SEVENTEEN BAR ASSOCIATIONS FILE FRIEND OF THE COURT BRIEF

The Connecticut Bar Association joined sixteen other bar associations in filing a friend of the court brief in a federal appeals court to support expanded legal representation for the poor in civil cases.

In the brief, the group of bar associations argue that federal restrictions on how legal services organizations can spend private money violate the First Amendment to the Constitution and run contrary to the nation's "founding principle of equal justice for all." The brief urges the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to uphold a preliminary injunction barring the federal Legal Services Corporation (LSC) from enforcing its physical separation requirement on three New York City legal services organizations.

Civil legal services lawyers help low-income Americans challenge unlawful evictions, protect themselves against domestic violence, and obtain health care, food, shelter, and other public benefits to which they are entitled. "In providing these services," the bars write, "legal services lawyers preserve and enforce fundamental constitutional and statutory rights and also help alter the conditions that lead to poverty." They warn that "the success of our effort [to improve access to legal representation and to the justice system for the most vulnerable members of our society] depends in large part on the ability of legal services organizations to use all sources of funding efficiently."

Legal services lawyers receive grants from the federally-funded Legal Services Corporation, but Congress restricts LSC grantees from representing clients in class actions, representing many classes of legal immigrants and all people in prison, representing clients before legislatures, and collecting attorneys' fees in winning cases.