Legal Aid Wins One Round

For foster children awaiting adoption, elderly residents who need help drafting wills and workers cheated by con artists, a federal court delivered some good news recently. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims that a 20-year-old nationwide program that generates millions of dollars for legal aid to the poor violates the Constitution.

The decision, affecting California and eight other Western states, gives public-interest lawyers who depend on these funds to do their work a huge morale boost and means that their poor, often desperate clients will continue to receive the legal help they need.

The 9th Circuit’s decision contradicts an earlier decision from a New Orleans appeals court on the constitutionality of this program, which takes interest earned on money temporarily held by lawyers for their clients and distributes it to legal services programs. The system generates $13 million a year for 102 legal services programs in California and $149 million nationwide. With deep cuts in federal grants to legal services, organizations like Public Counsel and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles rely on this money to continue their good works.

Challenging this funding has become almost a hobby for several conservative legal organizations. They insist that making use of this interest--typically $4 or $5 per case--amounts to an unconstitutional taking of private property.

Because the New Orleans appeals court, looking at much the same sort of challenge as the 9th Circuit, reached a different conclusion, namely that the interest is constitutionally protected property, the issue is almost certain to go before the U.S. Supreme Court for final resolution.

The old and the poor need the same help as everyone else in dealing with divorces and consumer frauds. The high court, which has shown little sympathy toward their concerns in the past, needs now to make sure it doesn’t slam shut the doors of justice to millions of Americans.