Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public!

Major news this week includes regulatory changes concerning student loans, with a new MOU between the Department of Education and the CFPB, as well as a streamlined application process for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Additionally, the ABA received pushback about its proposal to encourage state bars to explore “new approaches” in the practice of law. And in the top story below, Mother Jones spoke with immigration judges and attorneys about the logistical challenges they face implementing the Trump administration’s “Migrant Protection Protocols”.

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

See you around,

Sam

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• Mother Jones published a piece examining the impact of the Trump administration’s “Migrant Protection Protocols” on immigration courts:

  According to immigration judge Ashley Tabaddor, who spoke to me in her capacity as union president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, MPP has constituted a fundamental change to the way courts are run. DHS, she says, is “creating a situation where they’re physically, logistically, and systematically creating all the obstacles and holding all the cards.” The MPP program has left the court powerless, “speeding up the process of dehumanizing the individuals who are before the court and deterring anyone from the right to seek protection” All this while the Department of Justice is trying to decertify Tabbador’s union—the only protection judges have, and the only avenue for speaking publicly about these issues—by claiming its members are managers and no longer eligible for union membership. Tabaddor says the extreme number of cases combined with the pressure to process them quickly is making it difficult for judges to balance the DOJ’s demands with their oath of office.

  Immigration attorneys in El Paso, San Antonio, and San Diego have told me they are disturbed by the courtroom disarray: the unanswered phones, unopened mail, and unprocessed filings. Some of their clients are showing up at border [sic] in the middle of the night only to find that their cases have been rescheduled. That’s not only unfair, one attorney told me, “it’s dangerous.” Central Americans who speak only indigenous languages are asked to navigate court proceedings with Spanish interpreters. One attorney in El Paso had an 800-page filing for an asylum case that she filed with plenty of time for the judge to review, but it didn’t make it to the judge in time.

• In Olympia WA, “[s]tate lawmakers are crying foul after a series of Immigration Customs Enforcement arrests outside of the Grant County Courthouse in Ephrata and Adams County District Courthouse in Othello last year [and considering] House Bill 2567[, which] ultimately could put an end to ICE courthouse arrests.”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In Washington DC, “[t]he U.S. Department of Education and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) – essentially a cooperation agreement – to address and better manage student loan complaints. The agreement calls for the Education Department and CFPB to meet quarterly and share complaint information, data, recommendations and analytical tools. Importantly, the MOU more clearly defines role and responsibilities.”
• Also in Washington DC, “the Department [of Education] said it would create one application for both PSLF and TEPSLF [Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness]. This would make it much easier as [forgiveness-seekers] could apply once and no longer be denied and forced to reapply if they qualified.”
• Also also in Washington DC, “House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney [] threatened Education Secretary Betsy DeVos with a subpoena, saying DeVos’ office “stonewalled and delayed” when the committee tried to confirm a date for her testimony…about ‘critical issues facing the Department,’ including oversight of federal student loans.”
• In Virginia, “the Virginia Senate joined the House of Delegates in passing what’s known as the ‘Student Borrower’s Bill of Rights.’”
• A new report from the Student Borrower Protection Center revealed that “[f]inancial companies often use data on borrowers’ higher education to determine access to credit and the price of consumer financial products. And those education data can lead to redlining, a form of discrimination against borrowers who attended community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, or Hispanic-serving institutions.”
• Nationwide, “a coalition of attorney generals…from [26] states as well as the District of Columbia…renewed a request that the U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos discharge federal student loans for people who were enrolled in now closed schools operated by Dream Center Education Holdings, LLC.”

Legal Technology

• In Memphis TN, “[t]he Memphis Bar Foundation, Community Legal Center and Memphis Area Legal Services are joining to spearhead [a] new initiative [whose] goal is to provide resources and information through an online legal portal[.]”
• In Washington DC, “the Federal Circuit heard oral argument in this case involving the $0.10 per page fee for downloading documents from PACER. The basic argument here is that ‘PACER fees must be limited to PACER costs.’”
• In Chicago IL, ChicagoInno profiled JusticeText, “a software platform that allows public defenders to quickly and efficiently sift through video footage that can be imperative in how they build a case and defend a client.”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In Bowling Green KY, “[a] new full-time staffed federal prosecutor’s office opened[.]”
• In Montgomery AL, “[t]he executive director of Amnesty International USA will take over as chief executive of Southern Poverty Law Center, which is trying to steady itself after months of turmoil that included the firing of its founder.”
• In Allendale MI, “[n]ew research by Teri Behrens and Tory Martin of the Grand Valley State University Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy shows nonprofits are succeeding in changing with the times [and accommodating millenials’ new role as the largest sector of the workforce] in some areas but struggling in others.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Chicago IL, “[a] proposal before the American Bar Association that would encourage states to consider “new approaches” in the practice of law is facing mounting opposition by some state bar leaders who say it will lead to outside investment of law firms and nonlawyers practicing law.”
  • Meanwhile, in Arizona “[t]he University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law has started a two-year pilot project that licenses a small group of nonlawyers to give limited legal advice on civil matters stemming from domestic violence.”
• In California, the California Commission on Access to Justice (CalATJ) published a report finding that “California’s housing crisis stems from an inadequate supply of affordable housing coupled with insufficient legal protections for renters and homeowners. The resulting access-to-justice challenge for low-income and modest-means residents is aggravated in rural areas by the underfunding of legal-aid organizations and the state’s rural lawyer shortage. …Free, high-quality Legal Aid is needed urgently.”
• In Brooklyn NY, “[a] community legal service planted a new home in a Brooklyn neighborhood in growing need of help with housing displacement, deed theft and foreclosure.”
• In New York NY, “State Supreme Court justices from Arizona and Utah…said they support considerations to open up the legal industry to greater participation from nontraditional players largely to tackle the country’s growing access to justice gap.”
• In Little Rock AR, “[a] state Supreme Court justice and a chief judge on a federal appeals court emphasized the need to increase access to civil legal aid for people with low incomes at a Legal Services Corp. board meeting[.]”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Seneca County OH, “County Commissioners [] approved a pay increase for attorneys who handle the defense in court matters for indigent people to $60 per hour. The increase was recommended by the judges of Seneca County.”
• In Virginia, “[b]ills to create a public defenders’ office in Prince William County and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park were approved by the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates with bipartisan support[.]”
• In Manitoba, “criminal defence lawyers are taking job action, resulting in the halting of bail court services for Legal Aid Manitoba clients.”
• In Travis County TX, “commissioners announced [] they had hired Adeola Ogunkeyede to serve as chief of the county’s forthcoming public defender’s office. She will begin April 20.”
• In Louisiana, “[f]or the sixth consecutive year, an annual report has declared Louisiana’s public defense system is in crisis.”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Washington DC, “Justice Department lawyers have improperly used requests for overseas evidence to buy more time to bring some fraud cases, a memo filed with the agency’s internal watchdog alleges.”
• In San Francisco CA, Chesa Boudin, the city’s new District Attorney, sat for an interview with local news to discuss his approach to criminal prosecution.
• In Dallas County TX, the county “public defender’s office plans to hire social workers to help keep its mentally ill clients out of jail.”
• In Cohoes City NY, “[a]n upstate judge set up a legal battle over the state’s new bail reform law [] with a ruling that intentionally challenged the controversial statute.”
  • Meanwhile, “NYPD brass and police unions blamed a new state bail reform law for an increase in overall crime in New York City, though murder, rape and hate crimes decreased significantly last month compared to January 2019.”
• In Savannah GA, “[a] Georgia district attorney has taken steps to help people remove criminal charges from their records if they are qualified to do so.”
• In Billings MT, “[t]he domestic violence prosecutor for Montana’s largest city says changes to the state’s probation and parole system are coming at a cost to victims.”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public!

In another down-to-the-wire week, stories on Immigration and Civil Access to Justice dominated. As always, these stories and more are in the links below.

See you around,

Sam

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• In Washington DC, “[t]he Trump administration is pushing ahead with a project that could lead to the government collecting DNA from hundreds of thousands of detained immigrants, some as young as 14 years old, alarming civil rights advocates. Once fully underway, the DNA program could become the largest U.S. law enforcement effort to systemically collect genetic material from people not accused of a crime.”
• In Washington DC, “[t]he U.S. Supreme Court ruled [] hat the Trump Administration can go ahead with its new public charge rule aimed at preventing low-income, legal immigrants from obtaining green cards.”
  • Meanwhile, in New York, “[i]mmigrants’ rights advocates [] urged noncitizen families to seek legal advice Tuesday, following a setback in the fight to block the federal government’s so-called ‘public charge rule.’”
• The Wall Street Journal reported that “[p]eople seeking asylum in the U.S. are less likely to have legal representation under a Trump administration policy that sends them to await court hearings in Mexican border cities, recently released research shows.”
• In Houston TX, Houston Public Media reported that “[s]ince President [] Trump[‘s] administration has repeatedly tightened the rules[] and narrowed who qualifies for asylum[, i]mmigration attorneys are turning away from the ‘gold standard’–asylum–and putting more effort into the two major legal alternatives: withholding of removal and the U.N.’s Convention Against Torture.”
• In Derby CT, “[a] judicial marshal accused of assisting a Connecticut resident in avoiding apprehensive [sic] by immigration officials was fired.”
• In Boston MA, “Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the case of an Iranian student who…US Customs and Border Protection deported [] despite an emergency stay issued by US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs[.] …Stearns said in court that he didn’t think the government would “listen” to him, and that he did not jurisdiction over the issue because Abadi had been deported, calling the case ‘moot.’”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In Madison WI, “Governor Tony Evers [] signed an executive order to create a task force on student debt.”
• In Washington DC, “Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, urged the federal government to collect $22.3 million that it’s owed by one of the biggest student loan servicers in the country.”
• Also in Washington DC, the Department of Education “revealed [] that it will simplify the process for borrowers to apply for an expansion of the troubled Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program.”

Legal Technology

• In Mountain View CA, “Google has announced it will charge law enforcement and other government agencies for access to user data to “offset the costs” of compiling responses to information requests.”
• In Iowa, “[t]he state court system is offering a new lawyer-free service for couples seeking a divorce. Judicial Branch Public Information Associate Marissa Gaal said the interactive service is only for people looking for a divorce who don’t have children.”
• The ABA Journal published a piece on legal hackathons.
• In Utah, “Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew Durrant called on lawmakers to spend more than a million dollars to upgrade the judiciary’s tech.”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In Washington DC, “[t]he Trump administration is attempting to decertify the National Association of Immigrant Judges (NAIJ), the union that since 1971 has represented federal immigration judges. The attack on the union appears to be in response to its vocal opposition to administration efforts to limit judges’ authority, force them to speed up hearings, silence critics of immigration policy, and cut resources for support staff.”
• In DC, “[t]he D.C. bar is joining the ranks of jurisdictions considering rule changes that would allow nonlawyers to own firms[.]”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Canada, Former Canadian Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin began “a periodic [column] series showcasing access to justice in action across Canada” for The Lawyer’s Daily.
• In Manitoba, “[c]lients of Manitoba’s Public Interest Law Centre are questioning a proposal to stop the advocacy centre from operating within Legal Aid Manitoba [after] a government-commissioned review of legal aid was released recommending the Public Interest Law Centre no longer be part of legal aid services offered by the province.”
• In Ontario, Legal Aid Ontario “clarified its policy for imprisoned clients seeking help with family law issues[:] Incarcerated persons may apply for all the family law services offered by Legal Aid Ontario, subject to fulfilling the requirements for legal and financial eligibility.”
• In New York NY, the city council considered “two bills–Intros 1529 and 1104– [that] look to expand Right to Counsel [in eviction] not only geographically but also economically.”
• In New Mexico, “[m]ore [] residents would have access to civil legal aid services under proposals approved by the state Supreme Court [which] include efforts to attract more out-of-state law school graduates to practice in New Mexico and possible financial incentives for attorneys who practice in rural or underserved communities.”
• In Utah, “Chief Justice Matthew Durrant told state legislators during the annual State of the Judiciary Address Monday that Utah faces a “crisis” in legal services[.]”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• The Indiana Lawyer reported that “[r]ural communities’ access to justice, bail reform and ensuring voting rights for individuals with criminal convictions will be chief among several criminal justice topics set for discussion during next month’s 2020 American Bar Association Midyear Meeting.”
• In Missouri, “[a] federal judge [] has refused to approve a consent decree that would have limited state public defenders to no more than 173.3 hours worth of cases each month, a standard that is based on a 40-hour workweek.”
• In Allen County OH, “County Commissioners will continue deliberating how best to improve the state of indigent defense in 2020, with the possibility of establishing a full-time public defender’s office still under consideration.”
• In Butler County OH, “attorneys who are appointed by judges to represent indigent defendants have received their first hourly rate hike in about 16 years.”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Albany NY, “[a] law that would have convened a special panel to evaluate complaints of misconduct levied against the state’s prosecutors was struck down [] by a state judge[], who said the measure was unconstitutional as written by the Legislature.”
• In New York NY, “[t]he NYPD’s largest police union has sued the Civilian Complaint Review Board over a ballot measure that expanded the watchdog agency — claiming the voter-approved legislation was ‘an illegal power-grab.’”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public!

Digest is squeaking out just under the wire this week, so I’ll be brief. Major stories include a proposal to fund the Right to Counsel for Eviction at the federal level, the new San Francisco DA’s decision to end pretrial cash bail, and the Trump Administration’s decision to relocate hundreds of immigration detainees’ hearings from northern to southern California. Thematically, work conditions for public defenders dominated the news, with Philadelphia public defenders preparing for a unionization ballot while state-wide policy proposals moved forward in Wisconsin, where public defenders are set to receive pay parity with state prosecutors, and in Georgia, where the governor is proposing to cut public defender funding by $3 million–and to increase prosecutors’ funds by about the same.

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

See you around,

Sam

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• In San Francisco CA, “Northern California immigration attorneys are reeling after learning of a controversial Trump administration decision to move hundreds of immigrant detainees’ court hearings out of San Francisco and to a new courthouse in Van Nuys, a neighborhood in north Los Angeles.”
• In Texas, “Gov. Greg Abbott [explained] in a TV interview [] why Texas will be the only state in the nation to reject refugees seeking resettlement, saying that aid groups working with refugees should instead prioritize other Texans in need, including the state’s homeless population.”
• Also in Texas, “[w]ith a substantial increase in filing fees for immigration benefits looming, advocates are urging migrants to get their applications in as soon as possible. Once the fees go up, attorneys and nonprofits who assist migrants fear the benefits of U.S. citizenship, legal residency for relatives, work permit renewals and a host of other services will be out of reach for many of their clients.”
• In a motion before the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles CA, “[l]awyers representing undocumented immigrants detained by ICE allege that courts and government authorities under the Trump administration are not complying with a federal court order that protects mentally disabled immigrants in California, Arizona and Washington.”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In New York NY, “Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) — a nonprofit that guarantees and services student loans on behalf of the Department of Education (ED) — is challenging the January 7 decision made by Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Cecelia G. Morris, who discharged $221,385.49 in student loan debt for Navy veteran and lawyer Kevin Rosenberg under chapter 7 bankruptcy.”
• In California, “[i]n an opposition motion [to a federal court’s $100,000 sanction against Education Secretary DeVos for violating a court order and billing thousands of students with loans tied to now-defunct Corinthian Colleges], the Education Department said it’s been doing its best to comply with a preliminary injunction that prevents it from demanding repayment for Corinthian-related student debt.”
• In Washington DC, “Sen. Elizabeth Warren [] praised the IRS and Treasury Department’s decision to provide tax relief to more people with discharged student loans.”
• The Chronicle of Higher Education, surveying the legislative agendas of the Democratic presidential candidates featured in the last debate, determined that “Free College, Student-Debt Forgiveness, and Pell Grant Expansion Dominate Higher-Ed Policy for Top Democratic Candidates.”
• Moody’s Investors Service released a report indicating that “student loan debt still stands at $1.7 trillion [with] borrowers taking longer to pay it back, which means they’re paying more interest in the end.”

Disaster Law & The Environment

• In San Francisco CA, “the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out…Juliana vs. the United States[,]” in which “21 young people sued the US government, alleging that by contributing to climate [change] despite knowledge of its dangerous consequences, it was violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.” The opinion found that “the plaintiffs’ case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large.”
  • Time Magazine has more on this story and “what it might mean for the future of climate litigation.”

Legal Technology

• In New York State, “Elizabeth A. Garry, Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, Third Department, provide[d] an update on access to justice in rural communities, writing that court simplification will ameliorate some of the challenges rural attorneys currently encounter.”
• In Washington DC, Above the Law, citing reporting from the Wall St. Journal, reported that “[w]hile Barr is trying to turn the public against Apple by suggesting it protects terrorists and murderers, FBI employees are worried his words and actions will harm them more than help them.”
  • In related news, Reuters reported that “Apple [] dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company’s iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations, [according to] six sources familiar with the matter[.]”
• Also in Washington DC, “[a] year after passage of a law requiring federal agencies to improve the quality and accessibility of digital services, the General Services Administration on Wednesday released a set of website design standards agencies across government can use to meet that mandate.”
• In Canada, “[t]he RCMP [] would neither confirm nor deny that it’s using Clearview AI’s technology, which allows police forces to check photos against a database of three billion images scraped from the web.”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In Washington DC, “Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says she wants to expand the use of direct hire authorities to fill critical vacancies throughout the federal workforce. She wants to find ways to reinstate qualified former federal employees back to the workforce. Warren is also recommending a government mentorship program specifically for employees of color. As well as expanding the cooling off period to six years for lobbyists before they can take a government job.”
• In Hawaii, “Hawaii Attorney General Clare Connors subpoenaed [] KAHEA, or the Hawaiian Environmental Alliances [because t]he AG believes the group involved in protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea is illegally using donations to fund civil disobedience.”
• In Alberta, “Legal Aid Alberta (LAA) is asking its roster lawyers to update their online profiles in order to reflect changes it is implementing on choice of counsel for clients and travel compensation for those who take on legal aid certificates.”
• On the internet, “[a] private equity fund backed by three prominent Republican billionaire families is expected to buy the dot-org domain, throwing into question whether the online safe haven for rights organizations and nonprofits could now face censorship or spiralling costs[; ] a small and vociferous group of nonprofits, charities, and human rights organizations have banded together to make a last-ditch attempt to block the sale.” (See previous editions of the digest for additional coverage of this story.)

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Washington DC, “Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut)…re-introduc[ed] what’s known as the Eviction Prevention Act[:] ‘It would allow the U.S. Attorney General to authorize $125 million in grants to states, counties and cities to provide people with representation by an attorney [in] any eviction cases[.]”
• In California, “State Bar leaders took another step…toward opening up the regulation of legal services in the state, launching the assembly of a task force to explore a licensing scheme under which paraprofessionals would provide certain legal services and advice to consumers.”
• In New York NY, the New York Daily News argued that “with the housing and homelessness crises unabated, it is more imperative than ever to expand the right [to counsel for eviction] to include the many low-income New Yorkers who are currently ineligible.”
• In Manitoba, “Legal Aid Manitoba has a short-term “contingency” plan ready should the province’s private criminal lawyers stop taking new cases to protest the current rates of compensation, says an official with the service provider.”
• LegalShield, “the world’s leading provider of affordable legal and identity theft protection plans, released the results of The 2019 LegalShield Workplace Study[.]” Among the study’s findings were that “77% of employers believe access to affordable legal services can help improve employees’ financial well-being [and] 61% of employers would consider offering identity theft and / or legal protection plans.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Philadelphia PA, “public defenders will vote to decide whether to unionize their workplace after informal negotiations with management stalled.”
• In Mercer County OH, “Justice Judith French [] talk[ed] to local judges about the issues they are facing and what resources the Ohio Supreme Court can provide to them. [On the shortage of public defenders,] French says even though the state has tried to address the problem with more funding, the solution is simple, Ohio needs more lawyers on both the criminal and civil side.”
  • In related news, the Ohio state legislature deliberated on “House Bill 5[, which] would give lawyers who become public defenders tuition loan assistance up to $85,000 for five years of service.”
• In Macomb County MI, local news reported the county “will create an office to represent indigent criminal defendants as part of statewide and national efforts to improve their legal representation.”
• In Atlanta GA, “Governor Brian Kemp has unveiled his proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which will begin on July 1, 2020. In it, he asks lawmakers to slash the funds available to state public defenders by more than $3 million—and to increase the funds available to prosecutors by about the same amount.”
• In Madison WI, “[t]he state Senate [] passed an amended version of Senate Bill 468 to provide a pay-progression plan for assistant state public defenders.”
• In Jefferson City MO, “[d]uring the annual State of the Judiciary address, given to a joint session of the Missouri Legislature, Chief Justice George Draper III [stated that] ‘Speaking from the perspective of both a former prosecutor and a former trial judge, I can tell you the system simply does not work without a sufficiently funded and staffed public defender system’[.]”
• In Prince William County VA, “[a] proposal to create a public defender office for Prince William County has won two favorable votes already at the General Assembly.”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In San Francisco CA, “San Francisco’s new top prosecutor says his office will no longer ask for cash bail as a condition for defendants’ pretrial release, fulfilling one of his key campaign promises.”
• In Los Angeles CA, LA Magazine profiled “Rachel Rossi, the Progressive Ex-Public Defender Running for DA”
• In Honolulu, Hawaii News Now reported that “[p]rosecutors [have] recently started looking for warrants of witnesses and victims who are set to testify in upcoming trials.”
• In Washington DC, “Attorney General [] Barr [] swore in 16 members of a new national commission to study crucial issues in law enforcement, which aims to follow in the footsteps of a similar commission formed in 1965 that launched such concepts as improved training for police, increased data collection in policing and the 911 emergency dispatch system.”
• In Milwaukee WI, “Milwaukee’s District Attorney and the head of the Wisconsin Public Defender’s office have crossed turf lines to develop a system of ‘community-oriented’ justice whose end goal is to put fewer people in prison.”
• In Harris County TX, the Houston Chronicle reported that while “[t]he Harris County District Attorney’s office contends it needs more staff to ensure due process and increased diversion options [ c]ritics and primary challengers to District Attorney Kim Ogg contend that doing so would reverse justice reform efforts, believing more prosecutors equate to more convictions.”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public!

Hope 2020 is treating everyone well so far. I’m reeling a bit from the onslaught of news, so this is our first Digest of the year. We’re off to a roaring start. The right to counsel in immigration and asylum cases saw major developments, with a federal judge in California affirming asylum seekers’ right to counsel while New York State legislators debated creating a statutory right to publicly-funded counsel in deportation cases. Student loans also continue to make headlines, with the House of Representatives repudiating Secretary DeVos’ new regulations concerning student loan forgiveness in situations of fraud and a bankruptcy judge in New York discharging a lawyer’s student loan debt. Criminal justice reform has also been a major topic, from Minnesota, where Attorney General Ellison called for an investigation into the summary firing of Hennepin County’s Chief Public Defender, to Missouri, where the St. Louis District Attorney filed a federal suit against the city and its police union under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Oh! And former PSJD Fellow and Georgetown OPICS alum Katie Dilks was named the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation. Congratulations Katie!

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

See you around,

Sam

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• In Ciudad Juarez MX, “Mexican authorities [] removed almost 100 Mexican migrants seeking asylum in the United States from a camp in downtown Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, according to a Reuters witness, after state police threatened to separate parents from their children.”
• In San Francisco CA, “the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office filed a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office with the U.S. Federal District Court, Northern District of California, requesting an immediate hearing on behalf of a female transgender immigrant who was illegally transferred on Christmas night to a remote detention facility in Texas.”
• In Los Angeles CA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Los Angeles (CAIR-LA) is “working to educate the Iranian community about their legal rights in light of reports of increased profiling and discrimination against Iranians across the nation.”
• In San Diego CA, “[f]inding asylum seekers have a right to counsel when undergoing interviews to determine whether they can be returned to Mexico under the “Remain in Mexico” program, a federal judge [] confirmed immigration law guarantees attorney access for migrants.”
• In Albany NY, “[l]egislation is being introduced [] that would create a statutory right to a lawyer for any New Yorker facing deportation who cannot afford an attorney on their own.​”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In Los Angeles CA, “the UCLA School of Law is enhancing its Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP), starting in January. …Under new LRAP guidelines, alumni with incomes up to $75,000 will have their eligible loan payments fully covered, an increase from the previous threshold of $60,000.”
• In Washington DC, “[Senator Elizabeth] Warren said that as president, she would not wait for Congress to approve her plans to cancel or modify federal student debt. Instead, she would directly authorize the Department of Education to provide as much as $50,000 in relief to about 95% of student loan borrowers.”
• Also in Washington DC, “[t]he House voted 231-180 to overturn new regulations introduced by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that critics argue limit student loan forgiveness when a college closes due to fraud.”
• In California, “[t]he CFPB filed a complaint last week in a California federal district court against several companies and individuals involved in offering student loan debt relief services for allegedly obtaining consumer reports unlawfully, charging unlawful advance fees, and engaging in deceptive conduct.”
• In New York NY, “[a] bankruptcy judge excused a U.S. Navy veteran with a law degree from repaying more than $220,000 in student loan debt, the latest court ruling to lower the barriers to discharging educational debt.”

Disaster Law & The Environment

• In Washington DC, “US President Donald Trump's administration announced Thursday sweeping changes to an environmental law that would speed up the construction of highways, airports and pipelines [by] rais[ing] the threshold for what types of projects require an environmental impact assessment.”
• In Portland OR, Willamette Week described how “[i]n just a few months, the city of Portland will begin investing the proceeds from a groundbreaking new tax on large companies [in a] local version of the Green New Deal proposed in 2019 by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).”
• In Cambridge MA, “[d]ozens of Harvard Law School students disrupted a first-year student recruitment event held by corporate law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP[], calling on the firm to stop representing the oil and gas company ExxonMobil in ongoing climate change litigation.”

Legal Technology

• In Las Vegas NV, Amazon’s top hardware executive “said he’s proud of the [Ring law enforcement] program, believes the partnerships with police departments are good for neighborhoods, and hinted at a future in which Ring cameras could use Amazon’s facial recognition technology—a scenario that some of Ring’s critics have already expressed concerns about.”
• In Montreal QC, the Cyberjustice Laboratory launched “Autonomy through Cyberjustice Technologies (ACT)[:] the largest international mutlidisciplinary research initiative that seeks to leverage AI to increase access to justice while providing justice stakeholders with a roadmap to help them develop technology that is better adapted to justice.”
• In Canada, the Canadian Bar Association published a statement on “Modernizing the Federal Court”.
• The ABA Journal interviewed Richard Susskind about his thoughts on “[o]nline courts, the future of justice and being bold in 2020.”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In Chicago IL, “Executive search firm Isaacson, Miller has been enlisted to find the next president and chief executive officer for the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law[.]”
• In New Jersey, “[t]he New Jersey Supreme Court [] questioned why public defenders should not receive the state Tort Claims Act protections afforded to other state employees as the justices challenged a wrongfully convicted man’s bid to revive his legal malpractice suit[.]”
• Also in New Jersey, “state lawmakers approved a bill that will compel employers to give more notice and pay severance to laid-off workers, after a public backlash against the treatment of workers who lost their jobs in the retail apocalypse…Maxine Neuhauser, an attorney with Epstein Becker Green in Newark, said nonprofit employers could be in a bind if they suddenly lose out on government grants or funding.”
• In Above the Law, an op-ed argued that “Public Interest Organizations Must Use Their Surge In Donations To Pay Their Lawyers A Living Wage.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Connecticut, the State Bar Association created a “State of the Legal Profession Task Force[; a move] driven by the access-to-justice gap, as well as the challenges lawyers face in the current system.”
• In New York NY, “[e]victions [] have plummeted nearly 20% in the six months since Albany lawmakers enacted sweeping new tenant protection laws.The drop. revealed in city data compiled over the past two years, shows evictions in the last half of 2019 stood at 8,951, down from 10,958 over the same period in 2018.”
• Law360 published a list of “4 Access To Justice Cases to Watch in 2020”.
• In Indiana, “Chief Justice Loretta Rush issued a call to arms for everyone involved in the state’s justice system in her annual State of the Judiciary Address[:] one glaring area of need is legal aid. Too many people, she says, go unrepresented in court.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Minneapolis MN, “Attorney General Keith Ellison [] called for the Minnesota Board of Public Defense to examine the process that led to the suspension of Hennepin County's chief public defender, saying he believes Mary Moriarty was targeted for speaking out against racial bias in the criminal justice system.”
• In Alaska, the state’s Public Defender Agency responded to a recent gubernatorial report which claimed “defender caseloads are reasonable when compared to established professional measures.” The Public Defender Agency asserted that “Alaska shouldn’t join other states in failing to represent low-income defendants.” (As characterized in third-party reporting.)
• In Jefferson County OH, “County commissioners [] agreed to create a commission to study whether the county should create to a public defender’s office.”
• In Berrien County MI, “[f]or the second time since the Berrien County Public Defender’s Office opened three years ago, Berrien County is losing its chief public defender to a larger county.”
• In Fresco County CA, “[t]he [] County Public Defenders Office will be adding much-needed lawyers to its ranks as part of a legal settlement between the county and the American Civil Liberties Union.”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In New York, “[a] group of 64 activist groups called on Cuomo to “immediately prioritize the full statewide repeal” of a law known by its statute number, 50-a, which guards the confidentiality of personnel records of police, firefighters, correction officers and other uniformed officers.”
• In Virginia, “Gov. Ralph Northam [] announced his criminal justice reform agenda for 2020.”
• In San Francisco CA, “[n]ewly elected San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin fired multiple prosecutors on Friday afternoon as he reshapes the office and begins implementing his progressive vision two days after being sworn in.”
• In St. Louis MO, “[a] top prosecutor has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of St Louis and its police union citing a nearly 150-year-old law used to combat the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist group.”
• In related news, “[o]ne day after St. Louis’ top prosecutor filed a federal lawsuit alleging a concerted and racist conspiracy to push her out of office, other black female prosecutors from across the U.S. defended Kim Gardner, saying they’ve faced the same resistance in their own communities.”

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.”
  • Relatedly, “[t]he Trump administration is defending U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement’s authority to arrest suspected unauthorized immigrants at Massachusetts state courthouses, telling a Boston federal court…that the agency can make its arrests anywhere.”

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 a related news story, “[t]wo candidates running to become the district attorney of Los Angeles County are voicing support for decriminalizing possession of all drugs.”
• 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.”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Big news this week included revised plans for legal aid funding out of Ontario and a Department of Education decision not to issue full refunds to student debt-holders who were victims of fraud by for-profit colleges. You may also want to give the first article in the immigration section a look. I’d say more, but unfortunately I have to run.

See you around,

  Sam

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• BuzzFeed reported that “US Border Officials Are Issuing Fake Court Notices to Keep Out Immigrants Who Have Won Asylum[.]”
• Minnesota Lawyer reported that “[w]hile the government previously targeted immigrants with a criminal history, undocumented immigrants today are being put into removal proceedings even though they have no criminal record in the United States, lawyers say. As a result, a backlog of immigration cases is clogging the docket…across the country. Immigration attorneys say the sheer number of cases has outstripped their ability to help asylum-seekers. The [DOJ] has instructed immigration judges to pick up the pace of their cases.”
• In California, “[a]n immigration nonprofit accused [ICE] in [] federal court [] of preventing detainees from calling its hotline for reporting detention center abuses.” (Nonprofit Quarterly also covered this story.)
• In Utah, “a federal judge…decided.. [that p]eople born in the territory of American Samoa should be recognized as U.S. citizens[.]”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In Washington DC, “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos came under intense scrutiny from congressional Democrats on Thursday for refusing to fully forgive student loans for people who say they have been defrauded by for-profit colleges. DeVos has instead proposed a loan forgiveness plan based on earnings data.”
  • Meanwhile, “Secretary…DeVos…defender her decision to move ahead with partial loan forgiveness for students defrauded by for-profit colleges.”
• In Pennsylvania, the Penn Capital-Star published a profile of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, titled “How an obscure Pa. state agency became one of the nation’s biggest student loan servicers.”
• The Chronicle of Higher Education profiled the various legal challenges to the Trump administrations’ efforts to “roll back student-loan oversight”.
• The Roosevelt Institute published an analysis concluding that “[t]he [US] Education Department could cancel all U.S. student debt itself–and without any action by Congress[.]”

Legal Tchnology

• In Washington DC, “Attorney General William P. Barr [] signaled that the Justice Department plans to [] explor[e] new legal tools to probe [tech] companies for their privacy abuses and the way they police content online.”
• In Fresno CA, “[t]he Fresno Public Defender’s Office and Uptrust the social justice text messaging communication platform, has [sic] announced a partnership to reduce the number of Failure to Appear (FTA) incidents, arrest warrants and technical violations in the county.”
• In Pennsylvania, “the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled [last month] that it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination to compel a defendant to disclose a password to allow policy access to a “lawfully seized, but encrypted, computer.”
• In New York NY, the city’s “Automated Decision System Task Force” “failed at even completing a first necessary step in its work: getting access to basic information about automated systems already in use, according to task force members and observers.”
  • Meanwhile, AI Now Institute published a shadow report last week that, according to CityLab, “has issued a stark warning cry about ‘the limitations of existing bureaucratic procedures’ to tackle automated decisions.”\
• Fast Company reported on “[a] new chatbot called Mona, designed for Facebook Messenger and Telegram, [that is designed to] get reliable information and services on[to] the same platforms that refugees are already using, and reach them on their own terms with information and services that they [can] use when they actually need it most[.]”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• LegalNewsLine published a warning from a partner at ReedSmith that “[c]ity, county and tribal governments’ strategy of hiring private lawyers in opioid and other litigation is causing a ‘misalignment of the values’ between those entities and the traditional primacy of state attorneys general[.]”
• In Dallas-Fort Worth TX, “[u]nion representatives for Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas employees [picketed] the group’s board meeting.”
• In Houston TX, “[a] coalition of advocates, legal groups and a workers’ union [opposed] the district attorney’s upcoming budget request for 58 more prosecutors and questioning her commitment to justice reform.”
• Government Executive analyzed “All the Federal Workforce Provisions Tucked into the Defense Policy Bill[.]”
• In Alberta, the president of the Alberta Crown Attorneys’ Association described the province’s working conditions for prosecutors as “a state of continual crisis[.]”
• In Philadelphia PA, “Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, the 41-year-old pro bono legal services organization serving emerging artists and arts organizations, will return to being an independent nonprofit after more than a decade of being funded by the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia’s Arts and Business Council.”
• The Environmental Integrity Project reported that a survey of “annual expenditures and staffing levels from fiscal year 2008 to 2018 for state agencies that protect public health and the environment [revealed that] state eliminated 4,400 positions at agencies responsible for protecting the environment.”
• The Arizona Republic reported that “[e]ven in a lengthy economic expansion, many nonprofits still have trouble providing social services and all the other support needed by the community…[as n]ationally, the pattern has been one of lower donations from middle-class sources.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Toronto ON, the province’s “attorney general [] cancell[ed] planned cuts to legal aid funding, but this year’s 30-per-cent budget cut is being made permanent.”
  • However, an opinion columnist at CBC argued that “despite walking back $30 million in planned cuts to Legal Aid Ontario (LAO), [Attorney General] Downey’s legislation is a Trojan horse for his ultimate goal — a cruel gutting of access to justice for the impoverished.”
• In Canada more broadly, the Globe and Mail reported that “[l]egal experts say the justice system is failing Canada’s working poor, many of whom are unable to afford lawyers and end up pleading guilty or representing themselves in court.”
• NextCity Magazine surveyed changes in local government to ask, “Is Tenants’ Right to Counsel on Its Way to Becoming Standard Practice?”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Wyoming, the State Public Defender, who “has warned the Legislature that her office is essentially in crisis due to heavy caseloads and struggles to retain attorneys,” “spoke in favor of Gov. Mark Gordon’s budget proposal for the 2021-22 biennium[.]”
• In Maine, “[t]he Main Legislature’s government watchdog agency [announced] a more thorough investigation into how the state provides legal services for the poor, with a specific focus on the oversight of the program and its procedures.”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In North Carolina, “[t]he State Judicial Council convened…to discuss judicial branch reforms and to push for increased funding…for improved case management, bail reform, and improved drug treatment courts…It was the first time the council had convened in five years[.]”
• In New Hampshire, “[Governor] Sununu appoint[ed a] former public defender to head [the] parole board.” The new Chairman, Jennifer Brooke Sargent, also has experience as a judge and a prosecutor.

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Hope everyone had a chance to relax over Thanksgiving, because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover in another two-week span of news.

There’s an upcoming law review article arguing there’s a generational gap in the approach public interest lawyers take to their work (that’s the Editor’s Pick this week). Additionally, major changes to immigration law are underway as DOJ published memos limiting service providers’ ability to assist unaccompanied migrant children and the Supreme Court granted cert. on a case in which the federal government appealed a circuit decision striking down a statute criminalizing activity that “encourages or induces an alien come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such [behavior] is or will be in violation of the law” as overbroad in violation of the First Amendment. Meanwhile, Secretary of Education DeVos proposed spinning off the Department of Education’s student loan portfolio into a separate federal agency, the Miami Herald reported a “staggering exodus” of underpaid government attorneys in their city, and the Deputy Attorney General of the United States wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post expressing alarm over the recent trend toward “progressive prosecution” among city District Attorneys.

As always, these stories and more are linked below.

See you around,

Sam

Editor’s Pick: Rise of a New Generation of Legal Advocates

TheCrimeReport.org previewed arguments from a forthcoming law review article that Professors Luz E. Herrer (Texas A&M) and Louise Trubek (U Wisconsin) will publish in the New York University Review of Law and Social Change:

“ ‘Critical lawyers are creating an architecture that leverages their expertise to help clients and communities advance their social justice missions,’ the authors said. Their practices differ from the traditional non-profit public interest firms of the earlier generation that assumed justice would result if there [sic] law and lawyers were accessible.”

Should be an interesting read, when it comes out.

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• In Washington DC, “[t]he Supreme Court has agreed to take up United States v. Sineneng-Smith, a case that involves an obscure provision in the immigration laws that imposes liability on anyone who “encourages or induces” someone to reside in the United States knowing that such residence is in violation of the law. Broadly written, this provision and the ultimate decision by the Supreme Court could have a devastating impact on the legal advocates community, not just sending a chill but grinding to a halt most of the legal work [they] do.” (More on this case from ScotusBlog.)
• Also in Washington DC, “[a] pair of recent policy memos issued by the U.S. Department of Justice places more limits on legal service providers offering assistance to unaccompanied migrant children[.]”
• Also also in Washington DC, “[a] new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy will increase the price of citizenship applications by 83%. DACA renewals are also increasing to almost $800.”
• Again also in Washington DC, “U.S. Attorney William Bar denounced Oregon’s new rule that federal immigration agents must have warrants to make arrests on courthouse properties.”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In Washington DC, “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos…said the government’s $1.5 trillion student loan portfolio should be someone else’s problem[:] …Ms. DeVos said it should be spun off into its own federal agency.” The DC bureau chief of The Intercept opined that “[t]his very much appears to be a [] scheme to block the next president from unilaterally forgiving federal student debt.”
• Also in Washington DC, “Senator [Rand] Paul introduced the Higher Education Loan Payment and Enhanced Retirement (HELPER) Act. His bill would allow Americans to take up to $5,250 annually from a 401(k) or IRA to pay their student loans, tax and penalty free.” (Here’s Sen. Paul’s press release and the text of the bill.)
• Also also in Washington DC, “[l]awmakers are calling for an investigation into a troubled student loan discharge program one day after an NPR report revealed that the program–meant to erase the student debts of borrowers with significant, permanent disabilities–wasn’t helping the vast majority of those who are eligible.”
• Again also in Washington DC, “consumer advocates filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, accusing these government agencies of failing to protect student loan borrowers.” (Here’s the complaint.)
  • Meanwhile, “Attorney General Phil Weiser has joined 20 other states in filing a brief in a federal case in support of public servants who were promised student loan debt forgiveness in exchange for 10 years of public service, but were denied that relief due to the U.S. Department of Education’s mismanagement of the program.” (See Weingarten et al. v. DeVos et al.)
• In Iowa, “Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren suggest[ed] her plan to eliminate student loan debt may address population losses in rural Iowa…’Folks who’ve got to meet that nut every single month are a lot more likely to head out to the two coasts. I hear this from families all over Iowa.’ ”
• The Wall Street Journal analyzed data recently released by the U.S. Department of Education to observe that “[t]he vast majority of law-school graduates carry debt loads that exceed their initial earnings[.]”

2020 Census

• In the United States, “[t]ribes, voting activists, urban American Indian organizations and attorneys are collaborating closely with the federal government as the 2020 census looms and taking the wheel on outreach efforts to make sure Native Americans don’t lose out on federal funding or the political benefits of an accurate count.”
  • Meanwhile, “[a] new lawsuit in New York accuses the Trump administration of starving the U.S. Census Bureau of necessary funding, likely causing an undercounting in the 2020 census of racial and ethnic minorities and depriving them of crucial federal funds. In a complaint on Tuesday, the Brooklyn-based nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy Action and the city of Newburgh, New York said the government arbitrarily and capriciously slashed resources to count blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, the homeless and other members of “hard-to-count” communities.”

International Law

• In Washington DC, “[t]he U.S. has revoked the visa of the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, weeks after warning it would take such an action against anyone from the ICC who is investigating allegations that U.S. personnel might have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.”

Legal Technology

• In Washington State, “Bellingham-based lawyer Ziad Youssef…has seen hundreds of people sign up for his company’s free online service, Busted911.com. If you’re a member and you’re arrested and taken to a local jail, you’ll receive a free call from a lawyer and your emergency contacts will be notified…If your name appears on a jail roster, a criminal defense lawyer is immediately notified to contact you and help you get released.”
• In Ontario, “a report by former Attorney General Chris Bentley [argued that b]ecause lawyers have a ‘monopoly’ on giving legal advice, consumers may be depreived of the faster, simpler and cheaper options potentially available via direct to consumer automated legal tools.”
• Law.com profiled the “New York City and Philadelphia[] public defender offices[, which] started rolling out digital forensic labs this year. The two cities are among the very few in the U.S. to find the budget and expertise for such an endeavor.”
  • Meanwhile, “New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has appointed a rising star in the field of law-enforcement technology to reboot the agency that oversees the city’s internet services and telecommunications[.]”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In Washington DC, “[l]awmakers…have just a few weeks to agree on a budget deal to keep the federal government open [and n]onprofits across the nation..are dreading another government shutdown especially after the last one left some organizations still struggling today.”
• In Miami FL, the Miami Herald reported “a staggering exodus over the past year among the ranks of prosecutors and state-funded defense lawyers in Miami-Dade County. With the economy humming, private law firms have expanded hiring attorneys prized for the invaluable trial experience gained in the grind that is Miami-Dade’s criminal courthouse…Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and Public Defender Carlos Martinez will travel to Tallahassee next week to lobby the Legislature for a significant pay increase for their lawyers.”
• In San Joaquin County CA, “[t]he…Office of the Public Defender has been sued by a former employee alleging repeated sexual harassment, failure by management to adequately address her complaints, retaliation, and fear for her safety at work even after some of her allegations were substantiated by an independent investigation.”
• In Richmond VA, “[p]ublic defenders who represent nearly half of the people facing criminal charges in Richmond’s court system … [are] campaigning to get City Hall to provide the same kind of taxpayer-funded salary supplement that the city has long granted the attorneys who prosecute the alleged offenders and the Richmond Sheriff’s Office that jails those who are convicted.”
• In Philadelphia PA, “[a] majority of the attorneys at the Defender Association of Philadelphia have announced their intent to unionize in partnership with the United Automobile Workers, a manufacturing workers union that also represents legal aid groups.”
• In Manitoba, “defense attorneys are considering job action if the province doesn’t increase the amount it pays for legal aid.”
• In Alberta, “[t]he government of Alberta announced that it is doubling the number of Crown articling students, ensuring homegrown talent stays in Alberta.”
  • Meanwhile, “Alberta Justice is preparing to lay off 90 civil-law lawyers as its legal services division struggles to absorb a $20-million budget cut[.]”
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that “[t]he .ORG top-level domain and all of the nonprofit organizations that depend on it are at risk if a private equity firm is allowed to buy control of it….[because] it would give Ethos Capital the power to censor the speech of nonprofit organizations (NGOs) to advance commercial interests, and to extract ever-growing monopoly rents from those same nonprofits.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Calgary AB, “[l]egal experts say the justice system is failing Canada’s working poor, many of whom are unable to afford lawyers and end up pleading guilty or representing themselves in court.”
• In California, “[a]…state bar task force crafting proposals to overhaul regulation of the state’s legal marketplace has drawn criticism from attorneys who believe some of its members evaluating whether to open up the legal industry to nonlawyer ownership and greater technology-driven legal services have conflicts of interest.”
• In San Antonio TX, after “the [] City Council earmarked $100,000 for a ‘Right to Counsel’ pilot program to offer legal help for renters facing evictions[, t]he city is in the midst of negotiating with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid to provide the services.”
• In New York, New York Attorney General Letitia A. James argued that “[p]roposals to streamline New York state’s sprawling and cumbersome court system are leaving out an often overlooked but critical part of the system: the state’s more than 1,250 randomly operated and loosely regulated town and village courts.”
• In Ontario, the Law Society of Ontario recently approved a budget “which reduced fees for lawyers and paralegals [but which] Nima Hojjati, the chair of the law society’s Equity Advisory Group, [argued] was a ‘missed opportunity’ to assist access to justice and that the profession should have been consulted.”
  • • Relatedly, “[a]n Ottawa defence lawyer sa[id] some the city’s most vulnerable people are feeling the effects of a court system that’s been “gutted” by a massive cut to Legal Aid Ontario’s [LAO] finances.”
• In Texas, “New Texas Lawbook data shows that even as corporate law firms in Texas earn record profits, they have not increased the amount of pro bono legal work they do on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged. Many law firms, in fact, are doing less pro bono work than they were just a few years ago. Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht estimated that between 20 and 30 percent of all Texans who seek help from legal aid offices in Texas are turned away because of staff shortages. “The situation is dire,” Hecht said. The state’s biggest and most successful firms, however, are not stepping up to ease the shortage.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Austin TX, Community Impact published an update on ongoing work to create a public defender’s office for Travis County, authorized last August: “[w]hen the grant expires in 2024, Travis County will have a 67-person staff—about two-thirds attorneys—taking on 30% of indigent cases. The remainder will continue to be appointed private attorneys.”
• In Missouri, “state legislators say the state’s broken public defender system needs to be properly funded, but caution that budgetary and political concerns could get in the way.”
• In Utah County UT, “public defenders have taken on an average of 367 cases per attorney this year [while] public defenders in Salt Lake County handle between 140 and 160 caseloads annually [and] although annual funding has increased the county has not put forward money to hire new attorneys in nearly a dozen years.”
• In Spalding County GA, the “Board of Commissioners has once again tabled the indigent defense contract for State and Juvenile courts[.]”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Philadelphia PA, “[District Attorney Larry Krasner‘s office] has quietly launched an interim version of an unprecedented ‘diversion’ program, in which prosecutors simply withdraw charges for those who show proof they’re in drug treatment.”
• The Center of Media Crime and Justice at John Jay College’s Crime Report covered a recent argument by Prof. Jeffrey Bellin (William & Mary) that “[t]he wave of so-called progressive prosecutors elected around the nation signals a return to the ‘checks and balances’ originally envisioned in the U.S. justice system[.]”
• The New York Times published a profile of “[a]lmost 60 local prosecutors across the country [who] have created special units…to review questionable convictions…tracking an increase in reform-minded prosecutors winning election in mid-size and large cities.”
  • Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen argued in the Washington Post against “[a] small but troubling number of state and local prosecutors are vowing that they will not enforce entire categories of core criminal offenses, as part of a misguided experiment in “social justice reform.” A prosecutor has a vital role: to enforce the law fairly and keep the public safe. These purportedly progressive district attorneys, however, are shirking that duty in favor of unfounded decriminalization policies they claim are necessary to fix a “broken” system.”
  • Also meanwhile, the Washington Examiner argued that if you “strip away the “progressive” branding of the policies and the left-leaning personalities advocating on their behalf, and most of these initiatives are not intrinsically left-wing. Indeed, some even look downright [fiscally] conservative.”
• In Orange County CA, “[a] rapidly growing evidence scandal has swept the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and threatens to alter the criminal justice landscape[:] …Thousands of criminal cases…are potentially tainted after…internal reports revealing that hundreds of sheriff’s deputies sat on evidence and dozens of others lied about filing it.”
• In Queens NY, “[t]he Queens District Attorney’s Office reseased its list of cops who would be an issue on the witness stand[]–despite previously denying it had any lineup of ‘bad cops’[.]”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Playing catchup after last week and it’s a bumper crop of news stories for you all, so buckle in. Of particular note: the Washington State Attorney General’s office published a report based on interviews it has conducted with children in Washington formerly detained on the southern border, unionization drives at two major civil rights organizations have met with resistance from management, and California is considering first-in-the-nation enforceable borrower protections for student loan debtors.

As always, these stories and more are linked below.

See you around,

Sam

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• In Washington State, the state attorney general’s office released an investigative report “based on interviews with children who spent time in border detention facilities and are now living in Washington” as part of a challenge by 20 attorneys general to a Trump administration proposal “that would indefinitely detain migrant families and override current detention standards for children.” The report cannot be easily or adequately summarized; its assertions are lengthy, detailed, and grave.
• In Tuscon AZ, an “[f]ederal court jurors…drew a line between harboring and help [] when they acquitted border aid worker Scott Warren on felony charges for the assistance he gave to two Central American men last year….’The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness,’ Warren told the crowd outside the downtown courthouse.”
• In Oregon, “Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Martha Walters enacted a new rule Thursday that will make it harder for immigration agents to make civil arrests in the state’s courthouses.”
• In New York NY, “[a] federal judge said [] that he plans to rule by the end of the year on the Trump administration’s bid to dismiss a suit led by New York Attorney General Letitia James to challenge its policy of arresting undocumented immigrants in and around state courthouses.”
• Also in New York NY, “[t]he Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office has announced a major initiative that could lead to the reduction or removal of criminal convictions for…immigrants who entered into plea agreements and have convictions for non-violent offenses that subject them to deportation[.]”
• In Colorado, “Governor Jared Polis says [the state] is limited in what it can do to protect DREAMers if the [DACA] program is ended.”
• Law 360 reported that “the federal government has increasingly used in immigration proceedings across the country since 2017 to try to whittle down a massive backlog of cases. At the same time, critics have pointed to breakdowns in the technology and wonder if it is limiting access to counsel for detainees, who can be warehoused hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the courthouse and their attorney.”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In California, “[l]awmakers [] have put forward the first legislation in the nation that would create clear, enforceable borrower protections to rein in abuses by student loan companies[.]”
• Student Loan Hero shared “a rare example of success getting student loans forgiven with the federal PSLF program.”
• Forbes published an analysis of federal data discussing how “most PSLF applications were rejected because borrowers have not met program requirements.”
• Higher Learning Advocates released a policy brief arguing that “[o]ne of the primary accountability metrics used by the federal government [in deeming an institution ‘eligible’ for their students to receive federal student aid] … falls short of fully assessing student loan repayment outcomes[.]” The report goes on to assert that “[h]ow institutions are held accountable for defaults can be strengthened by coupling a new program-level cohort repayment rate (CRR) with the existing institution-based CDR to determine eligibility for federal student aid.”
• In Washington DC, “[u]nder threat of a subpoena, the Trump administration [has] agreed [] to provide documents detailing the Education Department’s handling of student debt relief claims to [the] House Education and Labor Committee Chairman[.]”

International Law

• Human Rights Watch released “comments on the…(draft Strategic Plan) of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court,” noting that “As we see it, the court has achieved limited successes at a time when weakened regard for the global rule of law and politicized attacks on the court have decreased its margin for error. Court officials need to urgently address shortcomings in policy and practice to confront an emerging crisis of public confidence in the institution.”

Legal Technology

• The Knight Foundation announced plans to fund “[t]wenty-two universities, think thanks and advocacy organizations [work] delving into policy issues around technology and the internet [with a] goal[] to ‘help meet the urgent needs of federal lawmakers and other decision-makers as they shape the future of the internet, as the impact of technology on our society and democracy becomes ever more significant.’”
• In New York NY, “Axiom, the global leader in specialized on-demand legal talent, today announced a strategic partnership with Pro Bono Net, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing access to justice and legal support for the disadvantaged.”
• Also in New York NY, reformers argued that “[the] NYPD fingerprint database [recently destroyed, as mentioned in last week’s digest] [is] just part of ‘big data’ that needs oversight[.]”
• In Portland ME, “[the] City Council voted [] to postpone consideration of a proposal to ban city employees from obtaining, retaining, accessing or using facial recognition technology, or information provided by facial recognition technology.”
• In San Diego CA, “a new online tool unveiled by county prosecutors [] allows people to report suspected abuse of students in school.”
• In Kentucky, “[t]he Legal Services Corporation (LSC) [] announced that Legal Aid of the Bluegrass (LABG) will receive a $176,966 Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) to reinvigorate and improve the Kentucky statewide legal information website, kyjustice.org.”
• In Santa Barbara CA, “[t]he Santa Barbara County Public Defender’s Office and Uptrust, the social justice text messaging communication platform, has announced a pilot program to reduce the number of Failure to Appear (FTA) incidents, arrest warrants and technical violations in the county.”
• TechCrunch.com reported that “[w]ith the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) taking effect in January 2020, companies have a limited time to get a handle of customer information they have and how they need to care for it.”
• The Atlantic published an article discussing the recent revelation “that Google had secretly harvested ‘tens of millions’ of medical records–patient names, lab results, diagnoses, hospitalization records, and prescriptions–from more than 2,600 hospitals as part of a machine-learning project code-named Nightingale.”
• In Washington DC, “[a] group of top Senate Democrats said on Monday that any federal privacy legislation should include the possibility that violators will face criminal penalties or consumer lawsuits.”
• Also in Washington DC, “Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) [] introduced a bill that would curtail the flow of sensitive information about people in the US to China through large tech companies like Apple and TikTok.”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In Washington DC, “the National Center for Transgender Equality discharged all employees in a bargaining unit organized under the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union (NPEU); the employees were seeking recognition of a union.” According to an open letter from former staff members:
  • “Over the last decade, it’s been abundantly clear that members of the executive team hold an inconsistent and irreconcilable view of how to make the organization itself a strong social justice movement — including recognition of a union and steps needed to ensure NCTE itself is an equitable place for people of color, people with disabilities, and other marginalized members of the transgender community.”
• Meanwhile, in Montgomery AL, “staff at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) went public with their union organizing campaign. SPLC staff [sought] voluntary recognition from the nonprofit, so that contract negotiations may begin promptly.” But, according to other reports, “Southern Poverty Law Center management said [] they would not voluntarily recognize a union organized by employees at the civil rights nonprofit and have hired a Virginia law firm whose website boasts about victories over labor organization attempts.”
• In New York NY, “[f]ollowing years of complaints from the contracted providers…the New York City Council approved a budget that allows support of indirect cost rates (ICR) exceeding 10 percent of a contract between community-based organizations and the city, starting this week.”
• Also in New York NY, “[t]he New York City Council is considering legislation that would create a new office to assist non-profit organizations in navigating regulations and applying for city contracts and funding.”
• Also also in New York NY, “[a]pproximately two-thirds of unionized so-called nonattorney advocates…need to find second jobs simply to make ends meet, according to the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys[.]”
• In the United States, “[e]mployees at Jewish nonprofits all over the country are disseminating a spreadsheet meant to help inform workers–especially female ones–about the salaries of their peers[.]”
• In Alberta, the “justice ministry’s operating budget…which covers everything from jails to legal aid to prosecutors to government lawyers — is expected to shrink from $1.45 billion to $1.35 billion. The UCP government argues this can be done by modernizing labour-intensive court procedures, including digitizing services as part of an “eCourts” system[.] It has also set aside money to hire 50 additional Crown prosecutors, and increased funding for drug treatment courts[.]”
• In Washington DC, “[a] new strike force of federal and state investigators is targeting antitrust violations in government procurement…The [initiative] is part of DOJ’s focus to reverse a downturn in antitrust prosecutions and collections in recent years.”
• In Georgia, a professor at Georgia State University discussed his research indicating that the US policy of “giving [veterans] a leg up in getting a job with the federal government…has had some negative effects…particularly in terms of lessening the civil service’s diversity[.]”
• In Connecticut, Nonprofit Quarterly discussed the “[b]udget and inequity issues [that] have plagued the state of Connecticut and its nonprofits for years.”
• In Oregon, “[a] contract public defender recently dropped by Weber County says he thinks it happened because he rocked the boat by filing a conflict of interest motion against prosecutors. [He] also says he saw enough during his tenure to conclude that the county’s system of hiring and managing public defenders ‘is in complete violation of the Sixth Amendment.’”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Philadelphia PA, “[the] City Council unanimously passed a bill Thursday that will provide free legal representation to low-income tenants facing eviction, all but cementing Philadelphia on a list of cities that have strengthened renters’ rights amid what many say is a growing national eviction problem.”
• In British Columbia, “legal aid staff lawyers will start [a] work-to-rule job action [] as they seek wages closer to those of other lawyers in the system.” According to a different story, “[a]ll legal aid centres will remain open. However, the 26 LSS staff lawyers will now only be completing their essential client and case work [and] no longer [] performing other administrative duties[.]”
  • Meanwhile, “[t]he government of B.C. is committing $2 million to fully fund eight legal clinics across the province, money which will be dedicated to enhancing access for people on issues of poverty law, disability, tenancy and immigration.”
• In Milwaukee WI, local radio profiled Legal Action of Wisconsin’s Eviction Defense Project.
• In New York NY, “[o]rganizations advocating for a right to counsel for tenants facing evictions [hosted] a town hall in Elmhurst [] as part of an effort to expand the law and ensure all tenants know about it.”
• In California, “[a state] task force aiming to broaden access to legal services now has a few more months to make its final recommendations, as debate continues about whether nonlaywers should be allowed to assist consumers with legal matters.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Maine, “[a] three month-investigation by Pine Tree Watch into the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services found that attorneys’ invoices are frequently incorrect, resulting in them often being overpaid for representing Maine’s poor. For nine years, the commission’s director has uncovered these inaccuracies on a daily basis, but he did not change how attorney payments are approved even as the agency’s spending nearly doubled. Lawmakers began to question the commission’s financial oversight earlier this year after a report by the nonpartisan Sixth Amendment Center revealed that 33 attorneys could have over-charged the state $2.2 million between 2014 and 2018 by billing hours that greatly exceeded full-time work.”
  • Meanwhile, “[l]ast April, a national civil liberties organization released a report on Maine’s indigent defense system — which is farmed out to private attorneys — warning that the state is not adequately providing low income Mainers with the effective legal counsel to which they are constitutionally entitled.”
• In Wyoming, the state “Supreme Court has heard opposing arguments in a case involving public defender representation in state courts [after] State Public Defender Diane Lozano…declared the public defender’s office unavailable for misdemeanor cases due to heavy caseloads and an understaffing crisis [and Campbell County Circuit Judge] Phillips found Lozano in contempt of court[.]”
• In Missouri, the Kansas City Star published a profile of the state’s public defender crisis.
  • The Star additionally published a piece noting that “[p]rosecutors across Missouri have overwhelmed public defenders by filing more and more cases every year, charging some people with much more serious offenses than they committed…In some cases, prosecutors seem confident about the charges until it’s time to show evidence in court.” When prosecutors drop charges just before trial, the result is that “many [Missourians] serve[] time without ever being convicted of anything.”
• On a related note, in New Mexico, “[a state] legislator said [] he intends to reintroduce legislation to reform the state’s bail bond system and crack down on what he called the potentially deadly problem of pretrial release of defendants connected to serious crime…Rehm’s legislation, tabled during the last legislative session, is intended to ‘turn the table, and now the defendant must prove that he should be released[.]’ However, attorneys in the New Mexico Law Offices of the Public Defender say that turning the table and putting the burden on the defendant is unconstitutional and fundamentally unfair.”
• In Louisiana, “[p]ublic defenders…get extra funding when their clients are convicted, creating perverse incentives that make it harder to establish trust between poor defendants and their attorneys[:] an accused offender who gets a court-appointed attorney can be charged $45 for ‘special costs,’ but the public defender’s office only gets the money if the client is convicted.”
• In Oregon, efforts continued in a “recent push to overhaul the state public defense system [after] a January study by the Sixth Amendment Center finding that Oregon’s public defender system was so unfair to defendants it was unconstitutional.”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In New York NY, “[t]he attorney of a Black teen allegedly punched and harassed by New York Police Department officers is releasing new video he hopes will show a pattern of illegal stop-and-frisk searches targeting his client.”
• In New Jersey, “[i]n conjunction with the release of a report by the Transgender Equality Task Force,…the [state] Attorney General issued a directive to all state, county, and local law enforcement agencies that governs interactions with transgender individuals.”
• In Iowa, “[a] supervisor in the Iowa public defender’s office quit his longtime side job as a police officer after critics said his dual roles created a conflict of interest[.]”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I was travelling last week for the NLADA’s annual conference; it was a fantastic event to have been a part of but it did take me away from my digest feeds for a while. I’ll be working through my backlog for the rest of the month to bring you all up to speed, but here’s some news for today: major stories include student debt, where the New York Fed. analyzed data that places racial disparities in student debt into stark relief, and civil access to justice, where the Utah state government is researching possible regulatory changes which would allow nonlawyers to provide legal services. (Meanwhile, researchers in Canadian academia launched a survey concerning limited scope services in family law matters.)

As always, these stories and more are linked below.

See you around,

Sam

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• In San Diego CA, “[a] federal judge asked for clarification…about how exactly the federal government’s “Migrant Protection Protocols” are being employed by immigration agents at the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego as he considers whether asylum seekers have a right to counsel when being interviewed about their fear of being returned to Mexico.”
• In Louiville KY, “[o]ne…nonprofit is offering small loans to help former doctors, nurses and other[ profesionals whose certificants haven’t transferred over when they immigrated to the United States] overcome the financial obstacles preventing them from pursuing their professions in their new home.”
• In Hartfort CT, “[t]he Hartford Courant reports that [] immigration agents say a Connecticut court security officer tried to prevent them from entering a courthouse where they planned to detain a Jamaican man.”
• In Harris County TX, “County District Attorney Kim Ogg on Friday announced her decision to fire a prosecutor who allegedly refused to file charges in a case after questioning whether the Mexican victim was ‘illegal.’”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• In New York, the New York Federal Reserve published a blog post highlighting racial disparities in both the size and the growth rate of student loan debt.
• Also in New York, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips published a legal update concerning “[o]versight of student loan servicing[, which] remains top of mine for state regulators[.]”
• In Washington DC, Pew Charitable Trusts released a report finding that “[a]pproximately a quarter of [student] borrowers defaulted within five years of entering repayment.”
• Also in Washington DC, “[f]acing a federal lawsuit and mounting criticism, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos [] said she will forgive certain student loans for more than 1,500 borrowers who attended a pair of for-profit colleges that shut down last year.”

Legal Technology

• In New York NY, NYU Law’s Policing Project published an article discussing its recent efforts (and successes) building relationships with technology companies as they consider the ethics of their partnerships with law enforcement.
• Also in New York NY, [t]he Legal Aid Society alleged that “‘The NYPD’s fingerprint database of juveniles included children who were never even prosecuted, children whose cases may have been dismissed or they may have been acquitted,’ …Legal Aid says it discovered the NYPD database after a 14 year old was arrested based on fingerprints kept by the department. Legal Aid, which represents most juvenile defendants, says it also learned the state was improperly holding on to fingerprints…The NYPD did not admit any wrongdoing, although it now says it destroys the fingerprints of minors after those prints are sent to the state. Legal Aid is now calling on the City Council to immediately hold oversight hearings on police surveillance, technologies and databases.”
• In Washington DC, “[a] federal regulator is investigating whether the federal privacy law known as HIPAA was followed when Google (GOOGL) collected millions of patient records through a partnership with nonprofit hospital chain Ascension.”
• In Redmond WA, “Microsoft [announced it] will follow California’s landmark online privacy law nationwide when it goes into effect next year[.]”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In New York NY, “[t]he paralegals and social workers who help vulnerable New Yorkers need raises just as badly as the attorneys they support, the lawyers’ labor union says.”
• In Washington DC, the President issued an Executive Order ending an Obama-era policy that required federal contractors and subcontractors “to make bona fide job offers to employees of the predecessor contractor who had worked on the contract site for at least three months and who would otherwise be terminated.”
• In Montgomery AL, “Southern Poverty Law Center management said…they would not voluntarily recognize a union organized by employees at the civil rights nonprofit and have hired a Virginia law firm whose website boasts about victories over labor organization attempts.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Canada, researchers at King’s University College and the Queen’s University Faculty of Law “invit[ed] lawyers across Canda who have undertaken [limited scope services] in family cases or [who] are considering doing so to complete a confidential online survey.” (Survey available here.) Their goal is to publish the results in order to “help improve access to family justice by providing greater access to affordable legal services.”
• In Utah, “[a]n independent legal research center will work with Utah officials to test what could be groundbreaking regulations on allowing nonlawyers to provide legal services.”
• In New York NY, “New Yorkers indicted city landlords for criminal and civil crimes against tenants’ rights during a mock trial hosted by the Right to Counsel NYC Coalition in Tribeca.”
• In British Columbia, “Legal aid services are back to normal after a one-day walkout disrupted some services at the Vancouver Regional Centre[.]”
• In Richmond VA, “[a] task force has been created to come up with ways to help mitigate and prevent evictions in Richmond, Virginia. The group will include affordable housing and social justice advocates, youth and family homelessness specialists, public housing residents and property management professionals.”
• In New Mexico, “[a] newly formed task force is searching for ways to improve the state’s system for providing legal representation to parents and children embroiled in abuse and neglect cases.”
• In Vermont, “The Access to Justice Coalition, a joint venture between the Vermont Supreme Court, the Vermont Bar Association and the primary providers and funders of low-income legal services in the State released a recently completed Economic Impact Study.”
• In Kansas City MO, “[t]enants’ rights are at the forefront at the Kansas City City Council as a growing group tries to pass a ‘Tenants Bill of Rights.’”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Alaska, the state “commissioner of the Department of Administration acknowledged staffing and workload issues for the state’s Public Defender Agency and highlighted the administration’s commitment to fixing them[.]”
• In Oregon, “the Oregon Office of Public Defense Services…recently decided not to renew [a] local attorney group’s contract, making numerous allegations of misconduct.”
• In Sarpy County NE, “[t]he…Public Defender’s office will stop accepting misdemeanor appointments beginning Nov. 18…citing increasing workloads for assistant public defenders.”
• In Missouri, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch speculated about how recent political changes in Missouri suggest that public defenders in the state may be more successful getting assistance with their caseloads than they have been previously.
  • For more on the public defense in Missouri, there’s this article in the Scottsbluff Star Herald.

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Oklahoma, “Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater stands accused of launching an illegal criminal investigation into former state House Speaker Kris Steele and Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform, a nonprofit he leads. The accusations stem from a wrongful termination claim by Prater’s former employee William Muller, [who claims] Prater ordered him in the fall of 2017 to obtain a grand jury subpoena from the state attorney general’s office so he could find “incriminating or compromising information” on Steele and his reform group, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union.”
• In Connecticut, “[s]tate police…began using various social media platforms to provide “use of force” statistics to the public, an initiative that comes with the passage this year of legislation aimed at better accountability that requires police quicken timelines for the release of information and video to the public.”
• In Portland OR, “public defense attorneys…began a coordinated effort [] in advocating against cash bail for their clients, in collaboration with a national legal nonprofit.”
• In New York, “[v]ideo of what appears to be the unprompted stop-and-frisk of a Bronx teen without a criminal record is further evidence that cops still target New Yorkers of color for illegal searches, attorneys say.”
• In San Francisco CA, “[t]he new San Francisco district attorney has said his office will not prosecute prostitution or public urination crimes in the city.”
• In Los Angeles CA, “[f]ormer public defender Rachel Rossi announced…she is entering the race to become the next Los Angeles County district attorney.”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Busy week, both here at NALP and in the world. Thanks to everyone who made it here for the 2019 NALP/PSJD Public Service Mini-Conference. You all make this event what it is, and this year I think it turned out pretty well. Good luck to everyone who has students interviewing at EJW’s CCF this weekend (or who is an interviewing student)!

And now, the news: the Trump administration suffered a pair of high profile court defeats on its immigration policies this week, while in student loan news data indicates student debt is now worth twice as much as the entire housing market and the CFPB has an open call for a task “to examine ways to harmonize and modernize federal consumer financial laws.” In Canada, the Legal Services Society of British Columbia reached an unprecedented bargaining agreement shortly after a unanimous vote to authorize strike action.

As always, these stories and more are available below. But before I go, I’ll leave you with one more, from last spring:

“Speaking six blocks from where he grew up in South Baltimore, Congressman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ‘begged’ lawyers to advance and protect voting rights in the nation…’Voter suppression remains a clear and present danger to the effective functioning of our democratic republic – and it must be stopped,’ Cummings said….He told the lawyers, ‘Without you we’re doomed.’”

See you around,

Sam

Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Issues

• In Toronto ON, panelists at the Law Society of Ontario’s Hispanic Heritage Month “sa[id] they are navigating stricter policies and unstable legal aid funding, even as there is more need for their services amid humanitarian crises in Latin America.”
• In Hawaii, “[A] Shortage of Hawaii Pro Bono Attorneys Hobbles Legal Aid To Asylum Seekers”
• In Mississippi, “[t]he impact of the largest single-state work site immigration raid continues to reverberate through southern Mississippi as more criminal indictments for immigration-related felony charges…are stretching an already overloaded federal public defender’s office, with local civil rights attorneys and volunteers stepping up to assist those who have been charged.”
• In the Western District of Texas, “[a] federal judge ruled…that President Donald Trump violated federal law when he used his declaration of a national emergency to get millions for building a wall on the southern border.”
• In the Southern District of New York, “Attorney General Letitia James announced…that a judge…granted a nationwide preliminary injunction on the [Trump Administration’s ‘public charge’] rule as multiple lawsuits against it snake their way through the court system.”

Environmental Law & Disaster Legal Aid

• In Washington DC, “[t]he Supreme Court is set to decide soon whether to greenlight state-court proceedings for several cases in which state and local government officials seek to hold oil companies accountable for their role in climate change.”

Student Loans & Student Debt

• The Washington Informer reported that “[w]hen likely voters across the country were recently asked their opinions about student loan borrowing, 82% agreed that the still-growing $1.5 trillion debt is a national crisis[:] 74% of Republicans, 80% of independents, and 90% of Democrats.”
• In Washington DC, “Senator Elizabeth Warren [] urg[ed] the Trump administration to end its contract with Navient, one of the biggest contractors that collects payments on federal student loans.”
• Also in Washington DC, “[t]he College Affordability Act[] was introduced by the House Committee on Education and Labor[. It] aims to lower the cose of college, improve the quality of higher education and increase student opportunities[.]”
• Also also in Washington DC, “[Thirty] attorneys general around the nation…requested that the U.S. Department of Education extend the time frame to cancel student loans for students of now-closed schools.”
• Again also in Washington DC, “[f]our U.S. senators told the head of [the CFPB] that they want her to launch examinations into serious problems with a program designed to offer loan forgiveness to public service workers.”
• Yet again also in Washington DC, “[a] cross section of Capitol Hill staffers say the congressional-sponsored student loan repayment program can help mitigate costs for those [staffers] with large educational loans, while spurring recruitment, retention and diversity in the labor pool.”
• Yet again also also in Washington DC, “the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says it’s forming a task force ‘to examine ways to harmonize and modernize federal consumer financial laws’. The CFPB’s [Director] Kraninger said that ‘as we work to set up the task force, we encourage interested individuals to apply to be considered to be part of the task force.” You can find the application here (Deadline 10/25/19)
• In Washington…State, “Attorney General Bob Ferguson is urging the state’s student loan borrowers struggling with public service loan forgiveness to register a complaint with the Attorney General’s office.”
• Benefit News published “5 reasons employers should offer student loan repayment benefits.”
• Realtor.com published data showing that “[t]he total student debt in the United States has grown to nearly double the housing market.”

Legal Technology

• In Mississippi, “Low-income Mississippians who have legal questions may [now] find assistance from the free legal information website ms.freelegalanswers.org.”
• In South Carolina, the Charleston Chronicle reported that “Amazon has been promoting DIY [] surveillance products to consumers….[b]ut what Amazon shoppers and most everyday Americans are just starting to find out is that the real target customers for these surveillance tools are police departments and other law enforcement agencies.”
  • In related news, in Tippecanoe & Clinton County IN, “police are joining 400 other law enforcement agencies across the country in using the new Neighbors by Ring [Amazon] app as a resource.”
• In Washington DC, the National Security Agency “worked with Penn State University, as part of a broader initiative from the Department of Homeland Security, to develop a free online course to educate people on cybersecurity operations, law and policy.”

Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring

• In New York NY, “Niketa Sheth, Executive Director of Womankind, formerly the New York Asian Women’s Center, said…nonprofits like Womankind are struggling to pay staffers and keep programs running because 80 percent of domestic violence action are not reported.”
• In Miami FL, the Miami Herald reported that “[t]he Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence…for the last 13 months[] has flouted the state’s oversight with little consequence.”
• In Washington DC, the Federal Circuit ruled that “[a] pair of nonprofit entities were correctly paid a lower interest rate on their tax refunds because they are incorporated under state law.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Canada, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice released a report concluding that “[m]oney spent on justice programs pays off in terms of economic gains and efficiencies.”
• In Victoria BC, “[s]taff lawyers from The Legal Services Society (LSS), who service Legal Aid centres across BC, voted 100 per cent in favor of strike action[.]” The action appears to have been averted, as “[t]he British Columbia government has reached an agreement with legal aid lawyers [for a] two-and-a-half-year deal [that] will ensure better access to legal support and more stability for lawyers who have been giving services at below cost.”
  • In related news, “the association representing legal aid lawyers in the province is calling [the deal] unprecedented in Canada.”
• In Pennsylvania, “[t]he state Supreme Court heard argument…on whether it should grant a preliminary injunction that would restore the Pennsylvania General Assistance program that provided funding to some 12,000 people before it was eliminated Aug. 1.”
• In Rutland VT, “[r]epresentatives from two nonprofit agencies that help low-income and vulnerable Vermonters with civil cases…will be in the city at the end of the month to hear from the community about the needs and challenges in the state.” [Ed. Note: These agencies are holding meetings at locations around Vermont this month, as previously mentioned in this digest.]
• In Minneapolis MN, “city officials are applauding the first year of a program intended to help families maintain stable housing and keep them out of homeless shelters. …[When] Legal Aid and the Volunteeer Lawyers Network studied 374 eviction cases in Hennepin County…it found that fully represented tenants are twice as likely to stay in their homes and get twice as much time to move if they choose to.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Missouri, “[m]embers of the state public defender commission met Thursday to outline the process for replacing Michael Barrett as director of the financially strapped agency[.] [The c]ommission chairman [] said his goal is to bring a new director on board no later than mid-January.”
• In Tulare County CA, “[a] design oversight at [the] newest jail may be putting the civil rights of prisoners in jeopardy. The problem, say defense attorneys is a lack of interview rooms…and the video conferencing system the [sheriff’s office] has chosen as a substitute.”
• In Butler County OH, “[t]he…Public Defender’s Office submitted the largest request for new staff to the commissioners at 12 [staffers].”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In New York, Indypendent.org published a story arguing that “[a]lthough the NY Working Families Party deserves credit for helping [Queens DA candidate] Tiffany Cabán initially prevail on primary night, there are some important questions surrounding the WFP’s handling of the next stage of the campaign, which ended last week with Cabán’s concession.”