Brennan Center for Justice

The Brennan Center helps lead and support a campaign to repeal restrictions on civil legal services providers that receive federal funding. The Center also advocates for adequate funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). In light of the economic downturn and its impact on other sources of funding, the federal government’s fiscal support for LSC is absolutely vital.

Background on Restrictions. In 1996, Congress attached numerous restrictions to the federal funding distributed by LSC to local, independent, legal services non profits that provide free legal assistance to low income people.  These restrictions limit the legal tools that clients of LSC-funded programs can rely on and also bar some categories of individuals from obtaining any legal assistance at all.  The most startling aspect of the restrictions is the “poison pill restriction,” so-called because once a legal services program accepts even a dollar in federal funds, the restriction imposes the entire set of restrictions on all activities conducted by the nonprofit, even those financed with their own funds raised from other sources such as the state government, local government and charitable private donors. 

Read more about the harms caused by the restrictions in the Brennan Center's white paper, A Call to End Federal Restrictions on Legal Aid for the Poor.

Recap from FY11
After months of wrangling and short term extensions, Congress passed a spending bill to fund the government until September 2011 that reduced LSC’s budget by $15.8 million. The cut is being absorbed over a six month period, resulting in a more concentrated impact for local legal aid offices.

 Recent Developments

• February 14, 2011 – the Obama Administration submitted a budget to Congress for fiscal year 2012 that recommends increasing funding for LSC to $450 million. For a third year in a row, the President recommended that Congress also remove the restrictions on non-LSC funds and class actions. LSC also submitted its formal budget request to the Congress calling for $516.5 million in funding.

• June 22, 2011 – 37 members of the Senate submitted a letter to the Chairwoman and Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, in support of increasing LSC’s budget to $450 million.

• July 7, 2011 – Scheduled mark up for the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS) subcommittee, which oversees LSC. The proposed subcommittee allocation or 302(b) allocation for CJS is $50.237 million or $3.09 million less than the amount enacted for CJS agencies in fiscal 2011.