|
The nation's second largest program of legal aid for poor
people narrowly survived a challenge from conservative activists
Wednesday, thanks to a 5 4 ruling from the Supreme Court.
The decision was greeted with relief by lawyers who represent
victims of domestic abuse, children in foster care, elderly
consumers who have been defrauded and others who are too poor
to afford legal representation.
"This is a victory for expanding access to justice,"
said Bruce Iwasaki, executive director of the Legal Aid Foundation
of Los Angeles.
Legal aid lawyers do not represent criminals, but their
cases can be controversial nonetheless. Sometimes, they represent
landlords against tenants, farm workers against growers or
welfare recipients against the government.
Funding for legal aid has been controversial as well.
In 1981, after Congress cleared the way for banks to pay
interest on checking accounts, advocates of legal aid devised
a novel funding method. Tiny amounts of interest earned on
trust funds held briefly by lawyers and in some states, escrow
from real estate transactions are swept into a state legal
aid fund.
Last year, this yielded about $200 million nationwide for
legal aid. Only Congress provides more money to fund lawyers
for the poor, through the $338 million a year given to the
Legal Services Corp.
But the program had a powerful enemy in the Washington Legal
Foundation, a conservative group in the nation's capital.
It launched a legal attack 11 years ago seeking to have the
funding program declared unconstitutional, and it appeared
on the verge of victory.
In 1998, the Supreme Court sided with the group in a 5 4
ruling that said the interest earned by these accounts belonged
to the clients.
"We can deal a death blow to the single most important
source of income for radical legal groups all across the country,"
Daniel Popeo, the foundation's legal counsel, said in a fund
raising letter last year.
But their effort came up one vote short in the Supreme Court
Wednesday. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who had joined the
conservative colleagues in the 1998 decision, switched sides
and created a liberal majority to save the program.
O'Connor is both a swing vote and a pragmatist. She is less
likely to be swayed by ideology than by practical facts.
It turned out that the conservative clients who sued had
lost no money.
The lead plaintiff, Allen D. Brown, from the Seattle area,
had deposited $90,521 in escrow for two days in 1997. He said
he was due $4.96 in interest.
But it would have cost more than that to set up a checking
account for two days.
A federal judge in Seattle concluded that Brown had no actual
loss, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and
upheld the legal aid program.
The Reagan administration's former U.S. solicitor general,
Charles Fried, took up the appeal to the Supreme Court in
Brown vs. Legal Foundation of Washington. He urged the court
to strike down the program nationwide. It amounts to taking
private property for public use without just compensation,
he said, a violation of the 5th Amendment.
Instead, the court upheld the program in a decision written
by Justice John Paul Stevens.
"Just compensation for a net loss of zero is zero,"
Stevens said.
He also noted "the dramatic success of these programs
in providing legal services to literally millions of needy
Americans."
Besides O'Connor, Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and Stephen G. Breyer joined his opinion.
In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia faulted what he called
"the Robin Hood Taking, in which the government's extraction
of wealth from those who own it is so cleverly achieved, and
the object of the government's larcenous beneficience is so
highly favored by the courts (taking from the rich to give
to indigent defendants) that the normal rules of the Constitution
protecting private property are suspended." Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence
Thomas agreed.
California's program is somewhat smaller than others because
it does not include interest from real estate transactions.
"It also fluctuates with the interest rates,"
said Judy Garlow, director of the legal services trust fund
for the California state bar. This year, the program yielded
$7.5 million for legal aid.
"It is our second largest source of funding for legal
services in California," she said.
Alfred P. Carlton Jr., the president of the American Bar
Assn., said the court's ruling lifted a cloud from the program.
"The real beneficiaries of this ruling are the tens of
thousands of poor people who receive legal assistance,"
he said.
|
