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• Associated Press: California weighs tougher heat rules for farmworkers
  Associated Press With temperatures in the Central Valley recently surpassing 110 degrees and state regulators investigating two possible heat-related deaths in the fields, the California legislature is considering new laws that would strengthen rules for protecting farmworkers from heat. A Public Counsel lawsuit helped put the issue in the spotlight.
• Daily News: LAUSD truancy-diversion program keeps violators out of the courts
  Los Angeles Daily News Chronically truant students will be referred to city-run youth centers rather than funneled into the criminal justice system under a program debuting in Los Angeles Unified.
• Pasadena Star News: Change in law endangers Industry program that built thousands of affordable housing units
  Pasadena Star News The demise of redevelopment agencies may turn off the spigot on an Industry-funded program that has paid for 10,000 affordable housing units during the last 20 years. Public Counsel is working to protect the program.
• California Lawyer: Section 8 Tenants Unwelcome
  California Lawyer The city of Lancaster declares war on federally subsidized renters, claiming Los Angeles County is steering poor tenants to the Antelope Valley.
• Daily Journal: Public Counsel gets aggressive
  Daily Journal The Daily Journal profiled Public Counsel's growing presence in litigation and policy.
• LA Times: L.A. to ask high court to overturn ruling on homeless belongings
  LATimes.com City cites public health threat in seeking the reversal of a lower-court ruling barring random removal and destruction of unattended personal property.
• LA Times: Los Angeles County officials considering welfare crackdown
  Los Angeles Times Advocates for the poor contend the crackdown would end up denying help to some of the region's most destitute residents who are eligible for assistance. "They are absolutely going to cut the number of people" receiving general relief payments, said Jennifer del Castillo, an attorney with Public Counsel Law Center. "But they are going to do this by putting in place these administrative hurdles that people can't overcome, rather than eliminate people who shouldn't have GR."
• KPCC: Bills on school discipline clear first hurdle in state Legislature
  KPCC Bills in the California Legislature that aim to address problems with school suspension rates and discipline cleared an initial hurdle.
• iWatch News: Los Angeles moves haltingly toward ending fines for truancy
  iWatch News The Los Angeles City Council voted to amend the city’s daytime-curfew ordinance and drop large monetary fines for truant students, in response to recent tensions over aggressive police enforcement of student attendance policies.
• LA Times: Detained immigrants with mental illnesses face barriers in court
  Los Angeles Times Immigrant advocates say there are hundreds of mentally ill immigration defendants left to fend for themselves without any protections in court.
• LA Times: L.A. hospital accused of patient-dumping
  Los Angeles Times Public Counsel filed a lawsuit Friday against a hospital on behalf of Jesse Bravo, alleging elder abuse, false imprisonment and hospital negligence.
• LA Times: L.A. County responds to claims of discrimination in Antelope Valley
  Los Angeles Times Hoping to avoid a potentially costly civil rights lawsuit, Los Angeles County will stop providing funds for additional housing investigators to the desert communities of Palmdale and Lancaster, where officials have been accused of targeting nonwhite recipients of federal housing subsidies for eviction and harassment.
• ABA Journal: Force for Good: Public Counsel Law Center's New App Connects Lawyers, Clients
  ABA Journal The American Bar Assn. Journal writes about Public Counsel's new smartphone app, Force for Good, which lets users refer cases, and allows volunteer lawyers to take a case and provide updates.
• National Law Journal: Judge certifies class of immigration detainees suffering mental problems
  National Law Journal A federal judge in California has certified a class of hundreds of undocumented immigrant detainees with mental disabilities who have alleged that they were unable to obtain legal counsel in violation of their due process rights.
• Daily Journal: Working to avert bankruptcy crisis
  Daily Journal The Daily Journal profiles Public Counsel's self-help bankruptcy clinic, which is a "lifeline for a court deluged with debtors who are unrepresented."
• Daily Journal: Obama adminstration deports record number of illegal immigrants
  The Daily Journal As the U.S. sets a new record by deporting nearly 400,000 people who were in the country illegally during fiscal 2011, Public Counsel's Judy London responded to the Daily Journal.
• Daily Journal: Litigators take up the fight for state court funds
  Daily Journal Public Counsel is part of a major new effort to protect California courts from cuts that hurt the public.
• Daily News: Truancy policy tuneup in works
  Los Angeles Daily News City officials are taking a new look at a school truancy crackdown effort that some fear has become simply a harassment campaign against kids in minority and poor neighborhoods.
• LA Times: California farmworker protections not going far enough?
  Los Angeles Times Six years after California became the first state to adopt rules requiring regular shade, water and rest for outdoor workers, adherence remains sporadic at best. The Los Angeles Times explores a life-or-death issue raised in a Public Counsel lawsuit.
• Long Beach Gazette: Court For Homeless Offers New Start
  Long Beach Gazette For Long Beach City Prosecutor and man he once prosecuted for living on the streets, homeless court was an eye-opening experience.
• Daily Journal: Settlement assures low rents
  The Daily Journal Hundreds of families living in one of West Los Angeles' last affordable housing complexes will get to hang on to their low-rent privileges after a breakthrough Public Counsel lawsuit.
• LA Times: Immigrant Detainees, Lost in America
  Los Angeles Times The immigration courts system is failing those detainees who have serious mental disabilities.
• LA Times: L.A. County looks into alleged racism in Antelope Valley housing-subsidy crackdown
  Los Angeles Times The county had been paying half the cost for Section 8 investigators in Lancaster and Palmdale. Supervisors postpone that funding after civil rights groups say the probes are biased against low-income minorities.
• LA Times: Suit accuses Lancaster and Palmdale of racial bias in Section 8 crackdown
  Los Angeles Times Elected leaders in Lancaster and Palmdale have waged an "unrelenting war" against low-income blacks and Latinos who receive public assistance in a campaign to drive them out of the historically white Antelope Valley, civil rights lawyers alleged. "The level of hostility in these cities as expressed and enforced by authorities is astonishing," said Catherine Lhamon, a lawyer for Public Counsel, the public-interest law firm representing the plaintiffs.
• Daily Journal: Lawyer-Mayor Targeted in Civil Rights Suit
  Daily Journal The Daily Journal reports as Public Counsel files a federal lawsuit on behalf of the NAACP and an Antelope Valley community group that alleges discriminatory policies against black and Latino families in Lancaster and Palmdale.
• Race, Poverty & the Environment: Los Angeles Coalition Wins Health Clinic and Jobs from Developer
  Race, Poverty & the Environment Get the back story about how Public Counsel helped community groups in South L.A. win health care and quality jobs at a luxury housing development. "We sent a message at a critical time that communities are powerful and can win," says Public Counsel's Serena Lin.
• OnCentral: How a Westside bus plan could change veterans' lives downtown
  OnCentral For homeless veterans in Los Angeles, the 720 bus down Wilshire Boulevard isn't just transportation, it's a lifeline between the shelters of Skid Row and the hope of recovery. Now a proposal to put a bus-only lane could speed travel times not just for hundreds of veterans, but for 80,000 other people who ride the 720 every day. Read a column from Public Counsel's Rick Little as the MTA Board and city get ready to vote on the new bus plan.
• LA Times: Let communities collect revenue that California won't
  Los Angeles Times If the state won't step up to help them, local residents need tools to make their lives better. A new bill won't close California's justice gap, but it could help some California communities gain ground.
• LA Times: Residents of Los Angeles County's poorest areas to get help in keeping their homes.
  Los Angeles Times Thousands of residents in Los Angeles' poorest neighborhoods will get new legal help in fighting high-stakes eviction cases involving slumlords and foreclosures under a pilot project approved by the state's judicial leaders Friday.
• San Diego Union Tribune: Disadvantaged schools may get break in layoffs
  San Diego Union Tribune Some teachers at San Diego's neediest schools have won job protection over their colleagues in more affluent neighborhoods -- with help from Public Counsel's lawsuit protecting students at struggling schools. "School districts in the state have taken notice of the settlement in Los Angeles and the court's affirmation that school districts must, even in the context of layoffs, protect a student's learning opportunities," said Public Counsel's Catherine Lhamon.
• KPCC: LAPD eases daytime curfew enforcement on teens
  KPCC The Los Angeles Police Department has agreed to ease daytime curfew laws amid complaints that officers are indiscriminately handing out tens of thousands of tickets to high school students. Public Counsel's Hernan Vera speaks out against "kids in L.A. being ticketed by the Los Angeles Police Department minutes before the bell rang. Kids being ticketed, handcuffed and put into police cars for being late for school."
• Associated Press: How to fix 'massive crisis' in immigration courts
  Associated Press Court delays can leave immigrants in limbo for years. Some steps are being taken to fix the courts -- but critics say these reforms are too little and long overdue. "So many things are wrong, it's hard to know where to start," says Public Counsel's Judy London.
• LA Times: Federal cuts in national service programs could be costly in California
  Los Angeles Times At stake is more than $100 million for groups that build affordable homes, mentor youth, care for the elderly, teach in under-resourced schools and provide other services to some of California's neediest families.
• LA Times: City planners approve $250-million residential-retail complex in South L.A.
  Los Angeles Times The L.A. Planning Commission unanimously OKs developer Geoffrey H. Palmer's Lorenzo project after the developer agrees to community demands that he set aside space for a medical clinic there and hire local residents. Public Counsel attorney Serena Lin, who negotiated this agreement on behalf of South Los Angeles community members, is quoted in this article.
• LA Times: Judge OKs settlement that limits use of seniority in L.A. teacher layoffs
  Los Angeles Times In a case that pits the constitutional rights of students against the job protections of teachers, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge approved a groundbreaking settlement Friday that limits the effect of layoffs on the district's most vulnerable students.
• Sacramento Bee: Ruling on teacher layoffs a beacon of equity for kids
  Sacramento Bee In response to a lawsuit filed by Public Counsel and others, Judge Highberger enjoined the Los Angeles Unified School District from laying off wildly disproportionate numbers of teachers at three middle schools in low-income neighborhoods.
• KPCC: TraPac expansion brings $16 million (so far) to port communities
  KPCC Wilmington and San Pedro will benefit from a new community fund - as much as $50 million set aside from Port revenues. This month the fund was finally created as a condition of a memorandum of understanding that allowed the TraPac container area to grow 3 years ago.
• Daily Journal: Operation Iraqi Freedom Is Not Over for Veterans
  Daily Journal Public Counsel's president writes in the Daily Journal that thousands of veterans are set to return from Iraq. Will they be provided with vital services to effectively reintegrate into society?
• Arrested Redevelopment: Cities often give short shrift to affordable housing
  Los Angeles Times At least 120 municipalities spent a combined $700 million in housing funds from 2000 to 2008 without constructing a single new unit, a Times analysis of state data shows. Nor did most of them add to the housing stock by rehabilitating existing units. Public Counsel attorney Shashi Hanuman is quoted in the article.
• OC Register: Disabled Costa Mesa man released from ICE custody
  Orange County Register A mentally disabled Costa Mesa man who has been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for five years without a chance to challenge his detention was released Wednesday.
• Two mentally disabled Mexican immigrants released after long detention
  Los Angeles Times Two mentally disabled Mexican immigrants who spent years in detention facilities after completing their sentences for assault convictions were released Wednesday by U.S. immigration authorities, officials said.
• The High Price of Court Reporters
  Daily Journal Appellate lawyers throughout the state, including Public Counsel's Lisa Jaskol, are urging the California Supreme Court to crack down on court reporters who overcharge for their transcripts.
• Asylum seeker hopes, hides in L.A.
  Los Angeles Times Two years after fleeing his nation, where he was jailed and tortured, he waits for his case to be decided, fearing for his family back home.
• Veterans Get Specialized Courts
  Daily Journal Orange County Judge Wendy Lindley runs one of the few special courts for veterans, striving to ensure veterans get into and stay involved in psychological and substance-abuse treatment, find housing and obtain education.
• Working Towards a Sensible Justice System
  Daily Journal The Veterans HALO clinic launched on June 16 with lawyers working together with a host of nonprofits to help homeless veterans resolve their legal problems, writes Paul Freese of Public Counsel.
• Punishing the Pro Bonos
  Daily Journal The practice of attacking pro bono attorneys for their unpopular clients - be it immigrants or Guananamo detainees - is getting uglier, according to Public Counsel's Hernan D. Vera.
• On the Move
  Daily Journal Senate Confirms Public Counsel President to State Justice Board
• After a Youth of Breaking the Law, He Finds His Calling: Making the Law
  Daily Journal 30-year-old Frankie Guzman has just finished his first year at UCLA School of Law, is set to co-chair the school's La Raza Law Students Association next year, and is about to begin a summer internship with Public Counsel in Los Angeles.
• Top Women Litigators
  Daily Journal Public Counsel's Catherine Lhamon is one of the 100 women honored by Daily Journal as the Top Women Litigators in California.
• L.A. Unified barred from budgetary teacher layoffs at three schools
  Los Angeles Times Court ruling, in case brought by Public Counsel and others, is meant to help the poor-performing campuses, which have been badly hit by the fiscal crisis.
• Saving the Life, Heart and Soul of the Law
  PATH Poverty Insights One night Paul Freese, the director of litigation and advocacy for Public Counsel, stopped by Von's to grab some food on his way home from work. This story describes what happened next.
• No Threat to FEHA Fees
  Daily Journal Contrary to what many employers' counsel predict, Chavez v. City of Los Angeles is likely to have a limited impact on attorney fee awards, writes Lisa Jaskol of Public Counsel.
• L.A. middle school, students struggle under budget cuts
  CNN Public Counsel attorney Catherine Lhamon quoted in story about a lawsuit the organization has filed with others, alleging that the teacher layoffs constitute a violation of the constitutional rights of inner city students.
• Civil rights group suing LAUSD, state over teacher layoffs
  Los Angeles Daily News A group of civil rights lawyers, including Catherine Lhamon of Public Counsel, sued Los Angeles Unified and the state Wednesday, claiming that a combination of budget cuts and teacher layoffs at three low-performing middle schools violated the legal rights of students to a fair and equal education.
• Families Sue Over Discontinued Autism Therapy
  Los Angeles Times Families of autistic children in eastern Los Angeles County filed a class-action lawsuit today against the nonprofit agency that provides them with state-funded services. Laura Faer, an attorney with the Public Counsel, filed the suit on behalf of the families in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
• Appellate Clinic Guides Hundreds
  Daily Journal Public Counsel's one-of-a-kind program at the 2nd District Court of Appeal has been quietly helping those who can't afford representation seek justice at the appellate level.
• Tenants Sue Over Low-Income Units
  Daily Journal Public Counsel is one of three firms representing the Holiday Venice Tenant Action Committee in a suit that claims that by recently letting the owners of the 1,000-resident complex pay off their HUD-backed loans several years early, the agency stripped the apartments of certain low-rent protections guaranteed while the loans were outstanding.
• Pro Bono Not Limited to Litigation
  Daily Journal Earlier this month, 50 summer associates from nearly two dozen major law firms attended a seminar in downtown Los Angeles on the benefits of doing corporate pro bono work. The one-of-kind program is the brainchild of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in collaboration with Public Counsel and the Los Angeles County Bar Association.
• The Deferred: Go West, Young Lawyer
  The AmLaw Daily Matthew Kane had expected that by now, he'd be settled into the firm's Park Avenue offices in New York City, meeting new colleagues, learning the ropes of life as a newbie lawyer. Instead, he finds himself occupying an altogether different kind of office. He's on the West Coast in Los Angeles's Koreatown neighborhood, adjusting to a new job with Public Counsel
• Child Care Centers Get Help
  Daily Journal Many people trying to open child care centers say they often find themselves up against a wall of red tape, struggling to decipher a long list of city permit requirements to set up shop in an area that might not have similar uses. Karla Y. Pleitez, staff attorney with Public Counsel featured.
• Using tax dollars to turn lives around is money well-spent
  Los Angeles Times It isn't cheap, but numerous studies suggest mental health courts cost no more than traditional courts and might prove to be cheaper over the long term, with much more to show for the investment. Judge Michael Tynan, who also a presides over Public Counsel's Homeless Court Program is featured in this column.
• College Hospital to pay $1.6 million in homeless dumping settlement
  Los Angeles Times L.A. city attorney's office says the hospital left more than 150 mentally ill patients on skid row streets. The hospital denies wrongdoing in what prosecutors say is their biggest dumping case to date.
• LAUSD officials OK settlement that could end seniority-based layoffs
  Daily News After months of negotiations, Los Angeles Unified officials unanimously approved a landmark legal settlement Tuesday that could end the district's practice of basing layoff decisions on seniority.
• Civil Rights Star Joins Public Counsel
  Catherine Lhamon Named New Director of Impact Litigation
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• NEWS CLIPS
  
• NY Times: Last Plea on School Loans: Proving a Hopeless Future
  The New York Times It isn't easy to stand up in an open courtroom and bear witness to the abject wretchedness of your financial situation, but by the time Doug Wallace Jr. was 31 years old, he had little to lose by trying.
• LA Times: L.A. sues US Bank over blighted, abandoned homes
  Los Angeles Times The city attorney accuses the bank of being a slumlord and demands that it clean up properties it foreclosed on.
• LA Times: California lawmakers pass historic foreclosure protections
  Los Angeles Times California lawmakers have passed legislation that would provide homeowners with some of the nation's strongest protections from foreclosure and such aggressive bank practices as seizing a home while the owner is negotiating to lower mortgage payments.
• Daily News: Lawyers prey on foreclosure-facing homeowners in San Fernando Valley and beyond
  Los Angeles Daily News More than 1,000 homeowners are potential victims of attorneys across the state who are targeting homeowners facing foreclosure as part of the fallout of the mortgage crisis that began in 2007
• Daily Journal: Central District has lion's share of nation's pro se bankruptcy debtors
  Daily Journal Few experience much -- or any -- success in bankruptcy court when going at it alone.
• LA Times: Bank of America turns foreclosure-facing homeowners into renters
  Los Angeles Times The bank is launching a pilot program that would allow customers with underwater mortgages to avoid foreclosure by becoming renters.
• LA Times: Latest HARP program for underwater mortgages ramping up
  Los Angeles Times "HARP 2.0," the second version of the federal mortgage refinancing program, comes with streamlined processing, but some key issues could hinder borrower participation.
• LA Times: L.A. hospital accused of patient-dumping
  Los Angeles Times Public Counsel filed a lawsuit Friday against a hospital on behalf of Jesse Bravo, alleging elder abuse, false imprisonment and hospital negligence.
• Los Angeles Lawyer: The ABCs of California Foreclosure Law
  Los Angeles Lawyer The real estate meltdown that began in late 2007 has resulted in an unprecedented number of loans in default and a substantial upsurge in foreclosures across the country. California continues to be one of the states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.
• LA Times: Foreclosures expected to rise, pushing home prices lower
  Los Angeles Times Banks are getting more aggressive with the 3.5 million U.S. homes with seriously delinquent mortgages, setting the stage for a big wave of foreclosure action this year.
• NY Times: Unemployed mortgage holders get extension on payments
  The New York Times Although home foreclosure rates appear to be stabilizing and unemployment is slowly coming down, there are still millions of jobless borrowers who are at risk of losing their homes because they cannot afford their monthly payments.
• Huffington Post: Standing up for consumers
  Huffington Post Richard Cordray, the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, says he intends the CFPB to exercise its full authorities -- with respect to both banks and nonbanks -- to help those markets operate fairly, transparently, and competitively.
• ABA Journal: Force for Good: Public Counsel Law Center's New App Connects Lawyers, Clients
  ABA Journal The American Bar Assn. Journal writes about Public Counsel's new smartphone app, Force for Good, which lets users refer cases, and allows volunteer lawyers to take a case and provide updates.
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 'Yo-yoing' practice by car dealers irks customers
  St. Louis Post-Dispatch 'Yo-yoing' is a deceptive practice by used car dealers aimed at getting customers to buy a car other than the one the buyer is interested in, or paying a higher interest rate to get the car s/he wants
• LA Times: A vicious cycle in the used-car business
  Los Angeles Times Sign, drive, default, repossess and resell - that's the game at Buy Here Pay Here dealerships.
• Daily Journal: Working to avert bankruptcy crisis
  Daily Journal Self-help clinics are lifeline for a court deluged with debtors who are unrepresented.
• Daily Journal: Litigators take up the fight for state court funds
  Daily Journal Public Counsel is part of a major new effort to protect California courts from cuts that hurt the public.
• LA Times: Defendant in numerous Public Counsel lawsuits awaits trial on real estate felony charges
  Los Angeles Times Timothy Barnett is charged with 23 felonies for allegedly tricking five people into unknowingly granting him title to their homes. Public Counsel staff attorney Patrick Dunlevy, who has filed lawsuits on behalf of several people who said they had lost their homes to Barnett, is quoted.
• Daily Journal: Promise of kiosk deal became pain for churches
  Daily Journal More than 20 Southern California churches said they were scammed out of thousands of dollars for broken computer systems by an interfaith group accused of defrauding hundreds of churches in at least eight states, according to court documents and lawyers, including Public Counsel, representing the churches.
• LA Times: L.A. Council votes to tighten rules on mortgage consultants
  Los Angeles Times A new city ordinance will bar the consultants from demanding upfront fees from any homeowner -- not just those in default, who are protected under state law. Public Counsel attorney Leora Freedman is quoted.
• >> News Clips Archive
  Public Counsel
• Backlog of VA disability claims grows despite effort to trim
  USA Today WASHINGTON Although the Obama administration has stepped up efforts to process medical disability claims by U.S. veterans, a top Department of Veterans Affairs official is set to tell lawmakers Wednesday that the agency's backlog continues to grow.