Poverty Law: Threat to the Ombudsmen

The young lawyers who run the OEO Legal Services Program see themselves as ombudsmen for the poor. As such, they do more than represent individual indigents in minor court actions. They also sue state and local governments on behalf of welfare recipients, migrant workers and other large groups of poor people. The growing success of such broad test cases may be measured by the opposition that has surfaced in the U.S. Senate.

"I object to the political involvement of a federally funded organization," said Senator George Murphy of California. In the same vein, Florida Senator Edward Gurney denounced OEO lawyers for "agitation." Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona accused them of "inciting trouble" on the Navajo reservation in the West.

After that, by a vote of 45 to 40, the Senate passed a surprise amendment that Murphy tacked on to a poverty-program bill to give governors a veto over individual budget items in OEO Legal Services programs. Previously, a governor could veto the appropriation for an entire program in his state—but the OEO Director could override his veto.* "This is a disastrous piece of legislation," protested Alfred Feinberg, an OEO lawyer who heads an association called PLEA (Poverty Lawyers for Effective Advocacy). "If ultimately passed by the House, it will destroy OEO Legal Services."

For all the Senate objections, it is not uncommon for attorneys on the federal payroll to sue state and local governments. The Justice Department has initiated scores of such suits in civil rights matters. The OEO statute does not specifically mention this power, but poverty lawyers have assumed it—and could hardly succeed without it. "The problems of the poor," explains John Ferren, a teacher at Harvard Law School, "are mainly with Government agencies." The American Bar Association has also attacked the Murphy amendment as "oppressive interference with the freedom of the lawyer and the citizen."

If passed into law, the amendment might have its greatest impact on future programs in the South, where the governors of such states as Mississippi and Alabama would be comforted to know that they could veto civil rights actions by OEO lawyers.

Already lawyers in the South Florida Migrant Legal Services program are in trouble with Governor Claude Kirk. He threatened to veto the program when the OEO lawyers brought legal action on behalf of migrant workers against, among others, the Florida State Employment Service. In a compromise, the lawyers agreed to permit appointment to their governing board of more members who may not be sympathetic to such suits.

Greater Respect. Senator Murphy's target is one of the most ambitious Legal Services programs: the California Rural Legal Assistance project. In three years, CRLA lawyers have won 85% of more than 35,000 cases. Their success has nourished a greater respect for law among the state's rural poor, especially Mexican Americans. In 1967, the agency upset Governor Ronald Reagan when it won a suit to prevent him from cutting benefits for almost 1,500,000 people in the state's medical-assistance program. Reagan threatened to veto CRLA's aDoropriation but reportedly did not do so because OEO Director Sargent Shriver was prepared to override him.