Legal services programs funded by U.S. taxpayers through the Legal Services
Corporation are supposed to use that money to provide help to the poor with
their everyday legal problems. Unfortunately, many legal services
attorneys use this money instead to fund their left-wing activist agenda.
This politicized agenda comes out often as a blatantly anti-business,
anti-development bias as shown by the following cases.
Legal Services Files Suit Against Development
Taxpayer-funded San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Assistance filed suit on April 22, 1999 against Los Angeles County and the developer of the proposed Newhall Ranch residential development to be built in the hills north of Los Angeles. The legal services suit claims that the development plans fail to include sufficient affordable housing and makes the rather novel claim that the environment will suffer more air pollution from motorists travelling to jobs in the new development who cannot afford to live there. Regardless of any potential merit, this case is a prime example of legal services lawyers engaging in activism rather than meeting the everyday legal needs of the poor.
See Agnes Diggs, “2 More Suits Blast Newhall Development,” Los
Angeles Times, April 23, 1999.
Legal Aid Interferes in Corporate Merger
The Legal Aid Society of Dayton (Ohio) imposed itself into the negotiations between two telecommunications companies and the Ohio state government concerning a proposed merger of the two companies. Ameritech Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. were seeking the approval of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio for the merger because Ameritech provides local phone service in parts of Ohio, including Dayton. Legal Aid came to the table on behalf of the Edgemont Neighborhood Coalition, an activist group, to negotiate a costly agreement with the companies that would bind the new merged company to provide a higher level of service than currently provided with no rate increases until 2002, as well as several expensive “goodies” for low-income areas of Dayton, such as a $5 million ‘computing center,’ a consumer education fund and a community technology fund. In effect, Legal Aid was seeking to extort as much money as possible out of the merging companies under the threat of regulatory disapproval of the merger.
See William Hershey and Laura A. Bischoff, “PUCO OKs Phone Merger,”
Dayton Daily News, April 9, 1999.
Legal Services Favors Restrictive Labor Law
Legal Services of the Virgin Islands, which receives funding from U.S. taxpayers, intervened on behalf of two employees in a lawsuit concerning the application of a restrictive employment statute passed by the Virgin Islands government. The Wrongful Discharge Act (WDA) limits employers to only nine stated reasons for which employees can be fired. Under the WDA, any other rationale for firing an employee is considered a wrongful discharge that can subject the employer to significant legal liability. Legal Services argued to the court in favor of this restrictive law. The court, however, ruled that the territorial government could not enforce the WDA, since it conflicts with federal labor laws. Participation by Legal Services in lawsuits concerning the validity of labor laws demonstrates the politicized anti-business bias of federally funded legal aid attorneys.
See St. Thomas-St. John Hotel & Tourism Ass’n v. United States
Virgin Islands, 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8652 (D.V.I., June 2, 1999).