Law Commons^™

Liberating Legal Aid: Reducing Covid-19'S Justice Gap And Promoting Health By Removing The Legal Services Corporation's Class Action And Advocacy Restrictions, Molly C. Schmidt

Cleveland State Law Review

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is the single-largest funder of civil legal services, or legal aid, in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored a longstanding and growing problem faced by ow-income Americans served by LSC-funded legal aid organizations: the growing "justice gap." The justice gap represents the unmet civil legal needs of low-income Americans. The justice gap perpetuates poverty, conceals health-harming legal problems, and furthers racial disparities. Despite the LSC’s essential role in reducing the justice gap and promoting “equal access to justice,” Congress consistently underfunded the LSC before and during COVID-19. Congress has also prohibited the LSC-funded legal …

Parens Patriae, Punishment, And Pandemics: The State’S Responsibility For Incarcerated Persons During A Public Health Emergency, Meredith Harrell

Journal of Law and Health

This article looks at the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020 and explores the commonalities and differences of states’ actions to protect their citizens, especially the most vulnerable populations. The article discusses the government’s obligations to jailees and prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic and how incarcerated persons have been consistently failed by the institutions that are required to protect them. The article examines possible remedies for these governmental and institutional failings under the Eighth Amendment and § 1983 civil rights claims. Ultimately the article proposes that monetary damages would provide relief to incarcerated individuals and their families …

The Future Of The Americans With Disabilities Act: Website Accessibility Litigation After Covid-19, Randy Pavlicko

Cleveland State Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted in 1990 to eliminate discrimination against individuals with disabilities. Over time, as society has become more reliant on the internet, the issue of whether the ADA’s scope extends beyond physical places to online technology has emerged. A circuit split developed on this issue, and courts have discussed three interpretations of the ADA’s scope: (1) the ADA applies to physical places only; (2) the ADA applies to a website or mobile app that has a sufficient nexus to a physical place; or (3) the ADA broadly applies beyond physical places to online technology. …

Petitioners' Reply Memorandum In Support Of Their Emergency Petetion For A Writ Of Habeas Corpus, Joseph Mead, David J. Carey, Freda J. Levenson, David A. Singleton, Mark A. Vander Laan, Michael L. Zuckerman

Law Faculty Briefs and Court Documents

In the roughly 120 hours since Petitioners filed their emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the death toll at Elkton has doubled, and the number of BOP-confirmed COVID-19 cases among prisoners has tripled. About three dozen corrections staff have tested positive for the virus, a number that has also tripled since this case was filed. Elkton now accounts for more than one-third of all prisoner deaths from COVID-19 in federal prisons nationwide, and over half of the COVID-19 deaths in Columbiana County, making it one of the deadliest places a person can live in the current pandemic. According …

Emergency Petition For Writ Of Habeas Corpus, Injunctive, And Declaratory Relief - Class Action, Joseph Mead, David J. Carey, Mark A. Vander Laan, Freda Levenson, David Singleton

Law Faculty Briefs and Court Documents

As a tragic combination of infectious and deadly, COVID-19 poses a once-in-a-lifetime threat on a worldwide scale. Every state and territory in the United States has now been impacted, with nearly half a million cases and over 20,000 deaths reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Even under ordinary conditions, each person who contracts this illness can be expected to infect between 2 and 3 others.

Cramped, overcrowded prisons amplify this threat. With thousands of people literally stacked on top of each other and unable to move around without rubbing shoulders, such environments are fundamentally incompatible with …