Calls for Congress to Loosen LSC Restrictions

On June 25, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the FY 2010 appropriations bill of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS) subcommittee. This includes funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the nonprofit organization that provides grants to legal-aid charities around the country. The bill appropriates $400 million for LSC. Notably, it removes restrictions on LSC grantees' state, local, and private funds. This provision has been referenced as a poison pill because as soon as a legal services program accepts any federal funds, the restrictions expand to cover all activities carried out by the nonprofit, even those paid for with private funds. We have argued that limiting the ability to spend private funds, unconstitutionally infringes on the freedom of charitable donors and nonprofits. The bill does leave two of the restrictions on non-LSC funds intact, a ban on the use of funds in abortion cases and cases involving prison inmates.

The full House passed its appropriations bill, removing the restriction prohibiting LSC grantees from seeking attorneys' fees, but left in all other restrictions on LSC and non-LSC funds. Once the full Senate passes its bill, the differences between the two will have to be reconciled in a Conference Committee.

A Baltimore Sun [1] editorial from June 26, 2009 praises the work of Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and wrote that the "poison pill" restriction, "effectively tied up hundreds of millions of dollars in private and non-federal funds that legal aid groups otherwise could have used to litigate cases ranging from voting rights and medical insurance benefits to public housing complaints and labor union disputes."

Previously, both The Washington Post [2] and the New York Times [3] called on the Senate to consider lifting the restrictions. The Brennan Center for Justice has also recently released a report, "A call to End Federal Restrictions on Legal Aid for the Poor." The report [4] asserts: "The time has come to eliminate the most severe of the LSC funding restrictions."