Webinar: Locked Up in a Pandemic: A Webinar on Prisons, Prisoner Rights, and the Covid-19 Pandemic
April 30, 2020

Sponsored by the FBA’s Civil Rights Section, DePaul University College of Law, and the National Police Accountability Project, this hour-long webinar described the evolving response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the nation’s jails and prisons. As public health experts have long recognized, jails and prisons are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of diseases like Covid-19 because people are confined in close quarters and severely restricted in their ability to maintain social distance or proper hygiene. A number of prisons in the United States have already become hot spots for the disease, endangering not just the prison population but also the communities surrounding those prisons. In response, lawyers for prisoners and detainees have been engaging in cutting edge legal efforts to help their clients, either through a release or some other type of reprieve, or by forcing better policies and practices within the institutions. This webinar  features a discussion of some of those on-going efforts and how governmental entities are responding.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNG5lGC_6W0&feature=youtu.be

Evictions and Civil Rights Panel Draws Diverse Audience in Detroit
January 2020

“We have an outsized problem and therefore an outsized responsibility to do something,” Hon. Judith E. Levy informed an audience of 45 gathered to learn more about Michigan’s eviction crisis and the federal civil rights issues implicated by it. Michigan courts handled 191,512 eviction cases in 2018, which is an eviction filing rate of 17% for rental households. To put this in context, Chicago has an eviction filing rate of under 4%, and Philadelphia’s is less than 8%. Michigan also has a very high rate of filings that lead to eviction orders—22% in Wayne County and 25% in Genesee County, as two examples.

With these bleak numbers in mind the Eastern District of Michigan Chapter and the Civil Rights Section kicked off the new year on January 7 with a very well attended and engaging program on the Michigan’s eviction crisis and what federal civil rights laws are implicated in eviction cases.

Judge Levy moderated the panel, which featured Hon. Nancy Blount of the 36th District Court, Elizabeth Benton, attorney at Legal Services of South Central Michigan, Heidi Naasko, Pro Bono Counsel at Dykema LLC, and Steve Tomkowiak, Executive Director of the Fair Housing Center of Metro Detroit.

Judge Levy opened the discussion by recalling her days as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, when she worked on civil rights enforcement. Showing off her highlighted and hand-annotated copy of the Fair Housing Act, she described a case she brought on behalf of six women who had been forced by their landlord to perform sex acts or face eviction. Judge Levy explained that this case came to her as a referral from a legal aid attorney who was representing one of the victims on an eviction and recognized the federal civil rights claim.

Benton then provided an overview of Michigan’s eviction crisis and some of the contributing factors. Benton, who is a co-investigator with a team from the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning evaluating the data on all Michigan eviction filings between 2013 and 2018, explained that evictions in Michigan are highest in the southern part of the state and concentrated around urban centers. She explained that evictions disproportionately effect Black women, Hispanic renters in otherwise White neighborhoods, and families with children.

A key theme of the panel was the crucial need for representation in eviction proceedings. Benton’s data showed that Michigan tenants rarely face eviction proceedings with counsel—only 2% of tenants in Washtenaw County were represented by counsel, while 90% of landlords were represented. Judge Blount then spoke to the specific situation in Michigan’s largest landlord-tenant court, 36th District in Detroit. She explained that the three—that’s right, only three—judges who handle the landlord-tenant docket at her court handle over 30,000 eviction filings annually. They do this in two-a-day court sessions hearing 70 cases each a day. She explained that half of the cases are resolved in consent judgments. Judge Blount acknowledged the low rate of representation for tenants, even though the court provides a legal clinic and a diversion program for individuals in HUD-subsidized housing. She also reminded the audience that landlord-tenant cases are brought under the state’s summary procedure rules, which require complete adjudication of the claim within 56 days of filing the Complaint.

Naasko, who has been closely involved in Detroit’s right-to-counsel movement, which has brought mandatory representation to New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, among other cities, implored those present to become involved in addressing the crisis. She noted that organizations like Lakeshore Legal Aid truly need the assistance of volunteer pro bono attorneys to assist with their on-site clinics and that the applicable laws are easy to learn. Naasko further noted that a right-to-counsel measure is pending before the Detroit City Council, and that it would have an immense positive impact on the city. Studies from New York, which has had a right-to-counsel for a couple years already, show that for each $1 spent on providing tenants with an attorney, the city saves $12 in costs associated with eviction, such as homelessness and social services.

Finally, Tomkowiak, who litigated housing civil rights cases for nearly 30 years before he became the leader of the Fair Housing Center, provided an overview of the legal issues and challenges of addressing civil rights violations that are a core issue within an eviction situation. He explained that in his experience, cases in which a lease is not renewed are the most common situations in which to find a civil rights violation. He also warned the practitioners in the room that an attorney could do the client unintended harm by raising a civil rights issue—for instance, quid-pro-quo sexual harassment around the landlord’s conduct with the tenant—as an affirmative defense. Instead, he recommended bringing the civil rights claims as a counterclaim with a motion to remove the matter to the Circuit court. He also noted the various preclusion doctrines that make it difficult to bring a case in federal court.

In closing, Judge Levy reminded the group that Susan DeClercq of the U.S. Attorney’s office was one of the organizers of the program and leads the group in the Eastern District of Michigan that can enforce Fair Housing cases. The other organizers for this panel were Todd Pierce-Ryan and Carrie Floyd, attorneys at Lakeshore Legal Aid, and Robin Wagner of Pitt McGehee Palmer & Rivers.