After Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they quickly passed the Legal Aid Act of 1995, which banned federally funded legal aid organizations from bringing class actions. My recollection is that the Republicans threatened to cut off all funding for legal aid in order to get President Clinton to sign the bill. This had the unfortunate effect of almost completely ending class actions against the Social Security Administration. In the 1980s and 1990s class actions had a major beneficial effect upon Social Security.
There was an op ed piece in the New York Times back in April calling for an end to the ban on federally funded legal aid organizations bringing class actions. There was a piece in The Nation in January calling for the same thing. I do not think that the friends of legal aid have forgotten about this issue or regard it as closed. I hope that this will get a hearing in the new Congress.
There was an op ed piece in the New York Times back in April calling for an end to the ban on federally funded legal aid organizations bringing class actions. There was a piece in The Nation in January calling for the same thing. I do not think that the friends of legal aid have forgotten about this issue or regard it as closed. I hope that this will get a hearing in the new Congress.
I am not in favor of the government using my tax dollars to sue itself. I don't agree that the effect of claas actions suits was benefical to Social Security.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, the class actions were the beginning of the SSA backlogs--everything else had to take a back seat to processing those.
ReplyDeleteIf class actions are revived, absolutely say goodbye to SSA.
That's right - screw due process and following the law and regulations - we gotta get those cases out!
ReplyDelete