Senate HELP Committee Approves Three LSC Board Nominees

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, DC -- The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions today approved the nominations of three White House appointees to the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation.

The committee is led by Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Ranking Member Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.).

The three nominees are Sharon L. Browne, a principal attorney in the Pacific Legal Foundation's Individual Rights Practice group and a member of the foundation's senior management; Charles Norman Wiltse Keckler, who teaches civil procedure and evidence at Pennsylvania State University's Dickinson School of Law, and Victor B. Maddox, a partner in the Louisville, Ky., law firm of Fultz Maddox Hovious & Dickens, PLC.

President Obama announced their nominations on December 17, 2009. Their nominations now go to the full Senate for consideration.

They join five other LSC Board nominees, announced August 6, 2009, awaiting Senate confirmation. They are Robert J. Grey, a partner in the Richmond, Va., and Washington offices of the Hunton & Williams law firm; John G. Levi, a partner in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin, LLP; Martha L. Minow, dean of the Harvard Law School; Julie A. Reiskin, executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, and Gloria Valencia-Weber, a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Last year, the Senate confirmed Laurie Mikva as a member of the LSC Board of Directors. She is a staff attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Illinois Department of Employment Security and a former civil legal aid attorney and public defender.

LSC is the single largest provider of civil legal assistance for the poor in the nation. Established in 1974, LSC operates as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that promises equal access to justice and provides grants for high-quality civil legal assistance to low-income Americans.