Martin DyckmanIn George Orwell’s classic novel, Animal Farm, the pigs who become tyrants of the barnyard declare that although all animals are equal, “some animals are more equal than others.”
He was satirizing communism, but the point applies to our democracy as well.
Your “equal” vote may be gerrymandered into uselessness. The politician takes calls from the big contributors while yours go to voicemail. The billionaire investor’s secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does.
It is a cherished belief that all Americans are equal before the courts of justice.
Gov. Rick Scott demonstrated the hollowness of that premise this week when he vetoed the Florida Legislature’s modest $2 million appropriation for Florida’s civil legal aid agencies. He’s done that all four years.
Plenty of pork survived the veto knife. This was one example of Scott acting out his creed that the business of government is business. His stacking the courts with pro-business judges is another.
In the corporate world that enriched him, flesh-and-blood citizens have no rights that the courts ought to respect.
The demonizing of trial lawyers is one example; if it weren’t for their profession, the lethal switch problem in General Motors cars never would have come to light. Remember that when next you hear some ALEC-addled legislator or Federalist Society clone yap about “tort reform.”
In states where Supreme Court justices have been voted out of office, corporate money is behind the curtain.
With the U.S. Supreme Court in their corner, the corporations have begun shutting their customers entirely out of court. More on that later.
In Florida, poor people facing criminal charges are guaranteed a public defender. But those whose woes are of a civil nature are on their own.
A Scott spokesman claimed Attorney General Pam Bondi has $15 million available for indigent legal aid, but that money, from a national mortgage fraud settlement, is restricted to foreclosure cases.
Who are the victims of Scott’s veto? People trapped in consumer fraud, hounded by ruthless bill collectors, denied benefits by lazy bureaucrats, sufferers of spousal, child and elder abuse, immigrants strangling in red tape, tenants exploited by slumlords.
Legal aid agencies help many, but are turning away many more because the financial crash dried up the Florida Bar Foundation’s principal funding source, bank interest on lawyer’s trust accounts.
“Florida’s delivery of legal services to the poor is in crisis,” declared former Chief Justice Raoul Cantero in a petition, backed by 520 other lawyers, asking the Supreme Court to raise Florida Bar dues by $100 to finance legal aid. “Studies show that as much as 80 percent of the legal needs of the poor go unfilled,” he said.
Cantero’s heart is in the right place — unlike Scott’s — but it’s not the best solution. Aside from the unlikelihood of the court approving it, it risks alienating many of the lawyers who presently represent poor people pro bono. And it might not be enough.
Moreover, there are a lot of younger lawyers for whom a flat fee simply wouldn’t be fair. According to the Bar, the median income of recent law graduates is $45,000. That’s not a lot when there are student loans to repay.
(Disclosure: My son Jeremy is a brand-new assistant public defender. But he’s in New York and licensed there, so the Cantero petition wouldn’t affect him.)
Cantero’s point is valid, though. Legal aid is a moral necessity, not a luxury. The proper question is how best to pay for it.
Inequality before the law affects the middle class as well as the poor. A provocative article, “Thrown Out of Court,” in the current Washington Monthly explains how “corporations became people you can’t sue.”
In some of its most outrageous rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed businesses to impose terms that require their customers to forswear class action and submit any individual claim to arbitration rather than go to court.
Class actions are the public’s only effective way to get back at corporations that rip them off a few dollars at a time. Individually, the cases are effectively worthless. Collectively, they’re worth millions.
AT&T used the fine print that most consumers hadn’t read to quash a class action over allegedly deceptive advertising that had cost them an average of $30 each. An appeals court ruled that AT&T’s terms were “unconscionable.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for AT&T.
This is an important issue. I’ll be writing more about it.
Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times. He lives near Waynesville, North Carolina. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
