Commentary : Majority Backs Legal Aid for Poor

Once again, the Reagan Administration has proposed in its 1987 fiscal year budget the defunding of the Legal Services Corp., the federal agency which is responsible for providing free legal aid for low-income Americans in non-criminal matters.

The President, whose budgetary desires in this regard have been denied in his first four budgets, has never been mistaken for a proponent of increased welfare or child-nutrition programs while in Washington, but his special penchant for doing away with legal aid attorneys dates back to his tenure as California’s governor.

In that period (1967-1975), Reagan and Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, then an aide to the governor, went to great lengths to thwart the efficacy of those California legal aid organizations, such as California Rural Legal Assistance, which had been successful in challenging state government policies and regulations affecting public assistance recipients and other low-income citizens. The idea that government-funded lawyers were successfully suing government agencies has never pleased many public officials, and the restrictions on political activities and class-action suits imposed in the past few years on legal services programs attest to that.

However, when the President attacks legal services for the poor, he is taking on a program that has the support of a strong majority of Americans, even those in areas which overwhelmingly supported the Reagan candidacy in 1980 and 1984.

In 1981, a New York Times poll reported that legal services for the poor ranked second only to defense spending as the category of government spending Americans supported most. While it could be expected that such support has been appreciably undermined by the Reagan attack on the Legal Services Corp., survey results indicate continued support for government-funded legal services for the poor from Orange County.

The findings were startling: liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, independents, the young, aged, affluent, poor, whites and non-whites, male and female by and large supported an increase in tax money for legal services for the poor.

Orange County gave Reagan his largest percentage margin of victory in 1980, and is the place where the President chose to kick off his 1984 reelection campaign. The local Democratic Party is in disarray, can claim only a handful of elected statewide or national representatives, and sells bumper stickers that read: “It’s OK to be a Democrat in Orange County.”

Orange County is also substantially more conservative than the rest of the nation on defense spending, gun control and the death penalty, according to the 1984 Annual Orange County Survey. A large proportion of the respondents to the scientifically stratified and representative sample was in favor of increased defense spending, and a majority opposed gun control, supported the death penalty and prayer in public school, and favored sending troops to Central America. Yet, at the same time, 55% of the respondents voiced their support for government-funded legal services for the poor.

In the past four years, extensive lobbying by the American Bar Assn. and by various congressmen has been successful in restoring much of the Legal Services budget, maintaining the continued vitality of legal representation for the poor in an era when social service program cutbacks threaten their ability to maintain a decent standard of living.

A cynic could point to the lobbying efforts of the ABA and attorney-congressmen as being devoted to the protection by lawyers of programs primarily for lawyers and incidentally for clients. Remarkably, our findings indicate that support for government-funded legal services for the poor exists in all categories of the population of one of America’s most affluent and conservative counties.

Three years after the New York Times poll showed legal services for the poor second only to defense spending as a defensible spending category, and despite three years of persistent Administration efforts to defund the Legal Services Corp., the commitment to the ideal of a citizen’s right to his or her day in court remains strong.

The message seems clear: even staunch supporters of the President, those who support him on defense spending and support for the Contras, are at odds with his efforts to defund Legal Services.