Justice For All

Our View: Lifting Restrictions On Legal Aid Will Give The Poor A Stronger Voice In Court

For the first time in more than a decade, Congress has a real chance to lift the crippling restrictions on the federally financed Legal Services Corporation (LSC) that have hampered the agency's efforts to assist poor people seeking redress through the courts. At a time when many people are struggling against the threat of foreclosure, eviction or loss of health and unemployment benefits as a result of the economic downturn, the LSC's services are needed more than ever. Congress should seize this opportunity to make them available as widely as possible.

The LSC was created by Congress in 1974 to help fund state and local legal aid organizations that represent indigent clients in civil cases. But after the Republican takeover of Congress that began in 1994, lawmakers imposed increasingly punishing restrictions on how LSC funds could be used to press poor people's claims in court.

One restriction prohibited plaintiff's lawyers who prevail in civil rights and consumer protection cases from recovering attorney's fees from the opposing side. Legal aid groups often use such fees to help support their operating expenses. Another restriction barred legal aid lawyers from representing clients in class-action suits that seek relief for problems affecting large numbers of people.

A third provision, the so-called "poison pill" restriction, proved even more insidious in its effect on the ability of indigent clients to have their day in court. It extended a laundry list of congressionally mandated restrictions on the use of federal funds - including bans on abortion litigation and cases involving prison inmates or undocumented immigrants - to all other funds a legal aid group might raise from state or local governments or private sources. That sweeping prohibition effectively tied up hundreds of millions of dollars that legal aid groups otherwise could have used to litigate cases ranging from voting rights and medical insurance benefits to public housing complaints and labor union disputes.

But last week a Senate appropriations subcommittee led by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski stripped the poison pill restrictions from the bill for all but abortion and prisoner representation cases when it approved the LSC's $400 million budget for next year; the panel's appropriation represented a $10 million increase over the LSC's 2009 budget. And earlier, House lawmakers had approved an even larger increase, to $440 million, and lifted the ban on attorney fees. The House version, however, leaves the "poison pill" intact.