- In California, “[t]he [ACLU] Foundation of Southern California sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement…to stop transfers of detainees held in two Orange County jails that recently ended their contract with the federal agency…The ACLU is asking the court to prevent transfers of immigrants outside of Southern California if they already have attorneys or if they have immediate family in the region.“
- In Fairfax County VA, “[t]he Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted 7 to 3 to…set aside $200,000 for a legal-aid pilot program to help immigrants facing deportation proceedings.“
- In New York NY, Governor Cuomo announced that “New York State will fund free legal services and immigrants’ rights clinics for non-citizens at consulates and religious institutions throughout the five boroughs [as] part of the state’s Liberty Defense Project[.]“
- In Virginia, “[i]mmigration enforcement agents cannot be sued over their actions, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled[], because they are not dealing in criminal law.“
- In Washington DC, the Washington Post reported that “[t]he U.S. immigration court system is facing a backlog of 850,000 cases, and it has fewer than 450 judges nationwide to handle them. New asylum applications and other claims are piling up…[and t]he president has grown so frustrated that he has been floating the idea of doing away entirely with U.S. immigration courts, which re part of the Justice Department, not the judicial branch.“
Voting Rights
- In Tennessee, the NAACP and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, along with several pro bono firms and a solo practitioner, “filed suit…challenging Tennessee’s new third-party [voter] registration law. The complaint alleges that the law, which imposes burdensome requirements on persons and organizations who seek to help people register to vote, violates fundamental rights of free speech, free association, the right to vote, and due process.“
- In Georgia, “U.S. District Judge Steve Jones…heard arguments on a motion from state election officials to dismiss…[t]he lawsuit [] filed weeks after Republican Brian Kemp narrowly beat Democrat Stacey Abrams [that] accuses the secretary of state and election board members of mismanaging the 2018 election in ways that deprived some citizens, particularly low-income people and minorities, of their constitutional right to vote.“
Student Loans
- In Washington DC, “[t]he Trump administration has retained private consultants to estimate potential losses in the U.S. government’s $1.45 trillion student-loan portfolio, and is weighing selling all or portions of the debt to private investors[.]“
- Also in Washington, the Department of Education released its Public Service Loan Forgiveness Report for March 2019. As StudentLoanHero.com put it, “[a]s seen with the previous data, only the lucky few have so far received loan forgiveness, at only 518 out of the 73,554 unique borrowers who applied.“
- Business Insider reported that “[a] solid majority of Americans–57%–who’ve already paid off their student-loan debt support Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s ambitious new plan to cancel tens of millions of Americans’ student debt, according to a new INSIDER poll.“
- Above the Law noted that “[while] Trump’s 2020 budget proposal…envisioned an end to the Public Student [sic] Loan Forgiveness program…[m]uch more interesting…was Trump’s push to forgive undergraduate student loan debt for all borrowers after 15 years[–]five years earlier than under current income-driven repayment plans,” a proposal similar enough to Senator Warren’s recently-announced platform that, “in any rational world, a compromise would be reachable between two factions who both agree that student debt should be forgiven in a shorter period of time[.]“
- InsideHigherEd.com reported that [the] Urban Institute announced that a widely-cited statistic finding that 49% of education debt is held by those in the top quartile of income “was the result of a coding error and was discovered in discussions with a writer for Slate[;] Urban Institute…announced that the figure was incorrect and should have been 34%[.]”
- Again also in Washington, “[t]he Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Conduent Education Services $3.9 million for failing to provide accurate account balances on more than 200,000 student loans that resulted in many borrowers paying off the wrong amounts.“
- Again again also in Washington, the American Enterprise Institute released a report titled “Ensuring Accountability and Effectiveness at the Office of Federal Student Aid”, noting that “[t]he fifth-largest bank in the United States…[is] the Office of Federal Student Aid” and urging Congress to “consider necessary updates to the statutory goals and structure of the performance-based organization” (a “structure [] designed to be somewhat independent from political pressures” of which the FSA is one of only three in the federal government).
- In Minnesota, “[the] House of Representatives approved a new higher education budget that would freeze tuition for two years at the state’s public colleges and universities.”
- In Illinois, “State Treasurer Michael Frerichs wants to allocate up to 5% of the $13 billion in taxpayer money he manages to direct student loans.“
- In California, “2020 presidential candidate John Hickenlooper announced that ‘as president I would lower the interest rate [on student loans] down to 2.5 percent, or as low as I can get it, without taking any risk[.]“
- Bloomberg News reported the chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities believes that “viewed next to the $104 trillion in household net work, that $1.6 trillion [in student debt] is more of an unfortunate ‘micro problem’ for individuals than a macro problem for the economy.”
#MeToo
Non-Profit Management & Hiring
- In Washington DC, Restore Public Trust, “a group representing 40 progressive organizations focused on issues of civil rights, immigration and government accountability” announced plans to “launch an ad campaign urging major universities including Harvard to avoid hiring former members of the Trump administration.“
- Also in Washington DC, “[a] case recently appealed to the federal labor board could give it an opportunity to decide whether unpaid interns can organize for pay and other changes to their working conditions, especially in workplaces that already have a union.“
- In Illinois, LegalEvolution.org published an overview of the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois’ praiseworthy track record addressing the access to justice gap in their state “with an approach to funding that focused on facts and finding new ways to increase impact.” (Speaking from my own experience, Illinois Legal Aid Online is a brilliant initiative.)
- In Boulder County CO, “[the District Attorney] and his team sought out and were awarded a $7,500 grant for additional training to combat implicit bias in [their] office.”
- Benton IL, “nine current and former state workers su[ed] the AFSCME union over agency fees paid between May 2017 and June 2018. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled those fees were illegal in the Janus v. AFSCME case last June….[The Liberty Justice League…plan[s] similar lawsuits in other states.“
- In Ontario, “[m]ore than half of the lawyers elected to the Law Society of Ontario’s new board of directors are opposed to the statement of principles” which the Law Society approved in December 2016 by Convocation, “requir[ing] licensees to ‘create and abide by an individual Statement of Principles that acknowledges your obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in your behaviour toward colleagues, employees, clients and the public.“
Law & Technology
- In Washington DC, “the Senate commerce committee heard from consumer advocates on how lawmakers should craft a data privacy bill…includ[ing] representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Future of Privacy Forum, Common Sense Media and the Irish Data Protection Commission[.]“
- In Sacramento County CA, the “District Attorney dismissed or reduce over 5,300 cannabis convictions this month thanks to an algorithm created by Code for America, a tech-driven government watchdog group. Sacramento is one of five California counties to partner with the nonprofit for the Clear My Record pilot program.“
- In Massachusetts, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU filed papers in a federal lawsuit alleging that “U.S. government searches of travelers’ cellphones and laptops at airports and border crossings [have] nearly quadrupled since 2015 and are being conducted for reasons beyond customs and immigration enforcement.” The lawsuit “claims going through electronic devices without a warrant is unconstitutional.”
Access to Justice – Civil
- In Ontario, the CEO of Legal Aid Ontario “laid out in an email to staff…measures the organization would be taking following provincial budget cuts announced earlier this month. He said front-line services to the public would ‘continue and remain strong,’ but the agency will be slashing full-time positions, implementing a hiring freeze, and freezing management salaries, among other internal measures.“
- In Washington DC, “[g]eneral counsel from 262 companies including Amazon, Eli Lilly and Company, and the Walt Disney Company, are urging Congress to increase funding for [the] Legal Services Corporation, a little more than a month after the Trump administration proposed defunding the group.“
- In Illinois, state officials are considering “the ‘Illinois Access to Justice Program Act,” HB131/SB2249, which looks to establish a public-private partnership for community-based legal assistance [and would] provide free legal representation to both immigrants and all communities of color.“
- In California, California Rural Legal Assistance reopened its Santa Cruz office, which had “closed within the last five years when funding from the city and other sources wasn’t available.”
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In Montana, “[t]he Montana Supreme Court sa[id] a judge can’t order a public defender to represent a criminal defendant if no jail time is at stake.“
- In Louisiana, “[a]ttorneys for a man accused of killing his girlfriend, her family and his parents…have asked for a pause in the prosecution of the case until they can get funding[;] their team is completely unfunded, leaving them working for free and unable to hire needed investigators and experts.“
- In Travis County TX, the Travis County Commissioners Court prepared for its vote next week on “whether to approve and advance a grant proposal to the state-funded Texas Indigent Defense Commission that would help underwrite establishing a public defender’s office for the county.“