News

Department of Justice cites Sheller Center language access study

A newly released report by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Language Access in State Courts, cites Barriers to Justice for Non-English Speakers in the Pennsylvania Courts, a Sheller Center study.  In that study, Social Justice Lawyering Clinic students presented the results of their research on Pennsylvania’s Magisterial District Justice courts (the lowest level in the Pennsylvania court system). The research showed that these courts often operated in violation of civil rights laws mandating language services for people whose native language is not English.

DOJ’s report cites some of the problems uncovered by the Center’s study, including “instructing LEP [Limited English Proficient] individuals to wait in the court lobby until another person who speaks their language comes in, or [expecting] the LEP person to come to the courthouse with an English-speaking friend or family member.”  DOJ states that “the challenge of providing meaningful language access in state courts demands that we continue to modernize, innovate, and keep pace with the evolving demographics of our country.”

With the development of a statewide language access plan in Pennsylvania, the hope is that the courts will implement uniform policies and practices that improve access to justice for non-English-speaking individuals.

Affordable housing and racial justice

The redevelopment of Philadelphia neighborhoods is putting pressure on the city’s supply of public housing – and on Philadelphia’s poorest residents, who are disproportionately persons of color.  What can be done to ensure that their housing needs are fairly addressed?

With this problem in mind, Justice Lab students are continuing to work this fall with their client, Community Legal Services’ Housing Unit.  While an advanced student continues to work on advocacy related to HUD’s new Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program (see our Philadelphia Rental Assistance Demonstration Program Advocacy Guide, issued last spring), other Justice Lab students are helping CLS develop a long-term strategy to address racial justice in affordable housing in Philadelphia.

Students are collecting and analyzing data about public housing properties, Section 8 contracts, demographics, income levels, gentrification trends, and other factors to identify ways to preserve affordable housing.  This innovative work will allow the students and CLS to develop proactive strategies to preserve equitable, affordable housing in Philadelphia, before tenants are at risk of losing their homes.

“Live Stop” fines and fees: over $100 million to the Philadelphia Parking Authority

Katelyn Mays, a 3L, worked on Philadelphia’s troublesome Live Stop policy as a student in the Center’s Social Justice Lawyering Clinic. Last May, the Center issued a report discussing the impact this law has on Philadelphia drivers, particularly undocumented individuals who cannot legally obtain a driver’s license in Pennsylvania.

Live Stop is a Philadelphia policy that instructs the Police Department to tow and impound a driver’s car if they are found to be driving without a valid license or registration. The driver must pay towing and storage fees to the Philadelphia Parking Authority, as well as any unpaid parking tickets, in order to get their car back. As Katelyn points out, “these fees can be financially crippling for Philadelphia families.”

Katelyn and her clinic partner filed a Right to Know Request with the Parking Authority to see just how much the city was collecting through the program. They found that, since 2003, Philadelphia drivers have paid a total of approximately $75 million to the Parking Authority to retrieve their cars. Katelyn notes that many drivers are unable to afford these fees, and that the Authority then auctions off their unclaimed cars. Since 2002, the PPA has sold around 125,000 cars, producing an additional $65 million.

Supporting returning citizens in Montgomery County

Students in Justice Lab are representing three organizational clients this semester.  One client, the Montgomery County Public Defender Office, has asked Justice Lab to develop strategies to incorporate reentry into the Office’s holistic approach to criminal defense.

Students are focusing on early interventions, including at the pre-trial phase, for individuals charged with crimes.  A few weeks into the semester, students are connecting with critical stakeholders, including lawyers and other service providers inside and outside the Office to fully understand the impact of incarceration on Montgomery County residents.

Amanda Cappelletti L’17 is one of the Justice Lab student attorneys.  After attending a community meeting with her client, she reflects: “So much of what I heard about the toll incarceration and arrests are taking on the individual and the community was unfair and it made me sad and angry.  There was a lot of talk about the injustices often faced by people in their community.  But at the same time, I think I also felt some hope.  I was sitting with a group of people, who for no other reason than selflessness, wanted to find some way.”

Challenging family detention from an international human rights perspective

Family detention is a pressing issue because of the psychological harm created by detaining children. One of the three family detention facilities in the U.S. is located in Berks County, Pennsylvania.

The Social Justice Lawyering Clinic has worked with Juntos, a member of the Shut Down Berks Coalition, to try and get families released. The Coalition’s work has focused on getting Pennsylvania to revoke the state license for the facility, which was accomplished in January.

However, Berks appealed the loss of its license, and the facility remains open pending the appeal.  And even if Berks is eventually shut down, the federal government is continuing to look for ways to open new facilities in other jurisdictions.

Now, Juntos seeks to broaden the conversation about family detention by showing that it violates international human rights norms. On September 17, the U.S. Human Rights Network convened a Human Rights Tribunal in Philadelphia, providing an opportunity for people directly impacted by human rights violations to testify before a group of jurists comprised of U.N. officials and a member of the Philadelphia City Council. We helped to frame the issues in terms of international human rights law.

Jack Farrell, a third-year law student, states: “Families and children are held arbitrarily, in violation of their due process rights and under prison-like conditions that fail to meet international human rights standards. Closing Berks is imperative for the sake of American domestic policy and human dignity.” For the tribunal, Jack, along with his partners, created a new fact-sheet summarizing the human rights violations at Berks.

Philly’s problematic “Live Stop” policy

When a Philadelphia motorist is found to be driving without a valid license or registration, the Police Department tows and impounds the car.  The driver must pay — sometimes upwards of $1,000 — to get the car back, in addition to any fines resulting from the violation.

State law does not actually require towing in most of these situations. But the City’s “Live Stop” policy calls for it anyway, mostly ignoring other options. According to Karen Hoffmann and Katelyn Mays, students in the Social Justice Lawyering Clinic who recently wrote a report on Live Stop, “Philadelphia seems to be one of the only cities in the nation with such an aggressive [towing and impoundment] policy.” (Some exceptions were created in response to a 2011 lawsuit filed by Stephen Sheller, who helped to create the Sheller Center for Social Justice.)

Among those harmed by the policy are undocumented immigrants, since – in a double whammy – state law makes them ineligible for drivers’ licenses (a problem discussed in another Sheller Center report). Thus, when an undocumented driver is stopped for even a minor violation, a license violation is also found and the car is towed. As Ms. Hoffmann notes, many of these drivers have valid registrations and insurance: “These are people who are trying to do the right thing, and the law is getting in their way.”

More generally, Live Stop imposes needless financial hardship on people who are struggling to get by.  As the report puts it, “Philadelphia should not have a policy that unnecessarily impoverishes city residents.” According to Ms. Hoffmann, moreover, the City seems unclear about how the policy was created or why it exists. “I learned how obscure city policies can be,” she says, “and how hard it can be to get to the root of where they came from.”

In researching the policy, the team worked closely with the New Sanctuary Movement, many of whose members have been affected by Live Stop. The experience, according to Ms. Hoffman, was “valuable, sometimes frustrating, definitely eye-opening.”  Read the full report here, in English or Spanish.

From words to practice: implementing Philadelphia’s new wage theft ordinance

Each week, hundreds of thousands of workers across Pennsylvania are paid less than they are owed, or are not paid at all. This troubling fact comes from a 2015 report from the Sheller Center, which also found that federal and state agencies lack sufficient resources to enforce these workers’ rights.

Could legislation at the local level help fill the gap? Advocates for low-income workers thought so. Last year, citing the Sheller Center report and other data, they urged Philadelphia’s City Council to take action. Council responded by unanimously enacting an ordinance establishing penalties for wage theft and creating a new office of Wage Theft Coordinator.

Passage of the ordinance was a big step forward — but then came a host of questions about how to implement it in practice. Social Justice Lawyering Clinic students Daniella Lees and Crystal Felix, working with Community Legal Services, tackled those questions last spring. Their product: an extensive set of guidelines for the City and its new Coordinator.

As Ms. Lees and Ms. Felix recognized, enacting a law is one thing; making it work effectively for real people is another. “The most difficult task,” Ms. Lees observes, “was figuring out how to make the new ordinance accessible to and useful for victims of wage theft. This involved considering the needs of individuals with limited English proficiency, recommending a community outreach program, and proposing approaches such as conciliation conferences.” The guidelines also address such issues as how the city should determine which complaints to accept, and what standards should be used in the adjudication process.

 

Billing parents for their children’s incarceration?!

When Philadelphia children are incarcerated, the City bills their parents for the costs of confining them. And if parents don’t pay, the City garnishes wages, withdraws funds from bank accounts, or garnishes tax refunds.

Justice Lab students Sela Cowger, Kelsey Grimes and Wesley Stevenson worked this spring with their client, the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, to seek a moratorium on this practice. The team’s research included interviews with attorneys who represent children, the City attorney who handles collections against parents, and parents who had been sued.  The students also met with members of Mayor Kenney’s administration.  While the problem is not yet fixed, there’s reason to be optimistic that it will be soon.

Ms. Stevenson commented: “What struck me most was that every single person we talked to about our project was outraged that the City would charge parents to incarcerate their own children.  From the social worker, to our friends outside of law school, to acquaintances I know in my neighborhood, everyone agreed: it’s just not right. That consensus provided me with clarity and a sense that my team’s work mattered and could have real impact, both in changing everyday lives but also changing attitudes. And it inspired us to extend the length of our project; some of our team will be returning to this fight in the fall semester in the hope that the City will end this harmful policy before the end of the year.”

 

Supporting low-income tenants

Lewis, Guarneri and Richardson
Paul Lewis, Martha Guarneri, and Palmer Richardson

If you haven’t yet heard of RAD, you probably will soon; HUD’s new “Rental Assistance Demonstration” program promises to reshape the nation’s public-housing landscape. RAD focuses on the fact that, because of funding shortfalls, public housing units have fallen into serious disrepair.  The solution?  Convert public housing complexes to “Section 8” properties, owned by private landlords who will receive subsidies to enable them to rent to low-income tenants.

But these conversions can pose a host of issues and risks for tenants. For that reason, Community Legal Services asked the Sheller Center’s Justice Lab clinic to take close look at the law, the federal guidance, and the experience of other cities.

In collaboration with Prof. Colleen Shanahan and CLS Managing Attorney Rasheedah Phillips, students Martha Guarnieri, Palmer Richardson, and Paul Lewis worked through a thicket of acronyms, statutory requirements, policy questions, and data.  Their report, Philadelphia Rental Assistance Demonstration Program Advocacy Guide: Protecting Tenant Rights and Long Term Affordability, includes recommendations for keeping converted units affordable, as well as for protecting tenants’ rights — to regain housing if they are displaced, to pursue grievances, and to organize.

Ms. Guarnieri noted some of the tensions in the process.  “On the one hand, advocacy is most effective when tenants themselves are at the forefront of the fight for their rights. On the other hand, the RAD program is so confusing that it can take months of dissecting long, wordy statutes and regulations to begin to understand it. HUD needs to make information about the program more accessible to the tenants who will be affected by it.”

CLS’ perspective?  “CLS’ Housing Unit has been advocating locally with PHA and private developers, and nationally with HUD as part of a working group for better protections for tenants and a long-term affordability plan. The [RAD Advocacy] guide is a really big step forward in these efforts…”

Cracking down on wage theft

When a large company contracts out jobs to smaller ones, who then hire workers as “independent contractors,” is the large company liable when the workers aren’t paid what they’re owed? It’s a tricky question that depends partly on how much control the large company exerts over what the workers do. It’s also an issue that’s leading to major litigation, including a recent lawsuit by New York State against Domino’s Pizza (which allegedly encouraged its franchisees to use payroll software that undercounted workers’ hours), and a $240 million settlement by Fed Ex in a nationwide class action on behalf of 12,000 underpaid drivers.

This spring, three Sheller Center students – Crystal Felix, Paige Joki and Daniella Lees — confronted a local version of the problem. Working with attorney Marielle Macher of the Community Justice Project, the students filed suit in federal court against a company that initially argued that it had no responsibility for wage theft by its subcontractors.

Ms. Felix notes that “seeing how prevalent wage theft is in Philadelphia is just mind-blowing.” And so, besides handling the case, she worked with Community Legal Services on the implementation of Philly’s recently-enacted wage theft ordinance.  More on that soon!