Proposed House FY 2025 Budget Cut Would Impair Already Under-Resourced Legal Aid Programs
Contact
Carl Rauscher
Director of Communications and Media Relations
rauscherc@lsc.gov
202-295-1615
WASHINGTON – This morning, the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science proposed a budget for FY 2025 that would cut the Legal Service Corporation’s (LSC) funding, impairing the ability of 130 legal aid programs to serve low-income Americans facing critical issues such as evictions, veterans benefits and domestic violence. The House Subcommittee’s proposed budget cuts LSC’s funding by $71 million to $489 million.
This cut would mean that 272,248 fewer low-income people would receive legal assistance on life-impacting matters such as home foreclosures, child custody and issues with unemployment insurance and consumer scams. Legal aid organizations funded by LSC would be forced to turn away 117,883 children, 24,503 survivors of domestic violence and 4,924 veterans.
LSC grantees are struggling with the year-after-year increases in demand for civil legal services due to the pandemic’s lingering economic impact on low-income Americans. LSC’s 2022 Justice Gap reportfound a staggering deficit: LSC’s grantees must turn away half of eligible clients who seek civil legal services due to a lack of resources. Without adequate funding, the capacity of legal services providers will continue to fall very short of the needs of low-income Americans and only worsen—contributing to a widening justice gap.
“LSC and its grantees are not satisfied with only serving half of the eligible low-income Americans who come to their local legal aid’s door with critical problems that impact their families’ homes, their safety, their future financial security and their ability to put food on the table today,” said LSC President Ron Flagg. “To decrease funding for legal services when so many are already unable to receive help does an immense disservice to our most vulnerable citizens.”
“In LSC’s 50-year history, we have been grateful for broad bipartisan support from Congress,” Flagg continued. “However, with so much progress left to make, we must not relent on our efforts to end the access to justice crisis.”
The proposed $71 million cut is identical to the House subcommittee’s FY 2024 proposal. Last year, the Senate appropriations committee put forth a budget that held LSC funding flat at $560 million, in line with the agreement reached in the Fiscal Responsibility Act to fund the federal government at the FY 2023 level in both FY 2024 and FY 2025. The flat $560 million funding for LSC eventually passed in March with broad bipartisan support. The Senate’s proposed FY 2025 budget is still pending.
“I’d like to thank ranking members of the Appropriations Committee Matt Cartwright and Rosa DeLauro for highlighting the impact this proposed funding cut would have on civil legal services at the subcommittee markup today,” Flagg said.
The White House requested $566 million for LSC in FY 2025. LSC’s budget request stated that in order to fully resolve the legal problems of low-income Americans who contact LSC grantees for assistance, LSC would need $1.749 billion for the Basic Field programs of its grantees. Basic Field grants comprise more than 97% of LSC’s proposed budget. The full budget request for FY 2025 is $1.797 billion—which also includes funds for important programs like Technology Initiative Grants, the Pro Bono Innovation Fund and the Loan Repayment Assistance Program for legal aid attorneys.