Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello, interested public! Doorstop of a digest for you this week, with major news on a variety of fronts. In student debt, state lawmakers are exploring more local options as federal student loan relief looks as though it may founder. The public defender crisis continued in many places with New York City’s public defender services issued warnings they may collapse without better funding, while defenders in Alberta worried newly-allotted government funds may not be used to increase their compensation (the subject of job action last year). In Oregon, defenders brought a suit asking to be withdrawn from some cases—and for charges against people unable to obtain court-appointed counsel to be dismissed. In legal aid news, the US Department of Justice issued its 2022 White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable report and the Right to Counsel in Eviction movement made further progress in Kansas City, Boulder, and the State of Utah.

As always, these stories and more are in the links below.

Take care of one another,

Sam

Editor’s Choice(s)

• In Atlanta GA, “[a] legal observer and attorney with civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism during a [] demonstration against the development of a 85-acre police training complex in Atlanta’s South River Forest…The attorney was acting as a legal observer at the time of his arrest, the National Lawyers Guild (which monitors protests) said in a statement, according to the Daily Beast.”

  • Relatedly, “[c]ivil liberties groups and defense attorneys say officials levied the disproportionate charges to scare off others from joining a movement that has only grown since January, when a 26-year-old known as Tortuguita was killed by a state trooper as authorities cleared activists from the South River Forest. Authorities said they fired in self-defense after the protester shot a trooper, but activists have questioned that narrative.”

• In Los Angeles CA, “[p]rosecutors [] have announced charges against Silverado CEO Loren Shook and two other company leaders in connection with a Covid-19 outbreak associated with the death of 14 people at a community in 2020…The trio faces 13 felony counts of elder endangerment and five felony counts of violation causing death…[According to DA Gascón,] ‘[t]he investigation revealed that the Silverado management team was aware of the risks associated with admitting a new resident from a high-risk area and failed to follow the appropriate procedures to protect their employees and the vulnerable people in their care’.”

Dueling Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence

• In The Hill, Dr. Jacy Reese Anthis (sociology) argued that “AIs are no longer mere tools like smartphones and electric cars, and we cannot treat them in the same way as mindless technologies[; ]we need to build a new field of digital minds research and an AI rights movement to ensure that, if the minds we create are sentient, they have their rights protected.”

• Meanwhile, in MercatorNet, Dr. Karl D. Stephan (electrical engineering) argued that “[o]ne big problem I foresee will arise from the defective anthropology that prevails in our modern culture. Human beings are different from other animals and from machines due to a difference in kind, not merely in degree. In the rush to embrace ever more impressive applications of AI, a lot of people have lost sight of this fact, if they ever believed it in the first place…A degraded view of humanity results when one assumes that there is no essential distinction between humans and advanced AI programs…And all the consequences of treating humans as machines will result from that attitude.”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In Washington DC, “Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, John Cornyn of Texas, and Joni Ernst of Iowa said they will introduce a resolution under Congressional Budget Office to overturn the plan. The CRA allows Congress to overturn government agency rules by a majority vote.”

• Meanwhile, at the state level, “lawmakers in many states are looking to expand their own student debt repayment programs.”

Immigration & Refugee Issues

• In San Diego CA, “a federal court largely denied the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit, Immigrant Defenders Law Center et al. v. Mayorkas, brought on behalf of people seeking asylum who were stranded outside the United States as a result of the Trump administration’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy.”

• In New York NY, “[i]mmigration advocates rall[ied] for [a proposed] Right to Counsel [l]aw [to] boost the capacity of legal service providers to an estimated 65,000 people who lack access to representation in immigration court.”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In New York NY, “[n]onprofits serving the Big Apple say they can't pay their bills because the money from city grants is just too late…[for example,] the Center for Community Alternatives [is] one of thousands on nonprofits that rely on city funding and are being hamstrung by a city bureaucracy so filled with red tape that it can take as long as a year to get paid.”

• In Washington DC, “The Georgetown University Law Center has announced the first three court projects selected for its inaugural Judicial Innovation Fellowship, which will embed technologists and software designers in state, local and tribal courts to develop tech-based solutions to improve access to the judicial system…Three fellows, with backgrounds as technologists, designers, data scientists or product managers, will be selected to join the Georgetown University Law Center in September to work on projects from Tennessee, Kansas and Utah.”

• In Washington DC, a recent survey from the MissionSquare Research Institute found that “[j]ust over half of respondents (51%) report being very or extremely satisfied with their current employer.”

• In a Chronicle of Philanthrophy survey of nearly 700 fundraisers, “30 percent of respondents were somewhat or very dissatisfied with their organization’s diversity. In open-ended comments, respondents complained it was difficult to find ‘a diverse candidate pool’ and said that Black fundraisers hired after George Floyd’s death often ‘found themselves within hostile cultures.’ One person went so far as to say there is a ‘white supremacy culture in fundraising.’”

Access to Justice – Civil & Economic

• In Washington DC, “Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and White House Counsel Stuart Delery jointly issued the 2022 White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (Roundtable) Report. The report, entitled ‘Access to Justice through Simplification: A Roadmap for People-Centered Simplification of Federal Government Forms, Processes, and Language,’ highlights agency accomplishments and commitments in furtherance of the Roundtable’s mission to ‘increase the availability of meaningful access to justice for individuals and families, regardless of wealth or status.’”

• In Multnomah County OR, “voters will have a choice to make this May on a proposed new tax that would provide free legal representation for tenants facing eviction.”

• On “Common Law,” a podcast of the University of Virginia School of Law, Prof. Elizabeth A. Rowe argued that “[because f]acial recognition technology is so powerful and rife with the potential to be misused that regulators should treat faces like trade secrets…[a classification that] would offer consumers the kind of defense they will need in response to a significant threat to privacy[.]”

• In Boulder CO, “[t]he City of Boulder has released the Eviction Prevention and Rental Assistance Services (EPRAS) program annual report which highlights successes and challenges from the program’s second year.”

• In Kansas City KS, “[the city’s] right to counsel program, which provides free legal representation to tenants facing eviction…prevented evictions for hundreds of tenants [in less than a year]. Now, the program is poised to get more funding from Kansas City officials for the upcoming fiscal year — $1.6 million, up from $750,000. Legal organizations involved in the program say more money will give it needed stability.”

• In Utah, “[the State] Supreme Court has announced an innovative project that aims to provide free legal advice to people facing housing issues in the state. According to the press release, the Utah Supreme Court’s Office of Legal Services Innovation, along with Innovation 4 Justice, is launching the Housing Stability Legal Advocate Pilot Program that will train nonlawyers working within community-based organizations or nonprofits to become legal advocates who may bridge the gap in access to legal aid for vulnerable populations.”

• In New York NY, “[n]onprofit organizations providing legal services to low income New Yorkers rallied [] at City Hall to call on the mayor to increase funding in the fiscal year 2024 budget.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Colorado, Kiyomi Bolick of the Colorado State Public Defenders’ Service argued that “I no longer expect our greatest victories to be won inside of a courtroom. Rather, the future of public defense lies in unionized collective action, and the leverage it will afford us to demand true systemic change.”

• In Washington DC, “Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Richard Durbin, D-Ill., introduced legislation [] to create a new source of grant funding to hire public defenders and raise their pay to try to level the playing field with prosecutor salaries.”

• In Kansas, “Heather Cessna, executive director of the Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services, said the [public defender] shortage is a disaster that is years in the making.”

• In Iowa, “[f]ederal officials visited Des Moines [] to announce new plans to improve access to affordable legal services for Iowans, while also cautioning that the state may be requiring indigent defendants to pay more than they can afford for their state-appointed lawyers.”

• In Victoria County TX, “County Judge Ben Zeller said a new regional public defender office could be a solution [to challenges residents face getting access to a public defender].”

• In Pennsylvania, the Editorial Board of the Lewistown Sentinel argued that “[b]y allocating state funding for indigent defense for the first time in Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro has taken a commendable step toward making the Gideon decision a reality in the commonwealth.”

• In Alberta, “the [provincial] government will be spending tens of millions of dollars to increase assistance offered through legal aid and offer more timely justice services.”

  • In other news, “[t]he funding comes after Alberta’s criminal lawyers last December ended five months of job action that included refusing to take on legal aid certificates in protest of what they called underfunding that affected their pay…[but i]t’s not clear how much that new money will affect lawyers’ pay [] and it might simply make up for cuts the UCP government made in response to reduced court cases during the pandemic.”

• In New York NY, “[t]he Bronx Defenders is one of five public defender services demanding more funding from the city in this year’s budget, including a combined $125 million ask that would increase salaries for public defenders, meet the needs of New York’s ultra-strict discovery laws and combat attrition in those offices, that they say, is contributing to court delays in their respective boroughs.”

  • Relatedly, “New York City’s six major public defender groups are in such dire financial straits they fear they’ll collapse if they don’t see a $425 million funding increase in the next municipal budget.”

• In Marion County OR, “attorneys in Marion County filed a recent motion that many hope will quickly make its way to the state supreme court. It asks for public defenders to be withdrawn from certain cases, for a stop to appointing lawyers to some new cases and a dismissal of remaining charges for anyone left without court-appointed counsel.”

• In Brazos County TX, “the Brazos County Public Defender Office is open for business.”

• In Miami FL, “[the US Department of Justice] announced that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and [the DOJ] Access to Justice program are conducting a comprehensive review of access to counsel in BOP’s pretrial facilities.”

• In Oakland County CA, “Paulette Loftin…has been appointed Oakland County’s first chief public defender.”

Criminal Justice Reform and Counter-Reform

• In Chicago IL, “a new study from Professor Siegler’s Federal Justice Clinic…studied the decisions of federal judges presiding over the cases of people accused of a crime who are awaiting trial and presumed innocent. Their research shows that federal judges regularly violate the very bail laws that they are sworn to uphold, locking people in jail who should be released.” (Study available here.)

• In New York, “[p]ointing to ‘disproportionate rates of policing and prosecution experienced in communities of color,’ New York state’s Appellate Division [] announced it has pared back its bar-admission question on applicants’ law enforcement encounters as a way to promote better equity and diversity in the bar.”

• In Washington DC, “President Biden on Friday called on Congress to increase the enforcement authorities of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, saying the federal regulators should be more empowered to punish those involved in cases such as the recent Silicon Valley Bank collapse.”

• Also in Washington DC, “Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Tim Walberg (R-MI) reintroduced a bill [] that would significantly overhaul the federal government’s civil forfeiture laws.”

• Again also in Washington DC, “President Joe Biden [] nominated…a former public defender and a longtime federal prosecutor [] to the federal bench in Maryland following his pledge to appoint judges with diverse backgrounds and experiences.”

• In Seattle WA, “[t]he Seattle Attorney’s Office reported it had prevented more than 750 police referrals in Ann Davison’s first year as city attorney, an 11% reduction in the annual average of incoming cases from the Seattle Police Department (SPD).”

• In Ottawa, “Federal Justice Minister, David Lametti, said he will tighten access to bail in Canada. This comes in response to concerns about the potential release of dangerous offenders who may pose a risk to the public.”

(Retractions)

• In last week’s digest, I linked to an article about problems with funding at the Georgia Public Defender’s Council. Although it was posted recently, that article was a reprint of a new story from another publication from several years ago. I apologize for this error. Thanks to the reader who called this issue to my attention!