H IDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS ON LEGAL AID LAWYERS? THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE SERIES HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS ON LEGAL AID LAWYERS? About the Brennan Center for Justice The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law unites thinkers and advocates in pursuit of a vision of inclusive and effective democracy. Our mission is to develop and implement an innovative, nonpartisan agenda of scholarship, public education, and legal action that promotes equality and human dignity while safeguarding fundamental freedoms. Central to the Center’s Poverty Program is its innovative Legal Services Project — a national, multi-faceted effort to help ensure effective, enduring, and unrestricted civil legal assistance for low-income individuals and communities. The Center actively fights efforts to restrict legal services programs and vocally rebuts the relentless attacks made by their opponents. About The Access to Justice Series This paper is the seventh in a series issued by the Center illuminating the accomplishments of legal services programs throughout the country, and documenting the impact of restrictions recently imposed by Congress on the federally funded Legal Services Corporation. It is the result of extensive investigative reporting by award-winning journalist Patrick J. Kiger in close collaboration with the Brennan Center’s Laura K. Abel, Elisabeth S. Jacobs, Jobina Jones, Leena Khandwala, Ilana Marmon, Kimani Paul-Emile, Amanda E. Cooper, and David S. Udell. The following individuals have been consulted as advisors for this series: Bonnie Allen, William Beardall, Martha Bergmark, Ann Erickson, Victor Geminiani, Peter Helwig, Steve Hitov, Carol Honsa, Alan W. Houseman, Esther Lardent, Linda Perl, Don Saunders, Julie M. Strandlie, Mauricio Vivero, Jonathan A. Weiss and Ira Zarov. For more information, or to order any of the Brennan Center’s publications, contact the Center at: BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE AT NYU SCHOOL OF LAW 161 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, 12TH FLOOR NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10013 212 998 6730 FAX 212 995 4550 www.brennancenter.org Acknowledgments The Access to Justice Series is supported by generous grants from the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute. THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE SERIES THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE SERIES B RENNAN C ENTER FOR J USTICE H IDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS ON LEGAL AID LAWYERS? X1 THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE SERIES HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS ON LEGAL AID LAWYERS? The seventh installment of the Access to Justice Series, Hidden Agendas: What Is Really Behind the Attacks on Legal Aid Lawyers? shines a bright light on the organizations and individuals responsible for imposing funding cuts and restrictions on civil legal aid lawyers, particularly on those in programs receiving federal funds from the nation’s Legal Services Corporation. These cuts and restrictions directly harm individuals and families unable to afford private counsel, but it is not immediately obvious why anyone would wish these vulnerable people ill. After all, civil legal aid programs have historically represented people for whom many Americans feel tremendous empathy: individuals and families being evicted, deported, exploited by employers, victimized by domestic violence, denied governmental benefits, cheated through consumer fraud, denied fair wages, and more. So, who is trying to take away the lawyers and deny the vulnerable poor their day in court? It is a narrow band of very aggressive advocacy groups closely allied with agribusiness interests and the Religious Right. Those with the highest profile include the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Christian Coalition, the Conservative Caucus, the Family Research Counsel, and the National Legal and Policy Center. Why attack legal aid? These groups say that legal aid pursues a left-wing agenda and helps immoral people, but the attackers’ true agenda is to relax legal protections for workers and to impose the attackers’ particular vision of correct morality on the entire society. This article reveals these motivations, and, more profoundly, illuminates the importance of preserving access to justice, not only for the most vulnerable members of society, but for us all. David S. Udell Director, Poverty Program Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law X2 Copyright© January 2001 by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without permission in writing from the publisher, Brennan Center for Justice, 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th Floor, New York, New York 10013. THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE SERIES B RENNAN C ENTER FOR J USTICE H IDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS ON LEGAL AID LAWYERS? TABLE OF CONTENTS THE FARM BUREAU . .5 THE NATIONAL LEGAL AND POLICY CENTER 11 THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT . .15 CONCLUSION . .20 X31 THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE SERIES HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS ON LEGAL AID LAWYERS? Where do low-income Americans — including lawyers of promoting divorce and homosexuality, helping abused women and children in Oregon, elderly victims drug dealers, and putting farmers out of business. One of consumer fraud schemes in Tennessee, and farm critic, Howard Phillips of The Conservative Caucus, workers cheated of their wages in Florida and Maryland complains to Congress that the lawyers are “imbued with — turn when they have serious legal problems and a neo-Marxist ideology of class warfare and socialist cannot afford to hire a lawyer? Each year, more than a objective.” Another critic, Kenneth Boehm, whose million individuals turn to legal aid lawyers at the over National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) pumps out 200 independent non-profits nationwide that receive magazine articles and press handouts called Legal Services federal funding from the Legal Services Corporation Horror Stories, asks, “Are [legal aid lawyers] really representing the poor, or are they pursuing their own political agenda?” Yet another attacker, Family Research Council (FRC) President and sometime United States Presidential candidate Gary Bauer, declares, “[LSC is] a taxpayer-funded deep well for anti-family litigation.” Harry Bell, a board member of the American Farm Bureau Federation (Farm Bureau), likewise denounces LSC as “an unproductive and unnecessary expense for the federal government.” One particularly vehement critic, political fund-raiser and activist Paul Weyrich, goes so far as to describe LSC as “among those government organizations most harmful to our society.” Attacks such as these have inflicted major damage: LSC’s critics mounted a well-financed, highly organized publicity and lobbying effort, and it worked. In 1995, Paul Weyrich (Terry Ashe/TIME/TimePix, reprinted with permission) the critics convinced Congress to slash LSC’s appropriation from $400 million to $278 million, as (LSC). Although these advocates make a profound part of a plan to eliminate the program completely over difference in many people’s lives, since the inception of a three-year period. Thanks to energetic efforts by legal LSC in 1974 the lawyers have been under nearly aid supporters, the organized bar, and sympathetic continuous attack from enemies who consider LSC an members of Congress, LSC’s life has so far been spared, outrage and demand that it be shut down. but just barely. Today, LSC struggles with an Critics denounce LSC as a program run dangerously appropriation of just over $300 million. Even without amok, a haven for ideologically-driven lawyers who use adjusting for inflation, that is less than the program public funding to further their own aims, rather than to had at its disposal in 1981. When the figure is adjusted help low-income people. The critics accuse LSC-funded for inflation, it is less than half of the 1981 allocation. Today, LSC struggles with an appropriation of just over $300 million. Even without adjusting for inflation, that is less than the program had at its disposal in 1981. When the figure is adjusted for inflation, it is less than half of the 2 1981 allocation. THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE SERIES B RENNAN C ENTER FOR J USTICE Howard Phillips Howard Phillips is one of LSC’s most dedicated foes. While he was the director of the Office for Economic Opportunity under President Nixon, Phillips nearly succeeded in entirely eliminating federal funding for legal aid. In the following decades, Phillips has drifted away from mainstream conservatism and founded a radical third party, currently called the Constitution Party, which is based on the belief that “the U.S. Constitution established a Republic under God, rather than a democracy.” The following excerpts from Phillips’ September 2000 acceptance speech for the Constitution Party’s Presidential nomination, which included a call for the abolition of LSC, illuminate the views of this vociferous LSC critic: [O]n Day One, as President of the United States, I will officially acknowledge the legal personhood of the unborn child, and appoint — by recess appointment, if necessary — new United States Attorneys who will make it their top priority to work with state and local officials in prosecuting and closing down every abortuary within their jurisdictions. *** [T]he bipartisan Washington political establishment ignores the prohibition on Congress funding any establishment of religion, looking the other way as Congress doles out scores of billions of dollars annually to organizations whose religion is abortion, whose religion is sodomy, whose religion is environmentalism, whose religion is