PSJD Public Interest News Digest – January 17, 2020
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public!
Hope 2020 is treating everyone well so far. I’m reeling a bit from the onslaught of news, so this is our first Digest of the year. We’re off to a roaring start. The right to counsel in immigration and asylum cases saw major developments, with a federal judge in California affirming asylum seekers’ right to counsel while New York State legislators debated creating a statutory right to publicly-funded counsel in deportation cases. Student loans also continue to make headlines, with the House of Representatives repudiating Secretary DeVos’ new regulations concerning student loan forgiveness in situations of fraud and a bankruptcy judge in New York discharging a lawyer’s student loan debt. Criminal justice reform has also been a major topic, from Minnesota, where Attorney General Ellison called for an investigation into the summary firing of Hennepin County’s Chief Public Defender, to Missouri, where the St. Louis District Attorney filed a federal suit against the city and its police union under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Oh! And former PSJD Fellow and Georgetown OPICS alum Katie Dilks was named the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation. Congratulations Katie!
As always, these stories and more are in the links below.
See you around,
Sam
Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues
- In Ciudad Juarez MX, “Mexican authorities [] removed almost 100 Mexican migrants seeking asylum in the United States from a camp in downtown Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, according to a Reuters witness, after state police threatened to separate parents from their children.”
- In San Francisco CA, “the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office filed a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office with the U.S. Federal District Court, Northern District of California, requesting an immediate hearing on behalf of a female transgender immigrant who was illegally transferred on Christmas night to a remote detention facility in Texas.”
- In Los Angeles CA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Los Angeles (CAIR-LA) is “working to educate the Iranian community about their legal rights in light of reports of increased profiling and discrimination against Iranians across the nation.”
- In San Diego CA, “[f]inding asylum seekers have a right to counsel when undergoing interviews to determine whether they can be returned to Mexico under the “Remain in Mexico” program, a federal judge [] confirmed immigration law guarantees attorney access for migrants.”
- In Albany NY, “[l]egislation is being introduced [] that would create a statutory right to a lawyer for any New Yorker facing deportation who cannot afford an attorney on their own.​”
Student Loans & Student Debt
- In Los Angeles CA, “the UCLA School of Law is enhancing its Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP), starting in January. …Under new LRAP guidelines, alumni with incomes up to $75,000 will have their eligible loan payments fully covered, an increase from the previous threshold of $60,000.”
- In Washington DC, “[Senator Elizabeth] Warren said that as president, she would not wait for Congress to approve her plans to cancel or modify federal student debt. Instead, she would directly authorize the Department of Education to provide as much as $50,000 in relief to about 95% of student loan borrowers.”
- Also in Washington DC, “[t]he House voted 231-180 to overturn new regulations introduced by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that critics argue limit student loan forgiveness when a college closes due to fraud.”
- In California, “[t]he CFPB filed a complaint last week in a California federal district court against several companies and individuals involved in offering student loan debt relief services for allegedly obtaining consumer reports unlawfully, charging unlawful advance fees, and engaging in deceptive conduct.”
- In New York NY, “[a] bankruptcy judge excused a U.S. Navy veteran with a law degree from repaying more than $220,000 in student loan debt, the latest court ruling to lower the barriers to discharging educational debt.”
Disaster Law & The Environment
- In Washington DC, “US President Donald Trump's administration announced Thursday sweeping changes to an environmental law that would speed up the construction of highways, airports and pipelines [by] rais[ing] the threshold for what types of projects require an environmental impact assessment.”
- In Portland OR, Willamette Week described how “[i]n just a few months, the city of Portland will begin investing the proceeds from a groundbreaking new tax on large companies [in a] local version of the Green New Deal proposed in 2019 by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).”
- In Cambridge MA, “[d]ozens of Harvard Law School students disrupted a first-year student recruitment event held by corporate law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP[], calling on the firm to stop representing the oil and gas company ExxonMobil in ongoing climate change litigation.”
Legal Technology
- In Las Vegas NV, Amazon’s top hardware executive “said he’s proud of the [Ring law enforcement] program, believes the partnerships with police departments are good for neighborhoods, and hinted at a future in which Ring cameras could use Amazon’s facial recognition technology—a scenario that some of Ring’s critics have already expressed concerns about.”
- In Montreal QC, the Cyberjustice Laboratory launched “Autonomy through Cyberjustice Technologies (ACT)[:] the largest international mutlidisciplinary research initiative that seeks to leverage AI to increase access to justice while providing justice stakeholders with a roadmap to help them develop technology that is better adapted to justice.”
- In Canada, the Canadian Bar Association published a statement on “Modernizing the Federal Court”.
- The ABA Journal interviewed Richard Susskind about his thoughts on “[o]nline courts, the future of justice and being bold in 2020.”
Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring
- In Chicago IL, “Executive search firm Isaacson, Miller has been enlisted to find the next president and chief executive officer for the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law[.]”
- In New Jersey, “[t]he New Jersey Supreme Court [] questioned why public defenders should not receive the state Tort Claims Act protections afforded to other state employees as the justices challenged a wrongfully convicted man’s bid to revive his legal malpractice suit[.]”
- Also in New Jersey, “state lawmakers approved a bill that will compel employers to give more notice and pay severance to laid-off workers, after a public backlash against the treatment of workers who lost their jobs in the retail apocalypse…Maxine Neuhauser, an attorney with Epstein Becker Green in Newark, said nonprofit employers could be in a bind if they suddenly lose out on government grants or funding.”
- In Above the Law, an op-ed argued that “Public Interest Organizations Must Use Their Surge In Donations To Pay Their Lawyers A Living Wage.”
Access to Justice – Civil
- In Connecticut, the State Bar Association created a “State of the Legal Profession Task Force[; a move] driven by the access-to-justice gap, as well as the challenges lawyers face in the current system.”
- In New York NY, “[e]victions [] have plummeted nearly 20% in the six months since Albany lawmakers enacted sweeping new tenant protection laws.The drop. revealed in city data compiled over the past two years, shows evictions in the last half of 2019 stood at 8,951, down from 10,958 over the same period in 2018.”
- Law360 published a list of “4 Access To Justice Cases to Watch in 2020”.
- In Indiana, “Chief Justice Loretta Rush issued a call to arms for everyone involved in the state’s justice system in her annual State of the Judiciary Address[:] one glaring area of need is legal aid. Too many people, she says, go unrepresented in court.”
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In Minneapolis MN, “Attorney General Keith Ellison [] called for the Minnesota Board of Public Defense to examine the process that led to the suspension of Hennepin County's chief public defender, saying he believes Mary Moriarty was targeted for speaking out against racial bias in the criminal justice system.”
- In Alaska, the state’s Public Defender Agency responded to a recent gubernatorial report which claimed “defender caseloads are reasonable when compared to established professional measures.” The Public Defender Agency asserted that “Alaska shouldn’t join other states in failing to represent low-income defendants.” (As characterized in third-party reporting.)
- In Jefferson County OH, “County commissioners [] agreed to create a commission to study whether the county should create to a public defender’s office.”
- In Berrien County MI, “[f]or the second time since the Berrien County Public Defender’s Office opened three years ago, Berrien County is losing its chief public defender to a larger county.”
- In Fresco County CA, “[t]he [] County Public Defenders Office will be adding much-needed lawyers to its ranks as part of a legal settlement between the county and the American Civil Liberties Union.”
Criminal Justice Reform
- In New York, “[a] group of 64 activist groups called on Cuomo to “immediately prioritize the full statewide repeal” of a law known by its statute number, 50-a, which guards the confidentiality of personnel records of police, firefighters, correction officers and other uniformed officers.”
- In Virginia, “Gov. Ralph Northam [] announced his criminal justice reform agenda for 2020.”
- In San Francisco CA, “[n]ewly elected San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin fired multiple prosecutors on Friday afternoon as he reshapes the office and begins implementing his progressive vision two days after being sworn in.”
- In St. Louis MO, “[a] top prosecutor has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of St Louis and its police union citing a nearly 150-year-old law used to combat the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist group.”