National Center for Law and Economic Justice
National Center for Law and Economic Justice (NCLEJ) works to advance the cause of economic justice for low-income families, individuals, and communities, using groundbreaking impact litigation, policy advocacy, and support for grassroots organizing. Because poverty disproportionately impacts communities of color and families headed by women, the Center applies this strategy to advance racial, immigrant, and gender justice. NCLEJ believes that this nation should ensure that all have access to the means to meet basic human needs and that all people are guaranteed an equal opportunity to participate. NCLEJ addresses a broad range of issues that impact low-income families. Our work focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on preserving and maintaining access to government benefits; protecting and securing the rights of low-wage workers; combatting unlawful debt collection; and advocating for persons with disabilities. NCLEJ’s staff of award-winning experienced lawyers multiplies its impact by collaborating with major law firms and with civil rights, civil liberties, women’s rights, and immigrants’ rights organizations.
NCLEJ was founded in 1965, in the heyday of the civil rights movement. From the very start, NCLEJ staff joined with southern civil rights lawyers in landmark cases, worked with community-based organizations around the country, won ground-breaking victories in the courts, and achieved major reforms in legislation and agency policies and practices. Through these early successes, NCLEJ demonstrated that the law can be a powerful instrument for improving the lives of the most disadvantaged members of our society. NCLEJ has guaranteed access to benefits for hundreds of thousands of people providing a baseline of economic security to help stabilize low-income families and individuals, holding agencies accountable to comply with the law, and safeguarding important legal and constitutional rights.
THE CASE
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The Barbara McDowell Foundation is helping to fund NCLEJ’s work in Montgomery, Alabama, which challenges pervasive and long-standing systematic and unlawful targeting of communities of color and the aggressive, punitive traffic stops and arrests resulting in millions of dollars in revenues on the backs of low-income residents. In addition, Plaintiffs contend that the City of Montgomery’s court system has a pattern and practice of jailing debtors who cannot afford to pay their criminal debt and has created conditions that have forced debtors to engage in court-imposed community service to reduce their time in jail. Plaintiffs also seek to hold accountable a private company that acted as a collection agent for the City of Montgomery. As the Court observed has:
“The complaint in this case regards the City of Montgomery, Alabama's alleged creation of debtor's prisons. Plaintiffs maintain that indigent individuals were made to sit in jail and "sit out" fines they could not afford to pay without ever being informed of their rights. This was done without any determination as to whether the plaintiffs could afford to pay the fines.”
This case arises at the intersection of two of NCLEJ’s ongoing areas of litigation focus - racial justice and unfair and abusive debt collection practices.
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The Barbara McDowell Foundation is generously helping to fund NCLEJ’s class action law suit, Black Love Resists et al v. City of Buffalo et al., which challenges the Buffalo Police Department’s systematic and unlawful targeting of communities of color and the City of Buffalo's aggressive, punitive traffic enforcement resulting in millions of dollars in ticket revenues on the backs of low-income drivers. Moreover, these are many of the same practices and policies that lead to community unrest in places like Ferguson, Missouri. NCLEJ and co-counsel brought the action on behalf of thousands of individuals as well as the organization Black Love Resists in the Rust, whose members have been harmed by the Checkpoints program. Since 2012, the Buffalo Police Department has conducted thousands of constitutionally impermissible “traffic safety” stops. The checkpoints were placed overwhelmingly in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, and police officers were issuing excessive traffic summons to increase city revenue. 91.4% of all check points were in majority Black or Latinx census tracts, and race was a driving factor in the location of these checkpoints.
The lawsuit aims to stop these discriminatory policing practices that have subjected communities of color in Buffalo to both unreasonable intrusion and relentless revenue harvesting through unfair ticketing, towing, suspensions, and arrests. This case arises at the intersection of two of NCLEJ’s ongoing areas of litigation focus- racial justice and unfair and abusive debt collection practices.
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In the ground-breaking litigation to enforce the preliminary injunction requiring Connecticut to timely provide food stamps to eligible households, NCLEJ will work with local colleagues and advocate to (1) enforce the injunction which requires the State to timely process applications for food stamps and (2) prepare for trial on the merits. Here, we and our colleagues won a first of its kind victory at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals setting forth that the provisions of the Food Stamp Act under which we sued were federally enforceable by applicants.
During the grant period, we plan to use a variety of tools to compel timely processing of applications. We will leverage the experience acquired in comparable work in other states to achieve improvements in agency practices and to institute oversight that will serve both as a management tool and as a means of measuring progress. We expect considerable resistance as Connecticut has fought hard at every step of the case.
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NCLEJ will advocate to (1) require the State to timely process applications for Medicaid and CHiP and (2) prevent implementation of a policy that will force hundreds of eligible families from the Medicaid rolls. Previously, Hawaii continued Medicaid uninterrupted until it had reason to believe the family ineligible. It is estimated that, the new policy, by forcing all families to periodically recertify for eligibility, even in the absence of a change in circumstances (a process known as churning), will result in 30% of eligible households being terminated for reasons unrelated to eligibility.
During the grant period, we plan to use a variety of tools to compel timely processing of applications and, if necessary, to stop unlawful terminations of eligible families. We will leverage the experience acquired in comparable work in other states to achieve improvements in agency practices and to institute oversight that will serve both as a management tool and as a means of measuring process.
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A grant was made for legal work in connection with Davis v. Henneberry, a case in Colorado brought to enforce federal and state mandates to process applications and redeterminations for Medicaid and food stamps in a timely manner.
CASE UPDATES SINCE GRANT YEAR
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The parties initially briefed class certification during the summer of 2020, culminating in a two-day evidentiary hearing. On December 24, 2020, the district court denied class certification because we did not have an administratively feasible method of identifying class members. Still, we successfully appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, which reversed, sending the case back to the district court. In May 2021, the district court again denied class certification, and we sought leave to appeal.
Since our last report, the Eleventh Circuit granted our motion for leave to appeal, and a briefing is underway. There has been no significant media coverage or court decisions since our last report.
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In 2019, the Foundation awarded NCLEJ $30,000 in support of Black Love Resists in the Rust v. City of Buffalo, a class action lawsuit intended to redress and reform racially discriminatory policing practices. Before filing, the Buffalo Police Department (BPD) had conducted thousands of "traffic safety" stops at police checkpoints overwhelmingly concentrated in low-income communities of color. So common were the Checkpoints that Buffalo's East Side residents lived their daily lives under near-constant police surveillance. Plaintiffs allege that Defendants targeted and continue targeting them for increased police enforcement to generate revenue for the City budget, as in Ferguson, Missouri. We engaged in extensive discovery and community outreach efforts with the Foundation's support. Because the City refused to turn over basic data on ticketing practices, we successfully subpoenaed this information from third parties. We then hired experts to help us interpret and analyze the data. After the grant period ended, we amended our complaint to include new allegations of discriminatory ticketing practices outside of Checkpoints, and we added five new named plaintiffs, whose stories fill out the range of discriminatory ticketing practices employed by the BPD.
Since our last update, provided in April 2020, we have continued to litigate the case aggressively despite extraordinary intransigence by the City in refusing to comply with basic discovery obligations. We had to file four separate motions to compel, and the district court eventually ordered sanctions against the City, which spurred the City to produce documents. We have subpoenaed and are analyzing updated ticketing data for 2020 and 2021. We have reviewed nearly 90,000 documents, with review ongoing. We have conducted ten depositions and expect to take at least another ten during Summer 2022. We expect to conclude discovery and move for class certification in September 2022.
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Obtained a preliminary and permanent injunction against the State of Connecticut on behalf of low-income people to enforce their rights to food stamps. Because of unjustified denials and delays in processing food stamp applications 40% of the eligible households in Connecticut could not access food stamps in a timely manner leaving families going hungry for weeks and months. Extensive discovery occurred in the case after which the district judge ordered the parties to utilize experts to negotiate a remedy.
Subsequently, in March of 2017 the district court approved a comprehensive class action settlement.
Briggs v. Bremby -
Negotiated changes in access to Medicaid benefits in Hawaii where low-income persons were experiencing long delays in processing their applications and obtained adjustments to the State’s recertification procedures so that families did not have to submit repeated applications in order to access health benefits.
As a result of these efforts, the State dramatically improved its ability to process new Medicaid applications.
Booth v. Koller -
Undertook successful enforcement of a consent decree it had obtained against the State of Colorado to ensure the rights of low-income people to have access to food stamps, Medicaid, and child health benefits in a timely manner. As a result of the state’s delays in processing applications, tens of thousands of eligible households could not access food aid and medical benefits. Continued monitoring occurred until 2017 when the State achieved the timely processing of food stamps and other benefits.
Davis v. Hennebury
GRANT AMOUNT
$40,000 (2020)
$30,000 (2019)
$16,667 (2016)
$10,000 (2012)
$2,500 (2011)
“With the support from the Foundation, tens of thousands of low-income households gained access to subsistence benefits necessary to sustain life and health
– the National Center for Law and Economic Justice
“At the beginning of the litigation, Connecticut was last in the nation in terms of the timely processing of food stamps. Now, it is in the forefront of delivering food stamps to households in a manner that will help them put food on the table.”
– Greg Bass, Senior Attorney