PSJD Public Interest News Digest – December 20, 2019
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! Hope the final days of this decade are treating you all well. Among the many retrospectives this week, you may find the one by Slate interesting, which describes the 2010’s as “The Decade Class Actions Were Gutted.” In the here-and-now, immigration and student loans stories continue to dominate, with a new federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of “weaponizing” the immigration court system and the Trump administration announcing its intention to take up student loan debt reform.
In sunnier news, the right to counsel in eviction just received bipartisan federal attention in the Senate! As usual, these stories and more are in the links below.
See you around,
Sam
Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues
- In Portland OR, “[l]egal service providers filed a federal lawsuit…challenging the ‘weaponization’ of the U.S. immigration court system. The filing is asking a federal judge in Portland to declare that the court system is illegal.”
- Relatedly the Wall Street Journal ran an article under the headline “Immigration Tent Courts at Border Raise Due-Process Concerns”.
- In Washington DC, Human Rights First released a report on “escalating human rights abuses against asylum seekers returned to Mexico by the Trump administration” alleging that “Trump administration officials continue to knowingly send people who have asked for refugee protection to be kidnapped, exploited, beaten, raped and even killed in Mexico[.]”
- In Milford CT, “[m]embers of Unidad Latina en Accion renewed its call for the ban Thursday after ICE agents attempted to arrest a woman at Superior Court in Milford and demanded identification from a second woman who is in the United States legally.”
Student Loans & Student Debt
- In Washington DC, “[a] new report prepared by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for Vermont senator and 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders [finds that] millennials are financial worse off than their parents and may not have the opportunity to do better.” Specifically, “student loan debt is what really differentiates millennial finances from other generations, with millenials more likely to have student debt that exceeds their annual income.” (Full report available here.)
- Also in Washington DC, “[t]he Trump administration is considering ways to help Americans with their student-loan debt, according to senior administration officials, including by refinancing loans at lower interest rates and eliminating debt in bankruptcy.”
- Also also in Washington DC, “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos [] vigorously defended her decision to grant partial or no loan relief to tens of thousands of students who were misled by for-profit colleges, blaming the Obama administration for overpromising debt relief.”
- Again also in Washington DC, “[l]awmakers continue to berate Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Kathy Kraninger over failures related to the oversight of student loan servicers, blaming her for allowing the massive problems in the student loan system to ‘fester.’”
- The Motley Fool reported that “only 44% of millennials with student loans say they completely understood their repayment terms before officially taking them on. And more than 33% of younger borrowers admitted that they didn’t even understand some of the basics associated with student loans — concepts like monthly payments, interest rates, and refinancing.”
- The Urban Institute updated its Debt in America Interactive Map, which allows users to filter specifically for student debt.
- In San Francisco, MeasureOne released its “Private Student Loan Report, an industry leading research report leveraging MeasureOne’s custom analytics services. This 13th edition of the report again affirms that students and families continue to responsibly use private student loans to cover college costs.”
- In New York, Pillar, a personal finance app, “launched a new feature for the holidays called Boost. Boost is the first gifting platform for consumers exclusively dedicated to paying off student loan debt. With Boost by Pillar, a person’s friends and family can make payments towards their loved one’s student loans. Pillar automatically applies these crowdfunded payments directly towards the user’s student loan debt[.]”
- Forbes published a discussion about “the unexpected dangers of paying off student loans with your 401(k) savings”.
- The New York Times published a discussion of “‘income-share agreements,’ [] new financial instrument[s] being promoted by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.”
Legal Technology
- In Florida, an unauthorized practice of law case filed by “traffic-ticket goliath The Ticket Clinic” against the technology service TIKD, which “invite[s motorists] to ‘spend two minutes or less’ taking a photo of [their] ticket, uploading it and paying a fee based on the fine amount[,]” is heading to the Florida Supreme Court: “Justices set arguments for March 4 to help them decide whether the app should be allowed or shut down.”
- In California, “Verogen, a California-based forensic genomics company, acquired GEDmatch, a user-sourced DNA genealogy site. The acquisition suggests that GEDmatch’s transformation from a popular genealogy site to a crime-fighting tool is almost complete. The privacy implications will be enormous, even for those who have never considered taking a consumer genetic test.”
- In St. Louis MO, after studying “the state bars of Arizona and Florida[, which] employ programs that match attorneys with pro bono work via software[,]” the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis has begun developing its “Pro Bono Software Project”.
- OpenGlobalRights argued that “the wild west of online political campaigning threatens to damage our democracies irreparably[; and w]e should be turning to international human rights law to set [] boundaries.”
- In South Dakota, “[a] new online tool that links lower-income South Dakotans and lawyers seems to be much faster than the old way, where legal-aid staff directly took people’s initial information.”
Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring
- In Washington DC, “under a bill that could become law this week [t]he United States government would be prohibited from asking job applicants about their criminal history at the start of the hiring process.”
- In Seattle WA, “the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ordered the Department of Defense to turn over documents that it has withheld regarding the Trump-Pence administration’s ban on open military service by transgender people, including its purported justifications for the policy.”
- In Montgomery AL, “employees at Southern Poverty Law Center took the next step in their drive for unionization, successfully voting to join the Washington-Baltimore News Guild in a vote of 142-45. The vote comes after SPLC management declined to voluntarily recognize the union and hired legal counsel that raised fears about pushback against union efforts[.]”
- Phys.org published a study in which “sociology researchers [] analyze[d] 41 predominantly white organizations and their leaders [where t]hese organizations seek to address local, state, and national issues by organizing community members to help influence public policy.” Researchers found that “all else being equal, organizations with a leader of color were more likely to address racial issues internally and when shaping public policy.”
Access to Justice – Civil
- Slate.com published a retrospective on the 2010’s as “The Decade Class Actions Were Gutted.”
- In Washington DC, “[a] bipartisan group of legislators introduced a bill yesterday that would provide aid for renters facing eviction[.] ..In addition to providing funds to avoid eviction, the bill would also improve legal representation for tenants by supporting the expansion of landlord-tenant community courts, increasing the presence of social service representatives for at-risk tenants, and funding the Legal Services Corporation, a public-private partnership that provides legal services to low-income Americans”
- In Toronto ON, Toronto Life published an interview with three local attorneys in which they weighed in on the effect of Premier Ford’s cuts to legal aid.
- In New York NY, “the Mayor’s Office announced an expansion of the Right to Counsel program that provides free legal assistance to New Yorkers fighting eviction. The Right to Counsel program, implemented by a ZIP code by ZIP code approach, will be expanded to five more ZIP codes across the City.”
- In Puerto Rico, “[a] Puerto Rican bar association is challenging the commonwealth’s new pro bono requirements, arguing they violate attorneys’ constitutional rights including due process and equal protection.”
- The Center for American Progress published “5 Principles for Civil Justice Reform”.
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In Wyoming, “[t]he Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Judiciary Committee advanced legislation…that would create a new state agency committed to representing children in juvenile court.”
- In Oregon, the Blue Mountain Eagle profiled “the Forensic Justice Project[, a] small Portland-based nonprofit…dedicated to helping defense lawyers understand, find and challenge scientific evidence introduced during trials.”
- In Buffalo NY, “[a]s part of a five-year program, the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo will receive enough state aid to increase its staff of defense attorneys from 24 to 50.”
- In Columbiana County OH, “[t]he non-profit organization of attorneys created to provide public defender representation in Columbiana County is getting more funding in 2020, which in the end will reduce the amount of money county commissioners have to spend on the program.”
- In Richland County OH, “[r]epresentatives of the Richland County Bar Association have indicated that the association could act this week to accept a compromise fee schedule for attorneys who represent indigent defendants and end their boycott of those cases, following a promise that the new fees will be reviewed again in mid-2020.”
Criminal Justice Reform
- In Los Angeles CA, “[t]wo candidates on the left are challenging [] the current D.A. One of the challengers [is] a former public defender for both LA County and the federal government.”
- In Prince Edward Island, “Charlottetown and Summerside [are] asking the province to give police new power to seize property[.]”
- In New York, “[u]nder new bail restrictions [taking effect Jan. 1], judges will no longer be able to weigh the risk to public safety and order defendants jailed with bail unless they are charged with certain violent or sex felony charges. Instead, defendants will be issued appearance tickets in nearly all cases. The legislation also compresses the prosecution’s timeline for sharing information with defendants and their legal counsel.”
- In Philadelphia PA, “the state Superior Court has ruled [that the] Pennsylvania Supreme Court is the only appellate court with the authority to review a Philadelphia trial judge’s controversial decision to replace the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office with a special prosecutor in a probation violation matter.”