President Trump has been a busy man since taking office. With all of his executive orders and Saturday morning tweets, he’s really got his plate full. But that hasn’t stopped him from revealing his budget proposal, which, unfortunately, would eliminate “the single greatest funder of civil legal aid in the United States, the Legal Services Corporation.” But it gets worse. At the same time, many in Congress are working to “block Americans from seeking justice on their own with the Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017.” Wait, Congress wants to make it more difficult for everyday Americans to file lawsuits? It would seem.
President Trump has been a busy man since taking office. With all of his executive orders and Saturday morning tweets, he’s really got his plate full. But that hasn’t stopped him from revealing his budget proposal, which, unfortunately, would eliminate “the single greatest funder of civil legal aid in the United States, the Legal Services Corporation.” But it gets worse. At the same time, many in Congress are working to “block Americans from seeking justice on their own with the Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017.” Wait, Congress wants to make it more difficult for everyday Americans to file lawsuits? It would seem.
If passed, who exactly would be impacted by the Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017? Well, anyone who wishes to file a class action lawsuit against corporations, the government, and any other entity that causes abuse of some kind. “For those who face systemic corporate abuses and failures of government, class action lawsuits are a critical tool for seeking justice.” Class action lawsuits allow “a few people or organizations” to “represent a larger group that has been harmed in a lawsuit against the perpetrator to seek a remedy, whether a change in practices or monetary damages.”
Without the ability to file class action lawsuits, fewer people will be able to obtain the justice they deserve. That’s why this proposal would be so devastating because it would “make it more difficult for people to seek relief or compensation when they have been mistreated by corporations or government agencies.” How? Well, according to reports, the bill would make it more difficult “for banding together to bring a case and complicating—as well as delaying—the process for collecting attorneys’ fees, making it riskier for attorneys to take on class actions to help those who have been harmed.”
Essentially, in order to file a class action suit under the new bill, every member of the group filing the lawsuit would have to have “suffered the same type and scope of injury.” Many claim this is impractical criteria, and severely limits who can sue. For example, “many or most classes in class actions include members who have not been injured but could have been.” Additionally, one can argue that such criteria “all but ends class action as a category: The same type of abuse affects different people in different ways.” This is exactly why the “Supreme Court has explicitly held that class members need not have suffered the same damage to benefit from a class action.”
On top of all this, the new bill would discourage lawyers from bringing class action cases because it would “peg attorneys’ fees in injunctive cases to a reasonable percentage of the value of the relief.” Unfortunately, however, this proposal is just the latest in a pile of congressional and executive proposals that will “widen the gap between legal needs and services available” for everyday Americans.
Sources:
Unfairness in Class Action: A New Attack on Civil Rights
Oppose H.R. 985 The Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017
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