COUNTYWIDE : County Will Lose Its ACLU Attorney

Because of fund-raising problems, the American Civil Liberties Union will no longer have a staff attorney based in Orange County, and local attorneys who do civil rights work say the cutback will make their jobs more difficult.

The ACLU announced this week that Rebecca Jurado, the ACLU attorney who has worked full time in Orange County for the last two years, will return June 1 to the organization’s regional office in Los Angeles, where she will devote 25% of her time to Orange County cases.

Although Jurado said the ACLU will maintain a presence in Orange County, other lawyers said Wednesday that the lack of a full-time ACLU attorney here could decrease attention to the most difficult civil rights cases--those the ACLU has traditionally taken on.

“Orange County has always had many civil liberties problems,” said Dick Herman, a Newport Beach attorney who does volunteer litigation involving jail issues. “There’s a need for people to guard civil liberties here. . . . It was very useful to have a full-time ACLU attorney based in the county.”

Andrew Guilford, president of the Orange County Bar Assn., agreed. “There’s clearly a problem with access to justice in Orange County,” he said. “While I personally don’t support all their agenda items, they’ve done some very important work.”

Ramona Ripston, an administrator for the ACLU in Los Angeles, said the reason for the cutback was that ACLU fund raising in Southern California came up $100,000 short last year. The annual cost of keeping the Orange County office open was about $70,000, including rent, salary and office expenses.

The lawyers interviewed Wednesday who do volunteer work for the ACLU said their caseloads were stretched to the maximum. Jurado’s departure, they agreed, would weaken the informal network of agencies and individuals providing free or low-cost legal services and could possibly result in some cases falling by the wayside.

Justin Clauser, general counsel at the Poverty Law Center in Santa Ana, said his organization’s resources were depleted after its recent successful defense of homeless people against Santa Ana police tactics.

“I’m afraid I’ll have more requests for assistance than I’ll be able to deal with.”

“It’s not the type of work that’s readily picked up by someone else,” said Robert Cohen, director of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County.