As demonstrated by the following examples, federally-funded legal services
programs in Illinois are involved in legal matters that fall outside the
programs' mission of meeting the everyday legal needs of the deserving
poor.
Federal Judge Rejects Legal Services' Use of Undercover Testers to Detect Hiring Bias
As a recipient of federal funding from the Legal Services Corporation, the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago (LAFC) is supposed to be dedicated to meeting the everyday legal needs of the poor. Despite this clear-cut mission, LAFC has become deeply involved in the very different issue of employment discrimination. Starting in 1997, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sponsored a program for a year under which LAFC sent undercover testers of different races and ethnicities to apply for various jobs, with the goal of uncovering employers' hiring bias. On September 18, 1998, however, a federal judge called LAFC's testing program into question by ruling that LAFC's testers could not bring federal civil rights lawsuits against the employers. The judge, Suzanne B. Conlon, dismissed LAFC's suit against Guardian Security Services because the testers, college students hired by LAFC for the summer, were not really seeking jobs with Guardian, and therefore were not injured by being rejected for employment. Federal law does not permit people to file lawsuits in federal court unless they have suffered some form of injury as a result of the actions of the defendant. The judge noted that a favorable outcome for the LAFC testers would only give them, at most, the satisfaction of championing the rights of humanity at large against racial discrimination. And, as Judge Conlon pointed out, "[f]ederal courts are not the proper forums to address the rights of humanity at large." Despite this defeat, LAFC appears unwilling to give up its testing program because the legal services provider has filed an appeal of Judge Conlon's decision. Although it appears that LAFC has not used Legal Services Corporation funds to support its employment discrimination program, LAFC attorneys were involved in filing the lawsuit against Guardian. By filing this type of civil rights lawsuit, LAFC is clearly getting off-track from its basic mission to help the poor who cannot otherwise get legal assistance.
See Stephen Franklin, "EEOC Loses Bid to Use Tester Program
to Detect Hiring Bias," Chicago
Tribune, September 23, 1998, pg. 1.
Legal Services Seeks Disability Benefits For Woman On The Basis of Obesity
On July 8, 1998 the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago (LAFC), a federally-funded legal services program, convinced a federal judge to overturn the decision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that Suzette Smith was not entitled to receive federal Supplemental Security Income disability benefits. Smith's justification for receiving SSI benefits is that her range of movement is limited due to obesity. During her administrative hearing before an HHS judge, Smith admitted that her day consisted of "watching television or reading and that she does not do any socializing." Despite Smith's physical limitations resulting from her obesity, a vocational expert testified that Smith was capable of performing numerous kinds of employment, including being a cashier, a hospital information clerk or a social welfare service aide. Legal services, however, convinced the federal judge hearing the case to apply a technicality in an agency policy under which a person is usually considered disabled if they unable to stoop. The HHS judge had found that Smith was completely unable to stoop but held that this fact by itself did not make Smith 'disabled' under the policy rule. This case presents a classic example of how federally-funded legal services providers use their resources to expand the boundaries of disability benefits programs by litigating cases for clients whose "disabilities" are either self-inflicted or not severe enough to prevent them from getting a job.
See Smith v. Apfel, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10661 (E.D.Ill., July 8, 1998).