As the dockets of federal courthouses across the country grow daily to the breaking point, federally funded legal services providers regularly gum up the federal courts with lawsuits that invoke nonexistant rights or grind through extensive legal proceedings for clients whose cases are blatantly unwinnable. The cases below demonstrate this absurd use of taxpayers' dollars.
Legal Services Makes Parking Boats On Lawn Into Constitutional Case
On August 4, 1998, a federal judge struck down an attempt by the Legal Services Corporation of Alabama (LSCA) to turn a mundane landlord-tenant dispute into a federal constitutional case. LSCA, a recipient of federal taxpayer funds, was representing Thomas and Linda Swindle, residents of public housing operated by the Chickasaw Housing Authority (CHA). CHA filed suit in Alabama state court attempting to evict the Swindles because they violated the terms of their lease with CHA. Specifically, the Swindles were accused of failing to keep their housing unit clean, failing to maintain their yard and parking three boats on the grounds of their unit--all direct violations of their lease. Prior to filing the eviction action, CHA had issued repeated requests to the Swindles to remedy these violations of the lease, but the Swindles failed to do so. After CHA filed suit in state court, LSCA had the case removed to federal district court so that LSCA could allege that the CHA violated the Swindles' rights under both the U.S. Constitution and the Fair Housing Act. LSCA claimed that the CHA eviction was in retaliation for the Swindles exercising their free speech rights and that the Swindles had not received adequate notice of the lease violations before the suit was filed. The judge hearing the case in federal court found no evidence supporting either of LSCA's principal arguments and ruled that CHA may properly evict the Swindles. Beyond the issue of whether legal services should be representing clients who can afford three boats, this case is a classic example of how unrestrained legal services programs can needlessly tie up federal courts by turning garden-variety disputes into complex federal litigation.
See Chickasaw Housing Authority v. Swindle, 1998 U.S. Dist.
LEXIS 14054 (S.D. Ala. Aug. 4, 1998).
Legal Services Claims That Feds Powerless To Regulate Native Fishing Rights
Alaska Legal Services Corporation, which receives taxpayer dollars from the federal Legal Services Corporation, unsuccessfully argued to a federal appeals court in 1998 that Native Americans have exclusive rights to fish the outer continental shelf of Alaska that cannot be regulated by the federal government, unlike the rights of all other Americans. Legal Services' argument was based on the premise that Native Americans, although U.S. citizens, had been fishing the waters of Alaska for centuries before the founding of the United States and therefore had exclusive 'aboriginal' rights to the fishing grounds that trump the regulatory powers of the U.S. government. The federal appeals court rejected Legal Services' argument, and in so doing sided with the trial court that had originally decided the case. According to the appeals court decision, Legal Services was attempting to read too much into a previous court decision that held that native tribes have limited aboriginal subsistence fishing rights that coexist with the federal government's interest in regulating offshore fishing grounds. Also, the appeals court believed that Legal Services was trying to use this previous limited case as a springboard to claim, in effect, that the native tribes hold title to offshore fishing grounds even when state governments or private citizens are not permitted to make such claims. Legal services' claim runs directly counter to our system of government, where both the states and Indian tribes are subordinate to the federal government and cannot simply claim title to property held by the federal government, such as offshore fishing grounds. This legal services program has strayed a long ways from its mission to meet the everyday legal needs of the poor when it advances ridiculous arguments trying to create a legal status for Native American tribes,whose members are U.S. citizens, equivalent to that of foreign countries.
See Native Village of Eyak v. Trawler Diane Marie, Inc., 154 F.3d 1090 (9th Cir. 1998).