The House of Representatives’ proposal to cut funding this year for the Legal Services Corp. (LSC) goes to the heart of our American values — equal access to justice and equal justice under law.
These values are not lofty abstractions. As we have seen firsthand, legal aid attorneys across the nation find solutions to critical legal problems confronting low-income Americans. These attorneys last year handled nearly 1 million civil matters involving households with 2.3 million people. They helped families fight unlawful eviction, ensured military veterans received fair treatment, helped women escape domestic violence, protected the elderly from scam artists and responded to the needs of disabled citizens.
For the last 36 years, Congress has appropriated funds for civil legal assistance, and the current level is $394.4 million. Now, in the middle of a fiscal year, the House has targeted LSC for a $70 million cut in these funds, which would immediately impact 136 nonprofit legal aid programs assisting clients in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. territories.
The House-passed cut would mean fewer low-income people, by the tens of thousands, being able to obtain help for their critical legal problems.
The timing could not be worse. The work of legal aid attorneys has become ever more important since the 2008 recession and the significant rise in poverty across the land. Fifty-seven million Americans qualify for civil legal assistance, and these individuals live at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline — an income of $27,938 for a family of four.
In many cases, civil legal assistance averts more costly interventions by state and local agencies. For low-income Americans, legal aid greatly improves their chances of keeping their home rather than moving into a city or county shelter, escaping an abusive relationship rather than suffering further injury or even death, and assisting veterans with a myriad of legal problems.
Legal aid attorneys do not handle criminal matters, do not litigate personal injury cases and do not pursue class actions or frivolous lawsuits. These nonprofit programs strive to be efficient and effective and increasingly use technology to expand access to legal information and to the courts, through statewide websites and online forms.
This national network of legal aid programs has become one of the nation’s most successful public-private partnerships, bringing together the courts, the private bar, state access to justice commissions, law schools and business and religious groups to help the most vulnerable in our society. Private pro bono lawyers handle more than 10 percent of LSC-funded cases and donate significant and valuable time to legal aid programs.
The federally funded LSC grants represent 40 percent of the total funding received by our programs, and, based on our experiences in our home states of Georgia and Illinois, these grants are the bedrock that assures local legal aid programs are able to operate.
The Constitution calls for establishing justice in its very first line. The Pledge of Allegiance proclaims our national commitment to “justice for all.” As the legendary federal judge Learned Hand said, “If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice.”
Irrespective of the state of the national economy, we all share a responsibility as Americans to support the values of the Constitution and to keep the flame of equal justice alive.
John Levi of Chicago is chairman of the Legal Services Corp. board of directors.
Frank Strickland of Atlanta served as chairman from 2003 to 2010.
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