Democratic US senators urge more funding to avoid public defender layoffs

Oct 6 (Reuters) – Twenty-three Democratic U.S. senators on Friday urged congressional appropriators to increase spending on federal public defenders beyond what is proposed in pending spending legislation or risk significant job cuts.

In a letter to the leaders of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, the 23 senators said more money was needed for fiscal year 2024 than contemplated in pending spending bills to “maintain the right to counsel in federal court.”

Those bills have yet to pass either chamber of Congress, which faces a Nov. 17 deadline to pass spending legislation or another stop-gap spending measure to avert a partial government shutdown.

The letter was organized by Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, a former public defender himself, and counts among its signatories all of the Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, including its chair, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.

The letter urged the Senate Appropriations Committee to increase funding to at least $1.52 billion to “maintain the right to counsel in federal court and continue the bipartisan support this program has historically received.”

Bills that have advanced through committees in the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives and Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate instead call for providing the public defenders $1.41 billion and $1.38 billion, respectively.

Those levels are below what the judiciary requested on behalf of the federal defenders and fail to account for an “unusual” $110 million carried over from 2022 that was left unspent due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the letter said.

Not accounting for that money leaves a gap that could result in the federal defenders having to cut 9-12% of their workforce, the senators said.

“Nearly 9 in 10 individuals charged with a federal crime cannot afford legal representation and thus are constitutionally entitled to appointed counsel,” the letter said. “Preserving the public defender workforce is essential to our justice system.”

A spokesperson for the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington, said she “will continue to look toward every possible avenue to protect funding for public defenders, now and in the future.”

Members of the Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary’s policymaking body, in a letter in August similarly pushed for a remedy to the budget shortfall currently proposed for the federal defenders, who are part of the judiciary.

A report in September by the judiciary’s research arm, the Federal Judicial Center, said the potential shortfall had its origins in an accounting decision made by the judiciary, whose process of drafting budget requests has prioritized its overall needs over those of the public defenders who work within it.