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Browse the latest Pro Bono Opportunities at The Legal Aid Society.
NOTE: These opportunities are only available to attorneys affiliated with firms that have an established pro bono relationship with The Legal Aid Society.
If you are interested in working on one of these matters, please contact the Pro Bono Counsel at your law firm to receive authorization and check conflicts.
Legal Aid’s Criminal Defense Practice and Immigration Law Unit are representing a Peruvian, HIV+ transgender woman who repeatedly suffered multiple forms of gender-based violence and sex trafficking both in and outside the US, who was recently detained by ICE and transferred to Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas. Our client will likely request release on bond and conditions from an immigration judge in June or July. If the judge denies, which is likely, the client will likely want to pursue habeas relief later this summer, with an anticipated filing between July and September, on the ground that she needs mental health treatment, not incarceration, and she will not pose any threat to the community if she receives appropriate services.
Our Immigration Law attorneys are available to co-counsel for both the bond hearing and habeas, but the habeas representation would require local counsel to appear in Texas. Additionally, Legal Aid could prepare the bulk of the initial written bond materials to help facilitate representation. Our client’s next court appears is on June 21, 2024, for a Master Calendar hearing.
Our clients fled Venezuela after the military broke into their home in an attempt to intimidate and extort the family as part of a larger military campaign focusing on small business owners. Our primary client, the mother of the family, entered the United States on 8/24/2023, along with her three minor children and the father of her youngest child. Upon entry to the United States, our client was sexually abused by a US immigration officer. She reported the incident to other immigration officers and continues to cooperate in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) internal investigation regarding this incident.
Pro bono counsel is needed to represent our client and her family on applications for asylum, a Change of Venue Motion from Houston to New York, and any additional matters before the Immigration Court. Counsel will also need to advise the mother regarding her continued cooperation with the CBP internal investigation, which could potentially allow the family to pursue a U visa for victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are helpful to law enforcement or government officials in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity.
The family must file for asylum before 8/23/2024.
LAS Immigration Law Unit advocates are available to advise and assist on this matter, but pro bono counsel should expect to take lead on all aspects of representation, including providing translation and interpretation as needed. LAS will provide access to recorded trainings outlining the basics of asylum representation and interviewing clients.
Our Health Law Unit seeks pro bono assistance on behalf of our client who wishes to pursue affirmative litigation against her prior employer who failed to properly notice a COBRA-qualifying event and retroactively disenrolled our client from their health insurance. These actions caused our client to be ineligible for Medicaid and left her with extensive medical debt.
Our client worked for a New York State-run psychiatric program until October 2020 when she was terminated due to loss of funding during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our client had a self-funded health insurance plan through her job and coverage was set to end a month after her termination. Our client was approved for Medicaid once she believed her employer-provided health insurance ended. However, the New York State of Health (NYSOH) sent her notice that she could not enroll into a Medicaid managed care plan because she was still enrolled in her prior plan. Our client did, however, qualify for Medicaid fee-for-service as secondary insurance. When our client attempted to disenroll from the employer-provided plan she was told that her employer would have to terminate her coverage and that she could not do so unilaterally. Our client made numerous attempts to contact her former employer’s HR department but never received a call back. Our client needed medical attention during this time, so she continued to use her employer-provided insurance with Medicaid fee-for-service. Between 2020 and 2022, our client went a step further and confirmed her coverage by calling plan provided by her previous employer before most, if not all her doctor visits.
In January 2023, our client called her plan before a medical appointment and was told that her former employer terminated her coverage retroactively to November 2020. Our client received a COBRA notice dated 2023 indicating that in 2020 she experienced a COBRA-qualifying event and that she would have to pay over $800/month retroactively to 2020 to receive coverage. Our client cannot afford to pay retroactively for COBRA because most, if not all, of the medical providers she saw between 2020-2022 do not accept Medicaid fee-for-service. Our client is now responsible for all doctors’ fees billed during her non-coverage period, which she cannot afford.
Initial research by our Health Law Unit on the COBRA FAQ on the NYS Department of Financial Services website indicates that employers are supposed to send COBRA notification within 30 days of the qualifying event. Furthermore, our client was supposed to receive a COBRA letter 30 days after her job loss and not three years after the fact.
Our Health Law Unit advocates seek pro bono co-counsel to explore what steps our client should take to address the failure of her prior employer and represent our client on the relevant advocacy and potential litigation.