PSJD Public Interest News Digest – May 31, 2019
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! There’s lots to catch you up on this week. Minutes ago, the ABA President issued a statement on the Trump Administration’s Family Separation Policy. The Associated Press took a poll of district attorneys to find out which ones would go on the record for non-enforcement of their states’ new anti-abortion legislation. The CFPB gave student loan advice on Twitter that one of its founders called “negligent or worse,” while the Trump Administration followed through and hired consulting firms to evaluate the federal government’s student loan portfolio. All this and more are in the links below.
See you around,
Sam
Also worth a listen: “NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asks former federal prosecutor Paul Butler about how more than 20 Trump judicial nominees have declined to affirm a Supreme Court decision desegregating public schools.“
Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Issues
- In Chicago IL, the President of the ABA issued an official statement registering that “[t]he American Bar Association is deeply disturbed by reports that hundreds of unaccompanied children seeking refuge in the United States are being held by the U.S. Border Patrol in violation of the law and federal policies.“
- Meanwhile, an immigration attorney with Annunciation House in El Paso TX argued in the Washington Post that “the [Trump] administration is vetting plans to revamp the [family separation policy]–euphamistically rebranding it as ‘binary choice’…either be separated from your children indefinitely or waive your child’s rights so they can be sent to jail with you.“
- In Los Angeles CA, “UCLA and the Los Angeles Unified School District will offer legal representation and advice to undocumented individuals through a new immigration law clinic at public schools in Koreatown.“
- In Boston MA, “[a] Massachusetts state judge charged with helping an immigrant escape U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody [made] a bid to reinstate her salary” in order to help her mount her defense.
- In Albuquerque NM “advocates and attorneys called on law enforcement officers and state courts to put an end to allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest immigrants while on courthouse grounds.“
- In Dane County WI, the Vera Institute of Justice announced plans to “test a new model: a public-defender-style system aimed at providing a lawyer to every detained, indigent immigrant.” Dane County is one of 13 sites across the country the Vera Institute has selected for its “SAFE Cities Network“.
Reproductive Rights
- The Associated Press “reached out to nearly two dozen district attorneys across seven states, and several said they would not file criminal charges against doctors who violate the laws. Even a few who left open potentially charging doctors said they would not prosecute women for having an abortion[.] …The four district attorneys who said they would not enforce the laws at all cited the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, saying their states’ abortion laws clearly conflict with that decision.“
- In Alabama, “Hugh Culverhouse Jr.[,] the University of Alabama’s top donor in recent years after giving the school nearly $40 million[,] called for a boycott of the university until Alabama repeals a controversial new law that bans virtually all abortions…Meanwhile, in a move that the university says is unrelated to Culverhouse’s boycott push, the chancellor of the University of Alabama system is recommending that the school return $21.5 million Culverhouse has given the institution in recent years and strip his name from the law school.“
- In Mississippi, “[a] federal judge is temporarily blocking a [state] law that bans most abortions once a so-called fetal heartbeat is detected.“
Non-Profit & Gov’t Management and Hiring
Legal Technology
Student Loans & Student Debt
- In Washington DC, “[t]he US Department of Education has hired two consulting firms to examine and analyze the student loan portfolio as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing consideration of its sale to private investors.“
- Also in Washington DC, “[t]he Education Department released new student loan data…as part of its plan to deal with student loan debt by giving individual consumers more information about what they’re likely to get for their money.“
- Also also in Washington DC, “[t]he Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted a tweet…highlighting forbearance [while] consumer advocates and state watchdogs remain concerned that student-loan companies are pushing struggling borrowers towards forbearance instead of other options that could better suit their needs, like income-driven repayment…’It’s negligent or worse for the bureau to be tweeting that,’ said Dalie Jimenez…a founding staff member at the CFPB.“
- Again also in Washington DC, “[f]ormer vice president Joe Biden…promised in an education plan…to ‘see to it’ that the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is ‘fixed, simplified and actual helps teachers.“
- In Nevada, “[a] bill that would create the position of Student Loan Ombudsman within the treasurer’s office[] passed unanimously through the Senate Government Affairs Committee.“
- In Colorado and Maryland, state governors signed into law “legislation regulating student loan servicers.”
- Redfin.com, a real estate brokerage website, published “analysis of student loan debt data by metro area from LendingTree, income data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, and our own home price data” concluding that “[u]nder [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren’s plan to cancel up to $50,000 of student loan debt, [a potential homebuyer with the average amount of student debt] could shrink[] the time it would take to save up the [20%] down payment [on the national median-priced home] to 9.4 years [from 12.3 years].“
- Meanwhile, the Washington Post published a comparison of Sen. Warren’s student loan plan against that of rival presidential candidate Julian Castro.
- Benefit News publicized “new research from the American Institute of CPAs, which asked 2,000 millennials which benefits would help them achieve financial goals [and learned that] health insurance [], paid time off [], and student loan forgiveness (41%) topped the list of most desired employee benefits.”
Access to Justice – Civil
- In Toronto ON, “frontline legal clinic workers, members of OPSEU Local 5118 and community members [announced plans] to host a series of ‘pop-up legal clinics’ in front of Conservative MPP constituency offices across the Greater Ontario Area” today “to draw attention to the devastating impact of nearly $300 million in budget cuts to legal aid.“
- In Quebec, the Accessing Law and Justice Project has launched Hub23, “a new project…to develop innovative practice and billing models for legal services in the province [aiming to] ‘draw on the expertise of practitioners involved in the day-to-day practice of law and university researchers from several disciplines…to establish models of practices likely to ensure a future for legal practice and true access to professional service for middle-income households.“
- In British Columbia, “[t]he Legal Services Society is introducing a new program to provide legal aid to accused people…who wouldn’t normally qualify for assistance.“
- In Washington DC, “the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved a large financial boost of $550 million to the [Legal Services Corporation].“
- In New Mexico, “[t]he New Mexico Supreme Court has appointed a work group to consider whether the state should allow licensed legal technicians to provide civil legal services. The court has asked the group to submit a report by 2020[.]“
- In Richmond VA, local news reported the city “is on track to be the first [] in the Commonwealth to roll out a program to stop people from getting evicted and to make sure landlords get rent money. This is happening at the same time as Virginia lawmakers are trying to start eviction diversion pilot programs in four cities.“
- In Philadelphia PA, the Philadelphia Bar Foundation announced plans to “build a nine-story nonprofit center…that will house most of the city’s free legal services. Currently, the agencies are scattered throughout Philadelphia.“
- In Laramie County WY, “Legal Aid of Wyoming is testing a pilot program…to provide military veterans access to free legal assistance, no matter their income level.“
Access to Justice – Criminal
- U.S. News profiled the “unique solutions [some states have developed] to try to attract more public defenders to certain areas and ensure the attorneys’ time is dedicated to cases involving more serious crimes.“
- In Oregon, Oregon Public Radio profiled overworked public defenders in the state, while noting that the ACLU has called on “lawmakers to enact a solution that address[es] all of [Oregon’s indigent defense system]’s existing deficiencies.“
- In Maricopa County AZ, “[t]he [ACLU] of Arizona su[ed] Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, alleging he has failed to fulfill an abundance of public records requests…regarding ‘basic information about how that office functions, including policies, budgets, and data on individual criminal cases.“
Criminal Justice Reform
- In Florida, the state’s “first African American state attorney says she’s proud to have challenged the status quo with her opposition to the death penalty, even though she eventually lost a legal fight with Florida’s governor on the matter.“
- In San Francisco CA, “[t]he [] District Attorney’s Office [] publicly launched DA Stat, the state’s first public portal displaying prosecutorial data online.” [Check out the DA Stat portal here.]
- On Staten Island NY, “[p]rosecutors and defense lawyers [aired] sharply divergent opinions of the recently-passed criminal justice and bail-reform laws [in] dueling and tartly-worded opinion pieces.“