Attorney General Frosh Joins Twenty-State Coalition Opposing Federal Efforts to Put Haitian-Born Residents at Risk of Deportation

Attorneys General Argue that Termination of Temporary Protected Status

for Haiti is Illegal

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh joined on December 30, 2019 a group of state attorneys general in challenging the Trump administration’s effort to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian nationals.  If the administration is allowed to move forward, Haitian TPS holders in Maryland, other states, and the District of Columbia would lose their legal status, leaving them vulnerable to deportation. 

In an amicus brief filed in support of the plaintiffs in Saget v. Trump before the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the coalition argue that the administration did not have a reasonable reason for the move, which they hold violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).  The brief urges the Court of Appeals to affirm the lower court’s ruling and uphold a nationwide injunction against the termination to prevent widespread harm -  deportation - in the amici states.

In the brief, the attorneys general argue that the District Court’s rejection of the administration’s decision should be upheld because: The administration did not justify its decision to revoke TPS for Haiti. Ending TPS for Haiti would harm tens of thousands of American families. Separating families creates a significant economic burden for states. State economies and critical industries would suffer if Haitian residents lose TPS. Public safety would be harmed if these residents are worried about deportation. In addition to Maryland, the brief was joined by the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. (From a press release by the Attorney General, December 30, 2019.)

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HISTORY OF EFFORTS TO END SOURCE OF INCOME DISCRIMINATION

The December 20, 2019 American Bar Association Human Rights Magazine published "Your Money's No Good Here: Combating Source of Income Discrimination in Housing" written by Homeless Persons Representation Project (HPRP) Executive Director Antonia Fasanelli and Poverty Race and Research Action Council Executive Director Phil Tegeler, with a contribution by HPRP Board Member Jill Williams.  

As of the end of 2019, four Maryland jurisdictions - Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Prince George's County passed laws this year banning housing discrimination based on source of income. These are great steps forward, but the question is: Why haven't Carroll County, Harford County, and many others taken this fair and equitable step?

To read more and follow HPRP's work ending source of income discrimination go here and to support these efforts go here.

ANTI-REDLINE EXHIBIT AT THE PRATT LIBRARY As noted by the Archdiocese of Baltimore's Beyond the Boundaries project, there currently is a very interesting exhibit at the Pratt called "UNDESIGN THE REDLINE."  The Pratt describes it as "a framework for unearthing our most deep, systemic and entangled crises. This interactive exhibit, workshop series and curriculum explores the history of structural racism and classism, how these designs compounded each other from 1938 Redlining maps until today, and how WE can come together to undesign these systems with intentionality."  The exhibit is located in the central hall of the main Pratt 1t 400 Cathedral Street in Baltimore. Public tours of the exhibit are led by Pratt-trained staff and volunteers. The Library stresses that space is limited and registration required. For a private tour for your students, community organizations, or social groups (minimum 5, maximum 20) outside of these hours, please email pao@prattlibrary.org or call 410-396-5494. Beyond the Boundaries plans to set up a private, guided tour in January, 2020. For more information on the exhibit, as well as the Library's location and hours, please visit the Enoch Pratt website here. Available reservation dates through January 23, 2020 Central Library, Elizabeth K. Moser Central Hall

ADVOCATES CRITICIZE PROPOSED CRA CHANGES AS wORSENING LENDING DISCRIMINATION

The organizations hold that the proposed notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for changes to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will make lending discrimination worse. In the statement by Jesse Van Tol, CEO of NCRC, he says:

“The ratio would measure the overall value of a bank’s CRA activities against the value of its deposits. This will encourage banks to seek the largest CRA financing deals, regardless of whether the deals make the most sense for local community needs. That’s why many banks as well as community-based organizations oppose the ratio being the primary determining factor on CRA exams. While the proposal looks at assessment area performance, it sets up a scenario where a bank could run up the dollar volume in 50% of its assessment areas, and still pass. The FDIC seems to have gotten a carve-out for community banks. In other words, many FDIC-regulated banks will be able to opt out of the new evaluation system and keep their CRA exams the way they are now. This  further confuses the regulatory landscape, the exact opposite outcome of what new rules were supposed to achieve.

“Discrimination in lending is still widespread and devastating for families and their communities. And yet 98% of banks pass their CRA exams. Taking steps to weaken the rules makes no sense. New rules should add clarity to the compliance process for banks, as well as reflect changes in how people interact with banks and how banks do business. But most critically, new rules should help low- and moderate-income borrowers in the communities that are most in need of CRA-based lending.”

Read the complete December 12, 2019 NCRC press release.

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IF YOU ARE A HOMEOWNER IN MARYLAND, YOU BETTER HAVE A DEED! HERE'S WHERE TO CHECK FOR FREE, AND POSSIBLY GET TAX CREDITS, TOO

Too many Marylanders think they own their home, but actually do not have a legal deed to the property. You need a deed or you cannot put it in your will, cannot leave the home to family, cannot quality for rehab grants, etc. Here is a link to a site for checking if you have a deed: http://www.myhomemydeed.org/. On the bottom of the page, you can check to see if you might qualify for a homeowners' tax credit. The page in Spanish is: http://www.myhomemydeed.org/my-deed-en-espanol/.

My Home, My Deed, My Legacy is a project of Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS) and Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development

Renters also are possible eligible for a tax credit. You might get a check for hundreds! To see if you qualify, go to: https://dat.maryland.gov/realproperty/Pages/Renters'-Tax-Credits.aspx.

EDNA SMITH PRIMUS, PIONEERING CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER, 75

Primus was the first black women to practice law in South Carolina, and is probably best known for her work as a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the 1970s. She won the US Supreme Court case that widened free speech rights for attorneys at nonprofit organizations.

In 1978, she was publicly reprimanded by the South Carolina Supreme Court for simply suggesting to a group of women who had received involuntary sterilizations that the ACLU could sue for them. At the time, South Carolina and some other states required poor women to be sterilized in order to receive public assistance through Medicaid. Because these forced sterilizations in the South were mostly performed on black women, many African Americans considered this genocide. 

Later that year, the US Supreme Court overturned the state court’s reprimand, finding in their ruling that she was protected by the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression. The court declared a lawyer could recruit clients when this concerned political expression and advocating for public rights. This ruling helped lead to current rules that attorneys working with nonprofits have wider constitutional protections than those motivated primarily by financial gain. 

Up until the 1980’s, South Carolina kept its sterilization laws. In 2003, South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges (b.1956) made a public apology for the forced sterilizations that had occurred in the state, and for the people who had their rights to have children violated. 

After the case, Primus continued to work for several decades in civil rights and social justice law.

Primus was praised by Wilbur Johnson, who worked for her at Palmetto Legal Services (Spartanburg, South Carolina): "Edna always demonstrated a quiet but serious commitment to the agency’s central mission; that is, delivering quality legal services to those citizens who otherwise could not afford them.” 

Read the December 6th The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina) obituary.

Read an academic article about sterilization in South Carolina.

New Website Tool Shows the Impacts of School Segregation by School District

The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University has released an excellent new interactive website describing access to educational opportunity for every school district in the U.S., which includes a series of tables explaining the persistent effects of racial and economic segregation on student achievement. 

The research papers underlying the new website are also collected here.

The Project utilizes the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), an initiative directed at providing data to assist scholars, policymakers, educators, and parents learn how to improve educational opportunity for all children. It includes various detailed data on educational conditions, contexts, and outcomes in US school districts and counties. Specifically, SEDA has measures of academic achievement and achievement gaps for school districts and counties, as well as district-level measures of racial and socioeconomic composition, racial and socioeconomic segregation patterns, and other measures. 

Research papers include "Is Separate Still Unequal? New Evidence on School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps" by Sean F. Reardon, Ericka S. Weathers, Erin M. Fahle, Heewon Jang, Demetra Kalogrides. September, 2019.

The website and SEDA are supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and several others.

NEW MTO STUDY FINDS YOUNG CHILDREN'S HEALTH BENEFITS FROM HOUSING VOUCHER PROGRAM 

In a just-released analysis, a team at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found evidence of moderately reduced hospital costs for children whose families had received housing vouchers in the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program (MTO), with additional cost savings associated with moves to lower poverty neighborhoods. Read a summary of the research here and the abstract here. The MTO Program was begun in 1994 by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), with the objective of determining the benefits of offering housing and neighborhood mobility opportunities to low-income families.

The analysis was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on December 3, 2019. It was written by Alexandra Yurkovic, Michael Silverstein, and Alastair Bell.

This research builds on prior research on the health benefits of housing mobility, and work by the Poverty & Race Research Action Council's own estimates of long term health system cost savings.