Public Interest Law Center Students and Faculty Continue to Assist the Community During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Students in our Public Interest Law Center (PILC) are continuing to assist clients even though they are currently unable to meet in person and many courts have changed the way they operate. During the spring semester, for example, students in the Children’s Advocacy Clinic created a project for children and young people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to help them obtain much needed CARES stimulus economic impact payments. According to Professor Paolo Annino, none of the project clients had ever filed federal income taxes nor were they aware of how to apply for the federal funds. This summer, students enrolled in Professor Darby Kerrigan Scott's Immigration and Farmworker Project will be preparing videos in Spanish and English on the 2020 Census and COVID-19 as it relates to stimulus, health care and community resources. The videos will be distributed to the immigration and farmworker communities in Gadsden County. In addition, students in Professor Carla Laroche's Gender and Family Justice Clinic Injunction Project are working under new procedures that allow them to remotely assist people seeking injunctions for protection. Instead of working with petitioners in person at the Leon County Courthouse Refuge House Office, students receive intake referrals so they can then begin the process of virtually assisting people with completing their injunction petitions. Please join me in thanking these students and their professors for their important work.

On a related note, congratulations are in order for PILC Professor Carla Laroche and the students in her Collateral Consequences Project, which received an Honorable Mention for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project from the Clinical Legal Education Association this week. The project was selected for its advocacy on voting rights restoration of returning citizens who were convicted of felony offenses. This is the second year in a row that a PILC project received an honorable mention in this category!

Published on May 29, 2020