Legal Services of Northern California Inc

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The World Justice Project‘s new “Rule of Law Index,” a world-wide survey, ranks the United States lowest among 11 developed nations when it comes to providing access to justice to its citizens — and lower than some third-world nations in some categories. The survey assessed how laws are implemented and enforced in practice around the globe. Countries are rated on such factors as whether government officials are accountable, whether legal institutions protect fundamental rights, and how ordinary people fare in the system.
The organization polled 1,000 people in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and found a significant gap between the rich and the poor in terms of their use and satisfaction with the civil courts system. Only 40% of low-income respondents thought the court system process was fair, compared to 71% of wealthy respondents. This 31% gap is the widest among all developed countries sampled. In France this gap is only 5%, in South Korea it is 4% and in Spain it is nonexistent.

The California Commission on Access to Justice this week released its newest report, Improving Civil Justice in Rural California, prepared by the Commission’s Rural Advisory Committee. Herb Whitaker, Managing Attorney of the LSNC Auburn Office, was the Committee Co-chair; Gary Smith, LSNC Executive Director, was also among the 19-member Rural Advisory Committee members that researched and prepared this report for the California State Bar.
The report addresses the paucity of funding for legal services in rural areas and the issues faced by the most vulnerable members of our society living in rural and remote areas of California. The Rural Advisory Committee hopes that members of California’s legal community and advocates for community-based organizations will use the report as a resource and help to implement the report’s recommendations to address the unacceptable imbalance of resources.
An excerpt from the Executive Summary:

There is a startling resource disparity between urban and rural areas of California, and one of the long-term goals of the California Commission on Access to Justice has been to “increase resources in rural areas [and] establish minimum access guidelines to be used as a baseline for funding considerations” in order to achieve true access to justice for all Californians. Both local and statewide collaboration is needed to improve legal services in rural areas, including the pursuit of the goal of statewide parity in funding. Achieving these goals is a shared responsibility. Since no legal aid program has adequate resources, initiatives to address the severe lack of resources in rural areas should be pursued in a way that does not unnecessarily undermine urban legal programs. However, there should be at least a minimum level of access for every region of the state.

You can catch the HUD webinar on Assessing Allegations of LGBT Housing Discrimination. Learn about the Guidance Memo on this issue, LGBT cultural competency, legal underpinnings, and more.

While most plaintiffs would be thrilled to receive a large lump sum settlement to compensate them for some injury of significant loss, low income people who rely upon public benefits due to advanced age, disability or other hardships find that receiving such an award can have dire consequences. Some become disqualified from receiving aid under the complex income and resource rules governing public benefit programs, even when the lump sum award is not sufficient to replace that aid. LSNC attorneys will join attorneys from the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the Homeless Action Center to discuss the impact of lump sum awards on public benefit recipients at the State Bar Annual Meeting in Monterey. View the presentation slide show. This presentation will be followed later this year by the publication of a guide for attorneys on the same topic.

In a report released this month, the US Census Bureau reports that the poverty rate in the United States rose more than a percentage point last year, from 13.2% in 2008 to 14.3% in 2009. This increase continues a trend since 2007, the beginning of the national economic downturn, that outpaces the increase in poverty experienced in the U.S. in the recessions of the early 1970s and 1980s. The poverty rate for children increased even more, to 20.7 percent, nearly two percentage points higher than the 2008 rate. The report also confirms that earnings disparities between genders and among racial and ethnic groups persist, with men earning nearly 25% more than women and median earnings for Blacks and Hispanics lagging behind Whites and Asians by tens of thousands of dollars annually.

The first two headline items in the September 2010 issue of the State Bar of California Office of Legal Services monthly newsletter feature the exceptional work of prominent LSNC advocates.
The first item draws attention to the Rural Justice Report to be released this month. Herb Whitaker, Managing Attorney in the LSNC Auburn Office heads the State Bar committee that prepared the report. The second item highlights that Gary Smith, LSNC Executive Director, is the 2010 recipient of the Loren Miller Legal Services Award, the highest award of recognition in the legal services community in California.

We are still in the process of making several major changes “under the hood” here at LSNC.net, so we are again compelled to ask for your patience as we re-tool things and make fixes for various parts of the site that are not working properly. In time, all will be repaired and revealed.

There likely will be a few interruptions and disruptions of service at all the LSNC.net sites over the next few days, starting this Friday and over the coming weekend – August 20-22. As the first step in a series of changes planned for all the LSNC sites, this weekend we will be changing our web servers and repositioning some of the content, so you may encounter some bad links as well. Be assured we’re on it, and will be working hard to get everything in place and working smoothly. Thanks for your patience and understanding!

These statistics would be printed on the back. The Social Security Administration recently posted data on the decisions issued by its administrative law judges for the fiscal year 2010. The report shows many ALJs disposing of more than 450 cases since September 2009 – a rate of about one and a half cases per day. Disability allowance rates are all over the map, with some ALJs at higher than 95% and others down around 20%. The report includes total dispositions and total decisions, specifying whether they were unfavorable, fully favorable or partially favorable.

The Civil Rights Division of the DOJ and HHS have jointly released Access to Medical Care for Persons with Mobility Disabilities, a technical assistance document designed to assist medical providers in understanding how the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 apply to them.