Unpaid wage claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act can support immigrant-worker organizing campaigns. Legal services organizations should prioritize wage-theft litigation with worker centers, as clients see better case results and extend the reach of the litigation to broader change. Advocates must beware of discovery tactics and retaliation aimed at stifling immigrant clients’ participation in employment cases.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Rebecca Smith, Cynthia Mark, & Anita Sinha, Protecting the Labor and Employment Rights of Immigrant Workers (Sept.-Oct. 2004)
• Cynthia Mark & Evonne Yang, The Power-One Campaign: Immigrant Worker Empowerment Through Law and Organizing (July-Aug. 2002)
• Marielena Hincapié, Opportunities for New Alliances to Protect the Rights of Undocumented Immigrant Workers (Jan.-Feb. 2001)
• Rick McHugh, Recognizing Wage and Hour Issues on Behalf of Low-Income Workers (Sept.-Oct. 2001)
• David T. Hutt, Ensuring Fair Wages? Subminimum Wages for Individuals with Disabilities Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (May-June 2011)
• Naomi Zauderer, Supporting Low-Income Workers: An Organizer’s Perspective (Jan.-Feb. 2001)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended the tax code to improve the community benefit delivered by nonprofit hospitals. The Act protects against aggressive billing and debt collection, encourages transparency in financial assistance policies, and requires public health and community input in assessing and meeting community health needs. Advocates can push for stronger protections on the state and local level by monitoring compliance, educating officials and consumers, and participating in community-health-needs assessments.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Valerie McWilliams & Alan A. Alop, The Dearth of Charity Care: Do Nonprofit Hospitals Deserve Their Tax Exemptions? (July-Aug. 2010)
• Alan A. Alop, Hospital’s Failure to Provide Charity Write-Off to Indigent, Uninsured Patient and Inflating Charges for Her May Constitute “Unfair Practices” Under Illinois Law; Suit Will Proceed (May-June 2007)
• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act: A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
• Leonardo Cuello, How the Affordable Care Act Shapes the Future of Home and Community-Based Services (Nov.-Dev. 2011)

Teens in foster care face many challenges. If a teen parent in foster care becomes a respondent in a family court case, she faces another challenge: the same child welfare agency responsible for her welfare as a subject child is, in many jurisdictions, the same agency responsible for proving that she is a neglectful or abusive parent. Not only does this raise issues of trust for the teen parent, but also, because the child welfare agency has a parens patriae relationship with the teen parent, the agency has access to her confidential medical and mental health history, which the agency often uses to the parent’s disadvantage. Is this double role right and lawful? If not, what should child welfare agencies be doing about it?

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Jennifer Pokempner, Jennifer Rodriguez, and Alice Bussiere, Fostering Connections to Success: Extending a Social Safety Net for Youths Facing Homelessness and Poverty (July-August 2009)
• Alice Bussiere, Jennifer Pokempner, and Jennifer Troia, Adolescents, the Foster Care System, and the Transition to Adulthood: What Legal Aid Lawyers Need to Know (July-August 2005)
• Casey Trupin and Richard A. Wayman, From Street Lawyering to Systemic Lawyering: Meeting the Basic Needs of Unaccompanied and Homeless Youth Through Systemic Legal Advocacy (July-August 2005)

Clearinghouse Review launches a new feature in this our first issue of 2012: Interview Afield. For forty-five years we have sought to introduce and connect advocates with one another. We hope to further that role by briefly profiling, in each issue, an advocate who has made a difference for low-income clients. Leading off this series is Bob Capistrano, who began his legal services career in 1976 as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) lawyer with San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation. The foundation has since merged with other programs to form Bay Area Legal Aid, where Bob is now director of advocacy and managing attorney. A reliable author of Review articles (see Robert P. Capistrano, Making the Fair Hearing More Fair, 44 Clearinghouse Review 96 (July–Aug. 2010), for his most recent contribution), Bob is on the faculty for Affirmative Litigation Training, which the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law’s training unit, formerly the Center for Legal Aid Education, will offer in March 2012 in the San Francisco Bay Are.

Read Interview Afield: Bob Capistrano

A major aspect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health reform law signed in 2010, was to bring health insurance coverage--by broadening Medicaid eligibility to cover people up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level--to some sixteen million U.S. residents who go without it. States are now making choices about how they will implement this expansion, to take effect in 2014. As states decide, advocates should weigh in to make sure that the Act’s promise of quality, affordable health coverage, especially for vulnerable populations, is fulfilled.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Leonardo Cuello, How the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Shapes the Future of Home- and Community-Based Services (Nov.-Dec. 2011)
• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act:  A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
• John Bouman & Robert A. Crittenden, Health Care Reform:  Seizing the Moment and Shaping the Message (Nov.-Dec. 2008)

Helping low-income clients with medicaid problems is a complicated endeavor in the best of times. With the economic recession prompting states to cut Medicaid spending by reducing provider payments and covered benefits, advocates for these clients face an even greater challenge. Even in tough economic times, however, states have to follow state and federal law when the cut Medicaid services. The states’ errors often follow similar patterns, and advocates who understand those patterns are better situated to help their clients.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, Medicaid Managed Care and People with Disabilities: Challenges and Opportunities (Sept.-Oct. 2007)
• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act: A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
• Sarah Somers, Cost-Related Community Integration Barriers in Medicaid: A Review of the EPSDT Program and Home and Community-Based Waivers (March-April 2002)

The Pickle Amendment allows individuals to qualify for Medicaid by subtracting from the countable portion of their social security income any cost-of-living adjustments received since their last Supplemental Security Income. Advocates can use a simple formula for calculation and screening.

Read more and view the chart.

Wednesday, January 11th has been proclaimed as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

Human trafficking is one of the most egregious human rights violations we see. It is a heinous crime of exploitation that involves forcing people to work for others for profit, whether through traditional types of labor or sexual exploitation.  Victims are men, women, and children from our state, our country, and across the globe.  Experts estimate that world-wide, 27 million people are trafficked annually bringing in $32 billion dollars. It is the fastest growing and second largest black market.

This past year, our office worked with legislators to enact a law that makes human trafficking a felony in our state and creates services for victims. The passage of this law has given us some important tools to combat trafficking, but more work needs to be done. To that end, we are beginning the work of our state wide task force made up of government and non-profit agencies to examine and address all aspects of trafficking.

Everyone has something to offer in the fight against human trafficking. Hospital, hotel, and transportation staff are in a unique position to identify victims.  Educators and parents can encourage prevention and internet safety education. Today, everyone can take a moment to learn about the signs and consequences of human trafficking and all that we can do to prevent this exploitation.

To learn more about human trafficking and what you can do, visit the Attorney General’s website.

Home health aides perform some of America’s most difficult work, and they do so without federal protections. Because home health aides are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, they are not guaranteed federal minimum-wage or overtime protections even though America’s demand for qualified home health aides is exploding as our population ages. The exemption of home health aides from Fair Labor Standards Act coverage has severe consequences not only for workers but also for consumers, and advocates across the country are working to improve home health aides’ wages in courtrooms and legislatures.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• David T. Hutt, Ensuring Fair Wages? Subminimum Wages for Individuals with Disabilities Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (May-June 2011)
• Rebecca Smith, Cynthia Mark, and Anita Sinha, Protecting the Labor and Employment Rights of Immigrant Workers (Sept.-Oct. 2004)
• William P. Quigley, Primer on Minimum-Wage and Overtime Issues Under the Fair Labor Standards Act for Low-Wage Workers and Their Advocates (Feb. 1996)

Civil legal services organizations and their clients will both be better off if legal services attorneys are better paid. Salary studies from several states show that salary improvements are necessary to prevent civil legal services attorneys from fleeing the public interest in favor of more lucrative work, and legal services leaders must pay attention to such data--even if they end up having smaller organizations.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Wendy Pollack, The "Right to Live": Civil Legal Services and Human Rights (Sept.-Oct. 2011)
• Debra Gardner and John Pollock, Civil Right to Counsel's Relationship to Antipoverty Advocacy--Further Reflections (July-August 2011)
• Theodore O. Fillette III, Thoughts on Better Practices for Pro Bono Legal Services for Clients of Legal Services Organizations (July-August 2011)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act may transform home- and community-based services in the Medicaid program. The Act shifts Medicaid long-term care away from institutionalization and toward home- and community-based services, gives states options for offering these services through their Medicaid state plans instead of through waiver programs, and promotes uniformity in consumer-focused standards for home- and community-based services.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act: A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
• Sally Hart, Recipients of Home and Community-Based Services May Bring Section 1983 Suit to Compel Delivery of Services Under Free-Choice Provisions of Medicaid Statute (Nov.-Dec. 2007)
• Sarah Jane Somers, Cost-Related Community Integration Barriers in Medicaid: A Review of the EPSDT Program and Home and Community-Based Waivers (March-April 2002)
• Michele Melden, The Home- and Community-Based Waiver Program Under Medicaid: An Update (June 1995)

The U.S. Supreme Court in its 2010 Term continued to throw boulders on the path to federal court, the Wal-Mart case limiting class actions being a well-known example. The justices limit access in other ways, in some cases going through contortions to arrive at an interpretation: deference cases (continued to defer to agency action) and preemption cases (preempted California law on arbitration clauses). The Court denied standing to taxpayers in an establishment clause case, with Justice Kagan dissenting from the majority’s result-oriented reasoning. However, in two employment law cases, the Court overturned lower-court rulings dismissing suits for failure to state a claim, and failure-to-state-a-claim cases did not intepret Twombly and Iqbal strictly.

Copies of this article, along with every other article published in our ongoing Federal Access Series, are available free of charge on our website.