State settles in assigned counsel case

The state last week reached an agreement to settle one of several lawsuits brought against it in recent years alleging that it had failed to meet its constitutional obligation to provide attorneys to low-income New Yorkers. 

New York State and the New York Civil Liberties Union recently agreed to a settlement in the case brought by the NYCLU that alleged that the state had not been meeting its requirements under Hurrell-Harring v. the State of New York, the settlement that first defined that the state has a constitutional requirement to provide legal representation for indigent defendants.

The settlement agreement reached in court last week comes not long before the settlement period in Hurrell-Harring was set to expire. 

Under the new agreement, the monitoring period under the previous settlement agreement will be extended by six months, coming to an end in March of next year instead of last month, when it was originally set to expire. 

The settlement also comes after assigned counsel attorneys across the state received pay increases through the passage of the state’s budget in May, after being denied similar raises in years past. 

According to a number of legal organizations — including the NYCLU — the stagnant wages contributed to high rates of attrition among assigned counsel panels, leading to higher caseloads for those attorneys who remained, and which, in turn, led to inadequate representation for low-income New Yorkers in need of an attorney. 

“The state has always — and continues to have — a constitutional responsibility to provide high-quality representation and must continue giving public defenders across the state, including assigned counsel providers that provide mandated…