Legal Doors Closed To The Poor

Legal Doors Closed to the Poor

By Fran Quigley

Indiana Legal Services, where I work part-time as a staff attorney, is the justice system’s equivalent of a hospital emergency room. Whenever the phones open to allow new applications for legal help, all available lines are quickly clogged with urgent requests.

This year, of course, the calls have reflected the epidemic of Hoosiers facing the loss of their homes through foreclosure. The clumsy privatization of Indiana’s food stamps and Medicaid programs has forced many persons who are sick and hungry to seek a lawyer’s help. Calls pour in every week from women hoping for a divorce and protection from abusive spouses, tenants facing dangerous housing conditions, and seniors struggling to maintain access to shelter and medicine.

My own docket, slim in comparison to my full-time colleagues, is filled with physically and mentally disabled persons who have been denied access to Indiana’s Medicaid health insurance program.

By law, their disability qualifies them for Medicaid. But most can’t get access to this program of physician-prescribed care even after having been found to meet the disability standard of the federal Social Security Administration, which qualifies them to receive a small monthly income. In many states, the Medicaid disability determination runs in tandem with that for Social Security. Indiana doesn’t follow this practice, likely saving some money for the state at the expense of those who are the most vulnerable.

As worrisome as the clients we accept are those who can’t be helped. In this legal ER, dozens of poor persons in need are turned away each week without so much as a bandage or an aspirin.

For the poor, there are simply not enough lawyers to go around. Indiana Legal Services is the largest legal aid agency in the state, but other important efforts, like Neighborhood Christian Legal Services, the Heartland Pro Bono Council and Indianapolis Legal Aid Society, are just as overburdened.

In criminal cases, there is a constitutional right to legal representation. In cases like personal injury suits, lawyers can collect their fees from the judgment or the other party to the lawsuit. But most civil cases demand that the party pay their own lawyer up-front.

For people struggling to put food on the table or a roof over their heads, this is an impossible burden. Some surveys suggest that as many as 80% of U.S. poor who need civil legal assistance go without.

Some of those turned away from Indiana Legal Services get advice letters, and some get sample court papers they can fill out and file on their own. For a few, this patchwork effort works adequately. For others, it is the equivalent of handing me a scalpel and a medical textbook and instructing me to conduct my own appendectomy.

In our nation of laws, people who are facing evictions, enduring dangerous family arrangements or being unjustly denied access to government programs all have legal rights. These rights look very good on paper.

But those rights don’t mean much if there is no one to help you defend them.

Fran Quigley

Indiana-Kenya Partnership/USAID-AMPATH
1001 West 10th Street, OPW M200
Indianapolis, IN 46202
(317)630-6882
www.iukenya.org
www.ampathkenya.org

This column is online at http://www.indystar.com/article/20090420/OPINION12/904200316/1002/OPINION
(reprinted with permission)

it is sad to see people slipping through the cracks like that. and a lot of folks don't even realize this system exists unless they end up in it. I have never had to go through that kind of hell beyond the social services offices making comments about my not being married to my then boyfriend... but we still ended up getting help. It really disgusts me that people who should be eligible for medicaid are being pushed to the side like that. i see commercials here in wny all the time for attorneys to help people get disability benefits. i wonder what their cut of that is!! it seems to have become a lot like insurance claims. they make you sue them for it which they know will stop at least some people. if we keep denying your claim, maybe you will just go away. it is disgusting!!

whaaaaataaaa!