Legal Aid was saddened to learn of the passing of Judge Patricia Wald on January 12, 2019. Judge Wald became the first woman to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and became the D.C. Circuit’s first female Chief Judge in 1986. Read more →

Tomorrow, the DC Council will vote for a final time on the Wage Garnishment Fairness Act of 2017, a bill that would reform District law governing garnishment of employees’ wages for collection on civil judgments. Introduced in November of last year, the bill would protect low and moderate-income District residents by placing reasonable limits on this often-debilitating debt collection method. We urge the Council to vote for the bill one final time and resist any efforts by the debt collection industry to weaken the bill via last-minute amendments. Read more →

Today, the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stating our strong opposition to proposed regulations governing the “public charge determination” for immigrants and their families. The proposed rule would treat receipt of essential public benefits (such as Medicaid, SNAP and Section 8 housing subsidies), low income, poor health, being young or elderly and lack of English proficiency (among other factors) as negative factors in assessing an immigrant’s application for lawful permanent resident status.
Read more →

Many personal injury cases in the District are settled using a “structured settlement.” Such settlements provide for the payment of damages to the injured party in a stream of income over a period of years through a special form of annuity. But the persons holding these annuities are often victimized by companies who seek to purchase some or all of the future payments in exchange for immediate cash that is far less than the value of the purchased payments. To make matters worse, the sellers often do not understand the full implications of the transaction. Read more →

Yesterday, DC Attorney General Karl Racine announced that the District has joined 42 states in a $6 million settlement with the nation’s largest debt buyer and collector — Encore Capital Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries, Midland Credit Management, Inc. and Midland Funding, LLC — in order to resolve claims involving the company’s use of illegal tactics to collect on unverified debts. Read more →