PSJD Public Interest News Digest – August 26, 2022
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello, interested public! Hope you’re all hanging in there. The major news this week has been anticipated for quite some time, but now that it’s here it will likely take a while for us all to unpack. (I speak, of course, of the Biden Administration’s new student loan forgiveness and reform policies.) In other major news, many states continue to see a shortage of criminal defenders–and some states have allocated or are considering allocating millions of dollars in funding to attempt to do something about their crises. In Canada, British Columbia is weighing whether to allow a class action lawsuit to proceed which would challenge the province’s approach to legal aid for single mothers and Montreal is piloting a new legal services model that relies on law students.
Take care of one another,
Sam
Student Loans & Student Debt
- In Washington DC, “President Joe Biden announced the cancellation of up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year or $250,000 for married couples. The plan is expected to help many of the over 40 million Americans with student loans and completely wipe out the balances of as many as 15 million borrowers. Among the over 40 million receiving relief, Pell Grant recipients, public servants, millennials, Black borrowers, and even future students could stand to benefit most from the administration's announcement and accompanying proposals.”
- Relatedly, “[t]he White House caused a stir on Twitter Thursday afternoon by calling out several Republican lawmakers who criticized President Joe Biden's move to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for many borrowers, pointing out that some of the critics’ businesses had more than $1 million in federal loans forgiven as part of the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program.”
- Yahoo observed that “perhaps even more significant is the Biden administration’s proposal to restructure how loans are repaid, giving future borrowers a lot more leeway when it comes to paying back debt.”
- In the Atlantic, Professor Joseph Stiglitz argued that “[w]hatever your view of student-debt cancellation, the inflation argument is a red herring and should not influence policy. Taking that logic to the extreme, canceling food stamps would dofar more to reduce inflation–but that would be cruel and inhumane, and fortunately no one has suggested doing so. A closer look at the student-debt-cancellation program suggests that the new student-loan policy may even reduce inflation; at most, its inflationary impact will be minuscule, and the long-term benefits to the economy are likely to be significant.”
- Slate observed that “[i]t’s easy to imagine the Supreme Court ruling that the secretary [of Education] must identify a more specific class of borrowers whose ability to pay off loans was demonstrably harmed by the pandemic. If the court chooses this route, though, there’s a straightforward fix: Biden can simply announce that any borrower affected by the pandemic can apply for relief; if they can prove hardship, their debts get canceled. The Heroes Act, of course, says such “case-by-case” adjudication is unnecessary. And this method would increase administrative burdens while shrinking the pool of beneficiaries, since some eligible borrowers will fail to apply.”
- The American Prospect argued that “the way for the Biden administration to…manage the transition [back to student loan payments] with the least amount of harm…lies in one of the other announcements the administration made on Wednesday[:] …The next step is to auto-enroll everyone in IDR. If this were the only path for borrowers to pay back federal loans, it would make the cost of those loans somewhat irrelevant. For most people who borrow more than $12,000, they would make this 5 or 10 percent payment relative to their annual income for 20 years and be done.”
Reproductive Rights
Access to Justice – Civil & Economic
- In Springfield MO, “[a] nonprofit organization that helps provide people with housing has sued the state over a new law that upends current approaches to addressing homelessness in Missouri…The legislation prioritizes providing shortterm shelter for homeless people, reversing a popular ‘housing-first’ strategy to get people into permanent homes.”
- In British Columbia, “[a] group representing single mothers is waiting for a B.C. Supreme Court judge to decide if they can sue the province for better access to legal aid. The Single Mothers' Alliance (SMA) filed a court application in February alleging an agreement between the province and the Legal Service Society (now Legal Aid BC) impedes access to justice in family law proceedings.”
- In Montreal QC, “[s]tudents from the École du Barreau will offer free legal advice as part of a pilot project in Montreal, announced the President of Quebec and the Minister of Justice.”
- In Charlottesville VA, “[s]ince pandemic rent protections expired, the Charlottesville Legal Aid Justice Center says it has seen a significant increase in eviction lawsuit filings.”
- In Washington DC, “an eviction prevention hotline and the attorneys who staff it stopped 70% of evictions sought by landlords from September 2021 to March 2022.”
- In Kansas, “[t]he Kansas Supreme Court appointed three new members and reappointed four existing ones to the Access to Justice Committee.”
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In Wisconsin, “[a] group of inmates, some whom have been waiting weeks or months to be assigned attorneys, filed a lawsuit against Gov. Tony Evers and members of the state public defender board. Legal action groups, including the National and Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, are representing a handful of the plaintiffs.”
- In Maine, “[t]he Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services voted to recommend a $62.1 million budget next year. The proposal would open four public defender offices in the state and raise the hourly fee from $80 to $150 for court-appointed lawyers…The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine is suing the state, contending there’s a failure to train, supervise and adequately fund a system to ensure the constitutional right to effective counsel.”
- Relatedly, the Editorial Board of the Bangor Daily News weighed in on the state’s indigent defense crisis (covered in prior editions of this digest): “the current system is clearly inadequate, harming defendants and taxpayers. So state lawmakers, the commission and advocates need to look for innovative solutions – not all of which require more money – with a heightened sense of urgency. Maine is the only state that has not had some version of a public defender system, where lawyers are state employees.”
- In Quebec, “[t]he Barreau du Québec has announced that a first agreement was reached with the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, to increase the fees of lawyers in private practice who accept legal aid mandates.”
- In Rochester NY, “[s]taff attorneys in the Monroe County Public Defender’s office have announced plans to form a union. The union drive comes amid ongoing questions over who will lead the office.”
- In Kentucky, “public defenders [are] looking ahead after years of low pay [and] high caseloads [after t]he budget passed in the 2022 session of the Kentucky General Assembly used a historic surplus to make investments in state government, including more than $7 million to boost the Department of Public Advocacy’s budget. [Kentucky Public Advocate Damon] Preston said the $7 million is a helpful starting point to stop the hemorrhaging of attorneys, but he hopes more state dollars will come in the future to expand DPA services and hire additional lawyers. But, for now, the pay boost is life changing to public defenders[.]”
- In Raleigh County WV, “[t]he Public Defender’s Office is starting to transition from traditional defense strategies to more concentration on holistic defense. With the new program, the office will no longer focus solely on legal issues. They will now focus on housing, jobs, parenting issues, and more. This shift is aimed at helping them get out into the community to offer services for the personal issues that effected their clients’ court issues.”
- In New Hampshire, “[a]mid a statewide shortage of criminal defense lawyers to represent those who can’t afford an attorney, changes to the New Hampshire court system could provide some short-term relief. Among those changes, a recent order by the New Hampshire Supreme Court opens a new avenue for private attorneys to take on these cases, lessening the caseload falling to already-strained public defenders.”
- In El Paso TX, “[after] a judge dismissed about 370 criminal cases in El Paso because of prosecutorial delays[, t]he El Paso Public Defender’s Office, which sought the dismissals, says this is just the beginning: It has more than 1,000 additional cases eligible to be dismissed and plans to file new motions soon.”
Criminal Justice Reform and Counter-Reform
- In New York, “[t]he New York State Bar Association launched a task force [] to suggest new laws and policies to improve the criminal justice system and tackle a variety of issues that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
- In San Francisco, the city’s elected Public Defender criticized recently-appointed District Attorney Jenkins’ new bail policies in an op-ed: “I urge District Attorney Jenkins to reconsider her policy on expanding use of money bail to incarcerate indigent community members. Nationally and throughout California, we are moving away from punishing people for being poor and toward ending the use of money bail. Let’s not regress on the progress we have made as a city and county that values equality and fairness.”