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Legal Aid seeks to ensure justice, fairness, and equity for our clients and their communities by changing the laws and policies that harm them. In addition to providing zealous individual representation, we fight for change through affirmative litigation, policy advocacy, and community organizing.
The law reform units in each of our practices work together and with the staff of our neighborhood and trial offices to take on the systemic issues most pressing to our clients.
Our Impact Litigation Docket
Civil Practice
Criminal Defense Practice
Juvenile Rights Practice
The Legal Aid Society lauded Governor Kathy Hochul for signing the Clean Slate Act into law. Legal Aid had long been an advocate for the critical legislation that will automatically seal conviction records for more than 2.3 million New Yorkers — a disproportionate number of whom are from low-income communities of color.
The Legal Aid Society, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP announced a historic settlement in Ciaramella v. Zucker – a federal class action lawsuit brought against the New York State Department of Health (DOH) on behalf of Medicaid recipients in New York who were denied coverage for medically necessary dental care by New York State.
The settlement will affect roughly five million individuals statewide, as reported by The New York Times. Most significantly, it ends the strict limit denying coverage for crowns and root canals to individuals with more than four pairs of teeth, an archaic policy not aligned with modern US dental practice. Coverage for those procedures will now be approved for Medicaid recipients when deemed medically necessary. Changes to the benefit program focus on added coverage for routine dental care and procedures, to help Medicaid patients preventatively maintain better oral and overall health.
Our work goes beyond individual cases to address corrosive inequities and fundamental problems within the legal system, driving landmark rulings that positively impact the lives of millions, in New York City and beyond.
Adults with Medicaid will have access to critical dental services as a result of our settlement in Ciaramella v. Zucker
New Yorkers who will have their conviction records sealed thanks to our advocacy for the Clean Slate Act
New Yorkers protected from eviction due to our advocacy in passing CityFHEPS housing voucher reform and expansion
The Legal Aid Society changes the lives of our clients with the help of our generous supporters.