Court restores Social Security benefits for thousands

As many as 140,000 Americans nationwide will get their Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits restored as a result of an order issued by Judge Sidney H. Stein in a federal court in Manhattan on April 13, 2012.

The benefits in question date back to October 2006 and may total $1 billion.
The order is the culmination of more than five years of litigation in Clark v. Astrue – Docket No. 06-15521 (S.D.N.Y.) – a case brought against the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) challenging its practice of relying exclusively on outstanding probation and parole warrants as sufficient evidence that individuals are in fact violating a condition of probation or parole as a basis for denying them benefits.

Rather than check the facts of a case, SSA merely matched warrant databases against its records. When it found a probation or parole warrant in the name of someone who was receiving benefits, SSA checked with law enforcement and, if the law enforcement agency was not actively pursuing the individual, SSA would cut off that individual’s benefits. In March 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the agency’s practice of relying solely on outstanding probation or parole violation arrest warrants to suspend or deny benefits conflicted with the plain meaning of the Social Security Act.

Under Judge Stein’s order, the SSA is enjoined from denying or suspending benefits in this manner and must reinstate all previously suspended benefits retroactive to the date the benefits were suspended. The SSA has until June 12, 2012, to submit a plan setting forth its anticipated time frames for implementing the terms of the order.

For more, click here.

Food stamps reduce poverty

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — A new study by the Agriculture Department has found that food stamps, one of the country’s largest social safety net programs, reduced the poverty rate substantially during the recent recession. The food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, reduced the poverty rate by nearly 8 percent in 2009, the most recent year included in the study, a significant impact for a social program whose effects often go unnoticed by policy makers.

To read the entire article, click here.

Terminally ill die while waiting for Social Security because of backlogs

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that backlogs at the Social Security Administration are so large that some terminally ill people die before they can collect benefits that are due to them–like this deceased Legal Aid client.

“One person who died waiting was Dexter E. Penny of District Heights, Md., who applied for disability benefits in February 2009 after being diagnosed with colon cancer,” the article said. “His initial application was denied. Then his first appeal was denied on the grounds that he didn’t provide enough medical records.

“Mr. Penny, a mason, approached the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau for help a year after his first application. He couldn’t understand why terminal cancer wouldn’t qualify him for benefits, says his sister, Diane Penny.

“Kate Lang, his lawyer, called four hospitals seeking additional records. Mr. Penny’s condition worsened. By September 2010, he was told he had stage-four cancer. Mr. Penny, 50 years old, was nearly broke and dying in the hospital and the agency wanted more accurate documentation to determine whether he was able to work, according to his sister.

“On Dec. 15, 2010, the agency informed him by letter that he had been granted benefits. Mr. Penny had died nine days earlier. The letter arrived the day of his funeral. On Jan. 31, the government sent him another letter saying his benefits had been revoked because he hadn’t responded to the agency’s questions in a timely manner.”

More seek Legal Aid in hard times

From yesterday’s Washington Post: As Maryland Legal Aid celebrates its centennial this year, the national housing crisis, which has hit suburban Washington hard, is making the work it does even more vital.

At the same time, the agency, like similar organizations across the country, is grappling with funding cuts that make it harder to help the increasing number of people in need of assistance in civil cases.

For example, Prince George’s, the second-most-populous jurisdiction in the state, has endured more foreclosures than any other in Maryland. And the economic downturn has brought Legal Aid prospective clients that the organization would not have seen 10 years ago.

“I review a lot of the intakes, and we’re getting people from Potomac calling us,” [said Legal Aid supervising attorney Teresa Cooke]. “But these individuals are now actually financially eligible for our services.”

To read the article, click here.

Lawyers of last resort

The Annapolis Capital profiled two Maryland Legal Aid clients as part of its “Getting By” series about the recession. David Gaines of Annapolis and Margaret Sullivan of Glen Burnie lost their jobs, and when they ran into legal difficulties getting unemployment benefits, they had turned to Legal Aid for help.

“Gaines, a middle-aged Annapolis man, lost his $60,000 job in 2009 and needed help getting his unemployment benefits reinstated,” the article said. “Sullivan, an 82-year-old woman who has worked her entire adult life, was laid off last year from her job at an Annapolis department store. When she had problems obtaining unemployment benefits, she, too, had nowhere else to turn.

“In the past, these were not the typical clients at the state’s largest nonprofit organization providing free legal services to the poor,” the article continued. “But as the economy has slowed, these former middle-income wage earners are flocking to Maryland Legal Aid to take seats next to the traditional low-income clients.”

To read the article, click here.

Social workers team up with Legal Aid lawyers

When clients come to Maryland Legal Aid, they’re often desperate. In addition to a pressing legal problem, they’re grappling with other issues that drive their lives into a crisis — no money, no housing or no medical care. Sometimes all of the above.

You could say they need a social worker almost as badly as a lawyer.

And you’d be right.

That’s why Legal Aid and the University of Maryland School of Social Work created a program that integrates first-year graduate social work students into the nonprofit law firm’s practice in downtown Baltimore.

“Clients come to us with a host of problems — the presenting legal problem, plus community-based needs,” said Cornelia Bright Gordon, chief attorney of Legal Aid’s administrative law and intake units. “For example, many people have barriers, such as mental health issues, that may interfere with the success of the legal problem. They need access to services to make the legal work stick.

“Since Legal Aid is the law firm of last resort, our clients are in true crisis,” Bright Gordon said. “They come in with threats of immediate eviction, no money or food in the house, and some are desperately ill, with no access to medical services and no insurance.”

The three-year-old project helps stabilize clients and bring their lives back to a state of equilibrium. “It’s a collaborative process between a lawyer and a trained social worker with hands-on, clinical therapeutic experience who is supervising four interns,” she said.

To read the entire Daily Record column, click here.

Baltimore Sun: A Busy 100th for Legal Aid

The lead story in the business section of today’s Baltimore Sun focuses on Maryland Legal Aid on its centenary.

“As Marylanders lose jobs, homes and savings, they are turning in record numbers to the state’s largest provider of legal services to the poor,” wrote reporter Andrea Seigel. “The Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this month, enters its second century with a growing caseload involving the newly needy.”

“They are coming out of the woodwork,” said Wilhelm H. Joseph Jr., the agency’s executive director. “You have people who are formerly middle class and for the first time in their lives, they have lost their jobs.”

To read the article, click here.

University of Baltimore law students take the food stamp challenge

Some University of Baltimore law students inadvertently put one foot in the real world last fall when they signed up for the Law and Poverty Seminar. In addition to reading case law related to poverty, they were required to get face-to-face with the poor.

Or stomach-to-stomach.

While some volunteered at homeless shelters and worked on expungement cases at the Homeless Persons Representation Project, a majority opted to take the “food stamp challenge”: limit their expenditure on groceries to $26.75 for a week (the average food stamp benefit).

And no freebies from friends.

To read the rest of this “Of Service” column in The Daily Record (written by Maryland Legal Aid communications director Joe Surkiewicz), click here.

Law firm of last resort

Today’s Of Service column in the Daily Record looks at Maryland Legal Aid’s downtown Baltimore intake process, which saw 670 prospective clients walk through its doors in June.

“People come in for any number of reasons,” said Bobbie Steyer, the lawyer in charge of Legal Aid’s intake unit, which hosts open intakes three days a week. “We are the law firm of last resort. Courts, other law firms, social services — if they see someone with an inkling of a legal problem, they send them here.”

“The people coming in used to be the poorest of the poor — until the economic downturn,” Steyer said. “Now we’re seeing people who thought they’d never come here. They’re unemployed, their house is in foreclosure.

“Housing is the biggest issue by far,” she continued. “People come in who are getting evicted tomorrow and we try to find places for them to go. But all the financial resources from other agencies have dried up.”

To read the entire column, click here.

Know Your Rights to Fair Pay

Know Your Rights to Fair Pay/A Guide for Workers in Maryland

Maryland Legal Aid released a new booklet, Know Your Rights to Fair Pay, loaded with legal information to help workers. Topics include workers’ compensation, wage deductions, retaliation, definitions of employee and independent contractor, minimum wage, overtime, and more. The booklet, downloadable as a PDF file,  is available in English (FairPay_booklet_English FINAL May 2010 ) and Spanish (FairPay_booklet_Spanish_FINAL May 2010