Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public–and Happy New Year! It’s been awhile, so there’s plenty of news to bring you all up-to-speed with. I’ll jump right into it, beginning with a new blog post aggregating various responses to the featured piece from the December 21 digest (a critique of law school’s role in our democracy by Prof. Moyn of Yale Law).

Best wishes for 2019!
Sam

Immigration, Asylum, and Citizenship

• Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced that “asylum-seekers presenting themselves at the southern border will be returned to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings, a process that often takes several years.”
• CNN reported on how the federal government shutdown is interfering with the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. The Washington Post ran a similar story.
• In Shelby County, TN, the County Attorney announced publicly his conclusion that a new state law requiring local authorities to obey federal requests to hold immigrants until federal agents can arrive does not apply to the county.
• In Minnesota, incoming Attorney General Keith Ellison named Josh Keller, Executive Director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, as his Chief Deputy Attorney General.
• The San Diego Tribune reported that “with as few as eight remaining eligible children moving toward possible reunification, the focus of [the family reunification effort] has shifted to restoring the rights of the migrants and to preventing such a crisis from happening again.”
• In San Francisco, CA, local public radio profiled the city’s Immigration Defense Unit, established last year to represent people threatened with deportation.
• In New York, Governor Cuomo announced his administration will “expand[] its first-in-the-nation legal defense project for immigrants to include social and health care services for families and rapid response to raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
  • Also in New York, the State Office for New Americans hired 20 full-time immigration attorneys to offer free legal services to immigrants.
• In Portland, ME, CentralMaine.com reported that as “the city and state are among the few that offer shelter and financial assistance to [] immigrants while their asylum cases are being processed…the arrival of so many asylum seekers has overwhelmed local services, including the city’s emergency shelter for homeless families.”

Government Hiring

• The Hill reported that new congressional representatives are facing difficulties setting up their offices–and hiring staff–while taking office during the federal government shutdown.
• Meanwhile, Newsweek reported that “Democrats are on a hiring spree for lawyers to help investigate Donald Trump in 2019.”
• In British Columbia, the Province Attorney General invited all law students in the province to visit his office.

Student Debt

• Forbes.com picked up the story that 99.5% of applicants to-date have been rejected by the student loan forgiveness program, amplifying the issue (already mentioned in previous editions of this digest). (Forbes also predicted that “the future of student loan forgiveness may change [in 2019].”) USA Today ran a similar story.
• Senators Doug Jones, Catherine Cortez-Masto, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren “submitted a letter to more than 100 stakeholders around the nation requesting feedback that can advance policies for student borrowers of color and work to make higher education more equitable.”
• In an opinion column, the Washington Examiner reported on research suggesting that “58 percent of independents and 47 percent of Republicans ‘strongly agree’ that student loan debt levels are at ‘crisis’ magnitudes,” urging Republican lawmakers to allow “[a]n employee signing up for a new 401(k) plan at work [to direct] his employer match…to his student loan until it’s paid off.” This idea is similar to–yet differences in crucial ways from–legislation recently proposed by Senator Wyden (mentioned in a prior edition of this digest), which would allow employers to make matching contributions to employee retirement accounts as employees paid off their student debt.
• Inequality.org profiled the “grassroots organizations [] pushing for sweeping change [concerning student debt] on a national level.”

Legal Technology

• Congress passed the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act, which technology groups say will “ensure that the federal government releases valuable data sets, follows best practices in data management and commits to making data available to the public in a non-proprietary and electronic format.”
• Industry commentators predicted that “it’s likely that a Democratic-led House will reinvigorate a push for a federal data privacy regime. But it’s unlikely that such a big piece of legislation will have an easy path through Congress.”
• In Pennsylvania, legal groups launched mycleanslatepa.com — a website that aims “to help people figure out if they are entitled to get their criminal records sealed under [a] new law [that took effect in late December].”
• According to an online survey by the Harris Poll, “[j]ust over two-thirds of Americans…state they would definitely use online legal services to save money.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• The American Board of Trial Advocates adopted a resolution supporting the work of the Legal Services Corporation.
• In Newark, NJ, the City Counsel approved a right-to-counsel law to ensure low-income tenants facing evictions have free legal representation, making Newark the latest city to join the right-to-counsel-for-evictions movement (mentioned in prior editions of this digest).
• In Minneapolis, MN, the Volunteer Lawyers Network published a study tracking more than 300 eviction cases finding that 96% of “fully represented” tenants won or settled their cases, while only 6% of tenants without lawyers left housing court with a clear eviction record.
• In Ontario, The Agenda with Steve Paikin published a video feature discussing a recent report from the Province’s auditor general “rais[ing] several concerns about how a half-billion dollars in legal aid funding is deployed in [the] province.”
• In Iowa, the Vice Chair of the Iowa Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission gave an interview to the Des Moines Register in which she discussed

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Utah, Governor Herbert proposed expanding the state’s public defender system budget more than fourfold— move the San Francisco Chronicle observes “comes after the state was sharply criticized in a 2015 report by the Sixth Amendment Center [as] one of just two states that left public-defender funding entirely up to local governments.”
• In Oakland County, MI, “[c]ounty officials have taken the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission to court, arguing that the county needs more money to hire additional staff [and] seeking a court order that says they don’t have to comply with the state regulations until the county receives a grant to cover the cost.” (The work of the Indigent Defense Commission to reform Michigan’s indigent defense system has been mentioned extensively in previous editions of this digest.)
  • Meanwhile, in Livingston County, MI, the Indigent Defense Commission’s new standards translated into a 25% pay raise for six of seven public defenders.
• In Faulkner County, AR, Arkansas Online reported that “the Faulkner County Quorum Court has diverted more than $350,000 in restricted funds from the 20th Judicial Circuit public defender’s office to other programs. The prosecuting attorney’s office, which got part of the money, has agreed to return $23,500, but the Quorum Court has declined to reimburse any of the remaining money. That refusal leaves the public defender’s office without enough money to hire an investigator or a legal secretary to assist part-time defenders[.]”
• In Louisiana, State Public Defender Jay Dixon “told legislators some of the state’s public defender districts are at risk of becoming insolvent in a year or two if the state doesn’t provide more funding.”
• In St. Louis County, MO, the Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals referred a case to the State Supreme Court that challenges structural reforms to the state’s public defender system, including a maximum caseload for individual defenders and a directive to focus attorney resources on defendants languishing in jail.
• In Washington County, NY, the County Public Defender reported that based on end-of-year statistics his office would be in compliance with new caseload standards imposed as part of a court settlement devised in 2014 which came into effect in the last six months of 2018.

Criminal Justice Reform

• The Associated Press reported about how “at least eight new reform-minded prosecutors will take office in cities around the country after winning their local elections by promising to be more compassionate toward drug addicts and more evenhanded in the treatment of minorities.”
• In St. Louis, MO, incoming District Attorney Wesley Bell announced his office “will no longer prosecute marijuana possession cases, among other changes…Bell wants to change the cash bail system, opposes the death penalty and pledged to hold police officers accountable if they step out of line.” The new district attorney has also fired some staff and suspended others pending termination hearings.
• In Dallas, TX, incoming District Attorney John Creuzot told reporters that his office may not prosecute “first-time marijuana offenders and simple criminal trespass [cases], ” asking his office to “join with me in another era of criminal justice reform.”
• In Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudoun Counties, VA, “liberal challengers are taking on prosecutors whose views they see as retrograde and excessively punitive.”
• In the Yukon, the Yukon Legal Services Society applauded the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decision that “imposing mandatory victim fine surcharges on offenders is unconstitutional.”
• In Baltimore, MD, the public defender’s office called for an investigation into the Baltimore Police Department’s alleged “widespread practice of wrongly expunging internal affairs files of officers accused of misconduct.”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I hope you all have a chance to take a break from things in the near future, but in the meantime, some news. One big story is featured immediately below. For the other, check out the “Student Loans” section, where a new Senate bill aims to make it easier for debtholders to save for retirement via employer matching contributions, the DoE released new PSLF data, and a report from a new non-profit purports to expose misfeasance in the way the federal government has administered the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Editor’s Feature: “Law Schools are Bad for Democracy”

In a strongly-worded piece, Professor Samuel Moyn of Yale Law wrote an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggesting that legal education misdirects aspiring lawyers’ desire for social change into judicial activism and provides “social-justice work [that] harmonizes [] easily with elite credentialing for power and wealth.” Multiple responses followed, including this one from Dean Raymond of the University of Wisconsin Law School (printed as a letter-to-the-editor in the Chronicle), and this blog post from Prof. Lubet of Northwestern Law.

Immigration, Refugee, & Citizenship Issues

• The National Catholic Reporter profiled the logistical and procedural hurdles pro bono attorneys face while trying to represent individuals with pending asylum claims detained by federal authorities.
• Southern California Public Radio also focused on logistical hurdles for asylum seekers, reporting that “California’s high cost of living could push families out of the very places offering the most help.”
• In Denver, CO, the city “officially opened a fund in November for people who can’t afford legal representation in their immigration cases.”

Student Loans

• Senator Wyden introduced the Retirement Parity for Student Loans Act, which “would permit 401(k), 403(b) and SIMPLE retirement plans to make matching contributions to workers as if their student loan payments were salary reduction contributions.”
• The Department of Education released new Public Service Loan Forgiveness Data. Politico used this data to report that “[a]s of September 30, only 206 borrowers have had their student loans discharged under [PSLF]. More than 32,000 borrowers had their applications denied ‘due to not meeting program requirements’ and another 11,892 were denied for ‘missing information.'” MarketWatch reported further on the subject.
• Meanwhile, CNBC profiled one recently-rejected PSLF borrower who has launched a lawsuit against her loan servicer.
• The American Federation of Teachers and the Student Borrower Protection Center released Keeping the Promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a report that purposes to detail how “servicers have created roadblocks for borrowers at each step in the process of qualifying for PSLF”–and to provide a roadmap for holding the federal government and its contractors accountable for “irreparable harm to millions of borrowers.” The Washington Post reported further on the subject.
• Following a court order, the Department of Education prepared to erase $150 million worth of student debt under the “Borrower Defense to Repayment” rule, a move that “will benefit about 15,000 lenders and students who were taken advantage of by “for-profit” colleges.”
• In California, a state senator announced plans to introduce a bill “lift[ing] state income taxes on newly forgivable student loan debt.”
• In Pennsylvania, “a federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit alleging widespread abuse by student loan servicer Navient Corp. can go forward.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• The ABA announced its approval for iQualify Lending as a financing method for client legal fees. Under iQualify’s system, “the attorney can provide the client with an application form that’s submitted to iQualify Lending offices, and within a matter of minutes, qualified lenders will submit bids to the client to help finance the legal fees…The result is that the client is now able to pay their legal fee in full, upfront, [and a]ll loans made to the clients are non-recourse to the attorney.” (See also ABA Formal Opinion 484: “A Lawyer’s Obligations When Clients Use Companies or Brokers to Finance the Lawyer’s Fee“.)
• Meanwhile, the ABA Journal expressed skepticism that novel financing structures can help: “[t]he access-to-justice gap doesn’t exist because of absence of loans (sic) or the lack of technology or the intractable billable hour. It exists–and continues to grow–because the cost of life in America has increased dramatically while wages for most Americans have been stagnant or even falling for decades.”
• In West Virginia, the newly-appointed Director of the state’s Access to Justice Commission discussed his vision for the commission with WVNews.com. (The state’s A2J commission recently came under the administration of the West Virginia University College of Law, as previously reported in the Digest.)
• In New Jersey, the State Senate passed legislation which would “direct the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs to fund a portion of the legal services provided to homeless veterans and veterans at risk of homelessness.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Indiana, the Public Defender Commission sought funding for a pilot project that “would pair public defenders [representing parents in Department of Child Services court cases] with social workers.”
• In Louisiana, a professor of political science published a thorough and thoughtful critique of Louisiana’s newly-revised system for funding indigent defense, created earlier this year after criticism of the old system (as discussed in prior digest editions).

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Canada, the National Magazine reported on how the “Jordan Rule” capping the duration of criminal trials is affecting the administration of justice: “[n]ow that [the] backlog of pre-Jordan cases has been larged cleared…Crown and defense lawyers alike report that trial times aren’t speeding up.” Instead, the Magazine reported “a trend…of courts holding defence counsel responsible for questionable delays that violate the Jordan limits…imposing an extra burden on the defence as an ‘escape hatch’ to evade Jordan stays.”

Pro Bono

• In South Carolina, the State Supreme Court “has created a new honor for attorneys who provide over 50 hours of pro bono legal service each year.”

Music Bonus

Dee1, “Sallie Mae Back”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Things continue to be busy here at NALP. Looking forward to checking in with you all more in the New Year. In the meantime, here’s some news:

Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Issues

• Professors Robertson (Case Western) and Manta (Hofstra) published an article alleging that the manner in which the Trump administration is working to de-naturalize citizens with criminal histories “carr[ies] a disturbingly high risk of mistakenly taking away citizenship from someone who committed neither crime nor fraud.”
• In California, the 9th Circuit conducted an en banc hearing of a case concerning whether the Fifth Amendment’s right-to-counsel guarantee extends to children facing deportation.
• Pro Bono attorneys from Hogan Lovells, in partnership with the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (DC) and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (TX), filed a challenge to the Trump administration’s attempts to keep asylum seekers from entering the United States.

Legal Technology

• In Chicago, IL, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) launched two new websites: www.a2j.org and www.a2jauthor.org. The sites are designed to allow anyone to create and host A2J Guided Interviews that help self-represented litigants complete legal forms or work through legal decisions.
• A survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Your Lawyers Online suggested that 69% of Americans would be willing to use online legal services if it would save them money.

Student Loans

• In Michigan, Eastern Michigan University has launched a program that aims to re-enroll former undergraduates who were unable to continue due to financial challenges by forgiving student debt when students perform community service.

Public Benefits

• In Massachusetts, the state is studying a series of changes to court rules and procedures after Northeast Legal Services revealed that district courts in the Salem area had been routinely “sign[ing] off on settlement agreements and judgments that force many low-income debtors to make payments of of public assistance, Social Security, or workers’ compensation payments.”

Pro Bono

• In Michigan, the State Bar launched its “A Lawyer Helps” Pro Bono Honor Roll, recognizing Michigan attorneys who provide 30 or more hours of pro bono legal services in a calendar year.

Access to Justice – Civil

• Martha Bergmark, a former LSC President, argued in the pages of USA Today that the new Congress should increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation and make other structural reforms to help narrow the justice gap.
• In West Virginia, West Virginia University College of Law became the home of the state’s Access to Justice Commission. According to WVU, “[o]nly two commissions in the country are administered by law schools.”
• In Cleveland, OH, Cleveland Legal Aid launched a fundraising campaign which aims to raise $10-$15 million over the next four years, 80% of which will go toward new programming at the organization.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Montana, the Office of the State Public Defender

Criminal Justice Reform

• In King County, Washington, the County Prosecutor, Sheriff, Deputy Policy Chief, and a representative of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center announced plans to “work with Legislators to expand the statue of limitations for sex assault crimes.”
• In Solano County, CA, a longtime deputy public defender was appointed to a vacant seat on the County Superior Court bench.

Judicial Appointments

• “Vice President Mike Pence cast a tiebreaker vote in the Senate on Tuesday to confirm a federal appeals court nominee who received a “not qualified” rating from the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary… a second confirmed nominee to the appeals court, Leonard Steven Grasz, [also] received [a] not qualified rating[].” 

Music Bonus!

Brass Against the Machine, “Cult of Personality” (Living Colour Cover)

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I won’t dodge. Things have been busy here at NALP, both with the PSJD Mini-Conference that happened at the end of October and with a number of projects in the office that I’m hoping to share with you all later this year. But also, it’s been hard to face the news the last few weeks and find a face to wear for all of you.

But the world continues to turn and the digest is back. Major news this week includes the likely demise of a successful and critical legal aid program in Ontario, ominous questions concerning the legitimacy of cy pres from the Supreme Court, a new, free, online caselaw library from the Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab, and a number of high-profile district attorney elections that went to candidates promising substantial progressive reforms.

See you around,
   Sam

Immigrants & Refugees 

• The Justice Department began using video hearings to have migrant children testify in immigration proceedings from detention, according to the Associated Press, “some attorneys and judges say[] that technical glitches…are actually making it much harder for teens in shelters to have a fair hearing.”
• In Seattle, WA, Seattle University suspended its externship program with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “based on its current policies and practices.” 

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Washington, Justices Roberts, Alito, and Kavanaugh made comments during oral argument in Frank v. Gaos  that questioned the legitimacy of cy pres deals by extending reasoning from the Court’s recent holding in Janus v. AFSCME: According to law360, “Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether it’s appropriate to hand out funds to charities–which may make political or other speech–that class members have not approved.” As the publication notes, “the scrutiny of these deals indirectly threatens a system that the American Bar Association estimates sends approximately $15.5 million every year to legal aid service organizations.”
• In Ontario, “[a] program that gets lawyers to volunteer their time to help people navigate the civil court system in Toronto and Ottawa is shutting down next month for lack of funding–even though a study shows it saves Ontario’s justice system more than $5 million a year.”
  • A former president of the Ontario Bar Association launched a GoFundMe campaign in an attempt to save the program.
• In the Ohio News-Herald, the Managing Director of Ohio State University’s Student Legal Services program discusses the student-legal-services model.

Veterans Services

• In Washington DC, the Department of Veterans Affairs led other government agencies (including Labor, Justice, Defense, and the US Navy), “signed a joint statement aimed at improving access to free legal services for Veterans in need.”

Student Debt

• Citing reports from the Urban Institute and Brookings, Forbes reported that “40% of student loan borrowers may default on their student loans by 2023.”
• AboveTheLaw suggested “law students should join ROTC to help minimize their student debt.”
• In Washington DC, “[DC] Attorney General Racine and a coalition of 20 states called on U.S. Department of Education (ED) Secretary Betsy DeVos to help student borrowers who attended schools that abruptly closed have their loans discharged.”
• In Maine, lawmakers extended the state’s “Educational Opportunity Tax Credit” program, a state policy that offsets student loan payments for recent graduates who stay in the state, “making a similar offer to graduates from outside the state; in effect, trying to lure them to Maine.”
• In Newburgh Heights, Ohio, the mayor has proposed a program which would offer $50,000 in loan forgiveness to people who move to the town, buy a home, and stay for at least 10 years.
• In Washington DC, Bustle.com speculated that the influx of younger congress-members may create an institution more inclined to treat student debt reform as an urgent issue.
• In Milwaukee, WI, the state journal reported the story of a former student loan debtor who reports that the Department of Education began requesting additional payments months after he received official notice his debts had been paid.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Michigan, “[t]he Michigan Indigent Defense Commission is preparing to distribute $84 million in grant money to counties in an effort to provide fairer legal representation to those who cannot afford it.” (This disbursement will be the culmination of many months of work by the commission, documented in earlier editions of the digest.)

Criminal Justice Reform

• In jurisdictions across the country, voters elected district attorneys promising to reform their offices:
  • In Dallas County, TX, John Creuzot won with a platform of police accountability and bail reform.
  • In Bexar County, TX, Joe Gonzales won with a platform of cite-and-release for minor offenses.
  • In St. Louis County, MO, Wesley Bell won with a platform of diversion and drug treatment.
  • In Boston, MA, Rachel Rollins won with a platform of eliminating cash bail, dismissing minor offenses, hiring a more diverse staff of prosecutors, and collecting data to discover biases among her staff.

Legal Technology

• In Cambridge, MA, Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab launched the CaseLaw Access Project: “a new free website [that] makes available nearly 6.5 million state and federal cases dating from the 1600s to earlier this year.”
• According to Gizmodo, “[i]n a company-wide meeting[], Amazon addressed its relationship with law enforcement agencies, including Immigrations Customs and Enforcement–its first direct response to employee concerns raised in June about the company’s often successful attempts to provide cloud infrastructure and facial recognition software for these government authorities.”
• The Chief Program Officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts wrote for governing.com on how “[t]echnology can help people who don’t have lawyers and make courts more efficient.”
• A new report, “Government Jobs of the Future,” examines how changes in technology might affect the types of roles humans play in the administration of government.

Music Bonus

Dolly Parton, “19th Amendment“

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Major news this week includes changes to Apple’s approach to dealing with data requests from government authorities, ABA plans for disaster aid to regions affected by Hurricane Florence, and the ACLU’s release of 50-state policy blueprints for reducing mass incarceration. There’s lots more besides, though! Read on below.

See you around,
   Sam

General Interest

• The Pacific Legal Foundation’s VP for Litigation called out Senator Whitehouse (D-RI), via an op-ed in The Hill, for a line of questioning during Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that seemed to question the legitimacy of impact litigation: “They … look for cases around the country that they believe they can use to bring arguments before the court … to hire a client whose case they could take to the Supreme Court with a purpose to make a point … and it causes me to think that sometimes the true party in interest is actually not the named party before the court, but rather the legal group that has hired the client and brought them to the court more or less as a prop in order to make arguments trying to direct the court in a particular direction… .” (As quoted in The Hill.)
• Nonprofit Quarterly discussed the latest internal controversy within the ACLU, over its decision to file an amicus brief in support of the NRA’s First Amendment lawsuit against the State of New York in the context of how “nonprofits [must] navigat[e] a new world of donor activism and political upheaval.” (The NPQ piece draws heavily on a more in-depth article on the ACLU’s internal debate published last month in Slate.)

Immigration & Refugee Issues

• In Virginia, the Legal Aid Justice Center filed a class-action federal lawsuit “challeng[ing] the sheriff’s policy of honoring…requests from U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement to hold immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally after they were due to be released on state charges.”
• In Washington, DC, “Mayor Bowser announced that her Administration will provide Immigrant Justice Legal Services (IJLS) grant funding to 15 community-based organizations that offer legal services for immigrants in Washington, DC.”
• In Florida, “[t]he University of Central Florida Legal Services Department, which is known for helping students with speeding tickets and underage drinking charges, plans to add immigration services to its list of legal troubles it can aid students with.”
• The LA Times reported on the difficulties the Trump Immigration’s asylum policies are creating for Christians from the Middle East.

Legal Technology

• Apple updated its Privacy Policy in advance of plans to launch an online portal for law enforcement requests for data “by the end of the year.”

Disaster Legal Aid

• The ABA Young Lawyers Division’s Disaster Legal Services Program announced plans to work with FEMA and local legal aid offices to provide legal assistance to disaster victims in the path of Hurricane Florence.
• In California, “a legal hotline is now available for people impacted by the Mendocino Complex fire.”

Student Loans

• The US House of Representatives passed the “Empowering Students through Enhanced Financial Counseling Act, H.R. 1635, which provides annual financial counseling for student loan borrowers.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Rhode Island, Operation Stand Down Rhode Island, an organization that provides social services to veterans, announced a full-time, year-round legal service…Legal Assistance for Warriors, or LAW.

Criminal Justice Reform

• The ACLU released “Smart Justice 50-State Blueprints” with policy recommendations that “show how each state can cut the number of people behind bars by half.”
• In Louisiana, an appeals court upheld a ruling below that the DeSoto Parish district attorney’s office acted unconstitutionally when it funded the public defender’s office with money from a pretrial diversion program.
• In Brooklyn, NY, the District Attorney announced “an initiative to help up to 20,000 New Yorkers wipe away pass records for marijuana convictions.”
• In Florida, two ACLU staff attorneys criticized a recent decision by the Chief Judge of Florida’s Fifth Judicial Court to remove two judges from Marion County Criminal Court after receiving a complaint from the county prosecutor asserting that the judges in question behaved favorably toward defendants. In the words of the ACLU, “[r]uling for the defense, or not doling out sufficient ‘punishment,’ is not legitimate grounds for removal. This would be true even if the judges were consistently getting it wrong on the facts or the law–but they weren’t. Florida’s appellate courts regularly affirmed these judges over [the county prosecutor]’s objections.”

Music Bonus!

Led Zeppelin, “When the Levee Breaks”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Major news this week includes regulatory action from the Trump administration that would allow the government to detain children for the duration of their asylum proceedings, the resignation of a CFPB official charged with safeguarding student borrowers, and a Louisiana court’s class certification in a structural right-to-counsel  lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center. For these stories and more, read on!

Meanwhile, in NALP news:

• Registration is now open for the 2018 NALP/PSJD Public Service Mini-Conference. Scheduled each year to occur immediately before Equal Justice Work’s Annual Conference and Career Fair weekend, the Mini-Conference is an ideal opportunity to meet and network with colleagues from across the country, attend substantive and skills-based programs, and interact with NALP staff members! The conference will take place on Thursday, October 25th, with additional programming for newcomers to the field on the evening of Wednesday, October 24th. 

See you around,
   Sam

Immigration & Refugee Issues

• According to TIME magazine, “the [Trump] Administration filed proposed regulation to terminate [a ‘longstanding court agreement that requires the government to release immigrant children after 20 days in detention’ and detain entire families for the duration of the legal proceedings that determine if they can stay. The rule, which will published (sic) on Friday, would also allow the federal government to transfer family units to facilities that are not ‘state licensed,’ which is currently required.” 
• In Boston, MA, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice filed a class action lawsuit “call[ing] on the federal government to compensate the estimated 2,500 children affected by the family separation policy and to establish a fund for mental heath care for children traumatized after being forcibly removed from their parents.”
• In Washington, DC, the Washington Post called attention to the fact that “unlike other cities that have created immigrant defense funds since Trump took office, Washington does not use tax dollars to help undocumented adults once they are detained by federal authorities and face deportation.”

Student Loans

• In Washington, DC, “[t]he consumer protection official charged with safeguarding student borrowers [resigned] in protest of the Trump administration, claiming it is siding with predatory lenders over consumers and enacting policies that will lead to ‘far-reaching harm.’“
• FiveThirtyEight.com reviewed the student loan crisis and federal proposals to fix it, using the hypothetical example of a Georgetown Law grad to underline the role of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

Legal Technology

• In California, “[s]tate lawmakers voted to pass a bill…ensur[ing] all California broadband customers have equal access to content on the internet. The law would be the strictest for internet providers in the United States, and put California at odds with the federal government.”
• The international law firm Dentons “announced last week that it is partnering with workflow platform provider Paladin to develop a system which will allow attorneys at law firms to discover pro bono opportunities without having to seek them out themselves.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In San Francisco, CA, the San Francisco Public Press laid out next steps for the city’s right to counsel in evictions program, now that voters have approved plan to set up a program to provide universal representation in eviction cases by July 2019.
• In Sacramento, CA, Dean Schwartz of McGeorge School of Law wrote an overview of ongoing rural access to justice initiatives, framed by a forthcoming article in the Harvard Law & Policy Review.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Louisiana, the Southern Poverty Law Center announced that “a [state] court has certified a class action lawsuit from the SPLC that challenges the constitutionality and funding structure of the state’s overburdened public defender system.”

Music Bonus

U2, “Where the Streets Have No Name”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! In a relatively slow week (aside from ongoing immigration developments) I have one specific recommendation for you: 

In Wired Magazine, Professor Susan Crawford of Harvard Law wrote about a recent event where “a hand-picked group of university presidents and provosts from across the country, plus a few university faculty members, met for two days at an estate-turned-conference center on Long Island to catalyze the intentional creation of a new academic field aimed at addressing precisely this gap in interdisciplinary opportunities. This new area, “public interest technology,” is still being defined; it encompasses designing public policy and laws with an awareness of how technology actually works, as well as ensuring that technology is being used to serve public values of fairness and equity.”

One more thing: PSJD is currently considering nominations for the 2018 Pro Bono Publico Award. If you know students at PSJD subscriber schools who have made outstanding pro bono contributions to their communities, please take a moment and let us know about their work. The deadline for nominations is 8/31.

See you around,
Sam

Immigration & Refugee Issues

• According to the San Diego Union Tribune, “[t]he Center for American Progress published ” the third in a series of surveys of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients by UC San Diego professor Tom Wong, who worked as adviser to the White House under the Obama administration. Wong found that 55 percent of more than 1,000 DACA recipients surveyed said they think about being deported from the U.S. at least once per day.”
• In San Diego, CA, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order preventing the federal government from forcibly deporting parents while their children’s asylum claims are pending.
• In Washington, DC, 29 parents filed a lawsuit alleging that the federal government acted improperly when it rejected asylum claims based on interviews conducted with confused and traumatized parents who had been separated from their children: “Lawyers representing their parents…claim it violates procedural safeguards set out for people fighting deportation…and violates their due process.”
• Insider NJ called attention to the DOJ’s recent practice of “disqualifying specific immigration judges with whom the Attorney General disagrees. Earlier this month, the National Association of Immigration Judges filed a grievance against the Department of Justice for removing Judge Steven A. Morely, who sits in Philadelphia, from 87 cases, because Sessions found fault with the way Judge Morely handled a case of an undocumented Guatemalan national who in 2014 entered as an unaccompanied 17-year-old.”

Disaster Aid

• In Santa Clara County, CA, as part of a legal brief filed in a lawsuit aimed at restoring ‘net neutrality’ “[t]he Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District says a communications vehicle it dispatched to the Mendocino Complex, the largest wildfire in California’s history, was rendered essentially useless after Verizon reduced data speeds to a fraction of what firefighters needed.”

Access to Housing

• Non-Profit Quarterly reported that “US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson issued a statement last week explaining why he was in the process of rescinding the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule enacted during the Obama administration…The rules…required communities and local governments receiving federal funding to…actively work[] to eradicate historical discrimination and segregation practices in housing.“

Music Bonus!

Paul Simon, “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Immigration policy continues to be a major story, with a number of new developments this week. You’ll also want to check out the A2J news out of LA, which may join other major cities in the right-to-counsel-for-eviction movement.

Closer to home (or rather, my desk), I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome the 2018-2019 PSJD Fellow, Awa Sowe! You’ll begin seeing Awa’s work on PSJD.org and here on the blog in the coming weeks. We’re very lucky to have her with us.

One more thing: PSJD is currently considering nominations for the 2018 Pro Bono Publico Award. If you know students at PSJD subscriber schools who have made outstanding pro bono contributions to their communities, please take a moment and let us know about their work. The deadline for nominations is 8/31.

See you around,
Sam

Immigration & Refugee Issues

• The Huffington Post reported that “[o]nly a small fraction of the nearly 600 migrant children reported to still be in the custody of the U.S. government at the beginning of the month have been reunified with their families, according to a status update from the Trump administration filed Thursday.”
• NBC News reported that “The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs…part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller’s plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.”
• In Washington, DC, “a federal judge…halted a deportation in progress…and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration started to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway.“
• In Boston, MA, the ACLU filed documents in an immigration case that “show officials from the Boston-area offices of ICE…discussed scheduling interviews with immigrants at times that were convenient for ICE agents who would be waiting to arrest them — and in some cases initiate the deportation process…ICE officials ask[ed] to spread the interviews over time to avoid media scrutiny and for logistical reasons.”
• In response to an EOIR memo requiring immigration judges to complete at least 700 cases per year, “more than 120 law professors denounced the Justice Department’s new performance metrics for immigration judges as a danger to due process and an infringement on judicial independence.”

Disaster Legal Aid

• “A legal hotline is now available for people impacted by the Carr Fire [in] Shasta County, California (additional counties may be added).”

Public Service Job Search

• You may hear some familiar voices on the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s latest edition of their “ADMITTED” podcast for law students: Rachel Kronick Rothbart of USC and Katrina Denny of Loyola LA. The episode covers legal career search issues generally, but includes some tips specific to public service careers, such as the ideal timeline when reaching out to employers in the LA area.

Voting Rights

• Noting that “although voting restrictions for ex-offenders are getting looser in a handful of states, many of those potential voters aren’t aware of changing laws,” NonProfit Quarterly suggested that “responsibility for educating [those affected] is part of the ongoing debate on voting rights for ex-felons.“

Legal Technology

• The ABA’s Legal Rebels podcast interviewed Nicole Bradick about her technology-focused approach to access to justice issues. “For example,…creating an app to help low-income tenants in Chicago navigate landlord-tenant matters such as evictions and to help pro bono lawyers better serve these tenants by providing information and automated document tools.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Los Angeles, CA, the “City Council’s Housing Committee has recommended that the city explore a ‘right to counsel’ ordinance that would guarantee tenants have access to the information and representation they need when faced with landlord harassment, eviction or other issues.” This move puts LA on track to join other major cities such as NYC and SF in initiatives to provide counsel in eviction cases, as noted in earlier editions of this digest.
• In Ohio, the state’s “nonprofit legal aid societies are teaming up to provide more legal services to low-income residents[–]the Alliance of Ohio Legal Aids[.]“

Music Bonus!

“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Aretha Franklin

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! It’s been a relatively slow news week, but one with a couple particularly weighty pieces. Several high profile organizations including government, civil society, and corporate actors critiqued law enforcement’s growing reliance on facial recognition technology. In Canada, experts warn that proposed changes to sentencing structure for minor offenses could have a profound affect on defendants’ ability to obtain representation from law student volunteers.

See you around,
Sam

Immigration and Asylum

• In New York, NY, Mayor DeBlasio announced plans “to send city government lawyers and social workers to Texas to provide free legal help to families being detained at the border.”

Legal Technology

• Law.com published an article detailing various high-profile critiques of law enforcement use of facial recognition, challenging the appropriateness and accuracy of the technology. Critics include the ACLU (which demonstrated dramatic flaws with Amazon’s facial recognition API, Microsoft (which called for greater government oversight), and members of Congress.
  • In particular, Microsoft’s critique–posted by its CEO on the company’s blog–is worth a look.
• In Canada, a research project headed by a professor at Carleton law and funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario’s Access to Justice Fund aims to study the benefits of mobile apps for family law, in hopes of helping the increasing numbers of self-represented litigants using Canada’s courts.

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Nevada, a study commissioned by the Nevada Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission found that “three out of four low-income Nevadans with legal challenges aren’t able to get a lawyer for cases involving issues such as domestic violence, home foreclosures or workplace discrimination.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Canada, “[p]roposed changes to Canada’s Criminal Code could have serious consequences for low-income, first-time offenders of less serious crimes,” as changes to minimum sentencing would reclassify these offenses and inappropriate for law student volunteer representation. According to a criminal defense attorney, “[i]f these students aren’t allowed to help anymore, we’re going to have a greater number of self-representing litigants in the system.”
• In North Carolina, more accounts of plainclothes ICE agents conducting arrests at courthouses (see earlier editions of the digest for coverage of similar episodes in New York City) prompted an ABC News piece interviewing experts who caution these tactics “could have a chilling effect on immigrants’ willingness to access and participate in the criminal justice system.“
• In Nevada, the Sixth Amendment Center’s Executive Director warned the state that it has “no infrastructure to ensure that [it’s Constitutional obligation to ensure defendants are provided effective legal representation] is being met.” (The Center is advising a commission studying Nevada’s public defender system.)

Music Bonus!

“I’ll be Watching You”, Sting & the Police

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Immigration and refugee issues continue to dominate the news this summer. Another noteworthy story is in the “Civil Rights” section, where reporting out of New Mexico looks at stalled efforts at reforming civil asset forfeiture in the state.

See you around,
Sam

Immigration & Refugee Law

• Bloomberg News profiled the contributions Lawyers for Good Government have made in recent weeks to addressing issues related to the Trump administration’s family separation policy.
• In Alexandria, VA, [t]he Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition, Legal Aid Justice Center, and Muslim Advocates announced they have “filed a class-action lawsuit…to challenge a new and fundamentally unfair policy that keeps immigrants detained after they win their cases, violating the basic tenets of due process.”
• In Tuscon, AZ, KVOA (a local news station) reported on the “whirlwind of confusion” surrounding the Trump administration’s efforts to meet the court-determined deadline for reuniting children and families separated by the administration’s border policies.
• In Texas, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) “received a $20 million donation from a Facebook fundraising campaign started in the wake of the separations.”
• In Milwaukee, WI, the Milwaukee Independent reported on the difficulties immigration lawyers in the state have meeting the current demand for their services.
• In Connecticut, Yale Law School and Connecticut Legal Services helped reunite two Central American children with their parents, in what Yale professor Muneer Ahmad says is the first challenge to the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border brought by children, rather than their parents.

Legal Technology

• In Vermont, the Associated Press reported on Norwich University’s decision to join a number of other colleges now offering undergraduates “income share agreements, in which colleges receive a percentage of the student’s future salary, in place of some student loans.”

Legal Technology

• In Montreal, QC, Lawyersdaily reported that “[t]he Cyberjustice Laboratory launched an Autonomy through Cyberjustice Technologies (ACT) research partnership in June 2018 that brings together 45 researchers and 42 industry partners in a six-year project [concerning] AI’s impact on conflict prevention, conflict resolution and governance and policy.”
• According to lawsitesblog.com, “[l]egal directory Avvo is shutting down its controversial…service that provides fixed-fee, limited-scope legal services through a network of attorneys.”

Civil Rights

• In New Mexico, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported that three years after the state became the first in the country to ban civil forfeiture “the effort..appears stalled.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• According to Ability Magazine, a new report  from the Global Initiative for ICTs (Information & Communication Technologies) “finds that people with disabilities lack fundamental access to the legal system…not just in developing countries but in developed ones as well.”

Music Bonus!

“Cold War,” Janelle Monae