Battling the LSC

In 1996 the Republican-led Congress imposed new restrictions on legal-services providers that are funded by the nonprofit Legal Services Corporation (LSC) in Washington, D.C. Recipients cannot initiate or participate in class actions, collect attorneys fees from adverse parties, or represent certain aliens. (See 45 C.F.R. § 1617.3 (class actions); § 1642.1 (attorneys fees); and § 1626.3 (illegal aliens).) In response, California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) found private counsel to take over more than 100 of its active cases, including a significant number of class actions.
      CRLA now cooperates much more extensively with private lawyers, far beyond the legal requirement to use 12.5 percent of its resources to do so. Because private counsel may collect attorneys fees, this cooperation means that many defendants face a potentially significant expense. And private lawyers, unlike those at CRLA, are able to represent undocumented clients.
      "Our relationships with private counsel are critical," says Jose R. Padilla, CRLA's executive director. "Not only can they represent individuals where we are barred, they also can ensure that farmworkers and the poor continue to have access to quality litigation."
      Padilla continues, "So long as CRLA doesn't directly represent any ineligible immigrants, it can participate in litigation that might benefit both eligible and ineligible case members." (See 45 C.F.R. § 1626.2(e).)
      By keeping strictly to the letter of the regulations, CRLA held its critics at bay for more than a decade. Early in 2000, however, CRLA began filing complaints against powerful dairy interests in the Central Valley, settling one of its many cases on behalf of dairy workers for $475,000 (Luis Lopez Tomayo v. Paul Souza Company, No. 06-220770 (Tulare County Super. Ct.)). The first of several federal investigations of CRLA began later that year at the request of some members of Congress from rural California.
      In 2006 the LSC issued a report, sought by U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Visalia), finding "substantial evidence that CRLA has violated federal law" by engaging in conduct prohibited by funding restrictions. Last year Kirt West, outgoing LSC inspector general, issued a subpoena demanding 33 months of data on 39,000 clients to determine if CRLA "disproportionately focuses its resources on farmworker and Latino work." CRLA refused to comply with the subpoena, Padilla says, "because California law protects clients and their confidentiality." The case has been fully briefed and is awaiting either the scheduling of a hearing or a decision (United States and Kirt West v. CRLA, No. 07-MC-01239 (D.D.C.)).
      "The office of inspector general can make no conceivable use of the 39,000 client names and their spouse names it is seeking," says Marty Glick, a partner at San Francisco's Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin who represents CRLA. "It refuses to say why it wants or needs them. It is also demanding access to privileged and work-product memoranda and documents. One has to wonder what the purpose is. Why is the effort to give people redress for the failure to pay legal wages or overtime so controversial?"
      In 2007 the LSC limited CRLA's funding to a month-to-month basis, but in 2008 the restrictions were relaxed to a six-month cycle. "But there's no end in sight," Padilla says. "The message we get is that CRLA should change the way it advocates for low-wage and Latino workers. We're being punished for protecting our clients."
     
     

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