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Law Notes - October 2001
by John Duffy
By now
you have seen five Law Notes columns in your local newspaper on topics ranging
from purchasing a car to managing debt. What, you might be asking, is Dakota
Plains Legal Services and why are they writing this column?
Dakota
Plains Legal Services was chartered in 1966 as South Dakota Legal Services to
provide legal assistance to citizens who could not afford a lawyer. It is a
non-profit organization that seeks to ensure equal access to justice under the
law for all eligible clients in its service area. That service area encompasses
8 Indian reservations and 26 of
South Dakota’s 66 counties as
well as one North Dakota county. It has six branch offices located in Mission,
Fort Thompson, Pine Ridge, Sisseton, Eagle Butte, and Fort Yates,
North Dakota.
In addition to serving eight South Dakota Indian reservations, DPLS also serves
non-Indian counties and citizens located within its service area.
Geographically speaking, DPLS serves 44% of South Dakota.
DPLS
funding comes primarily from the
Legal Services Corporation but is supplemented by a broad range of sources,
including charitable organizations, foundations, corporations, and donors. LSC
is a private, non-profit corporation established by Congress for the
distribution of funds to legal services providers. As a result, LSC funding
(upon which DPLS is particularly dependant) has restrictions attached. This
money may not be used for class actions, welfare reform challenges, lobbying,
prisoner litigation, representation of illegal aliens, drug-related housing
evictions, etc.
So who
can be a DPLS client? The simple answer is anyone who is eligible to receive
our services. The person must be a US citizen or eligible alien, not have
significant assets, and meet income guidelines established by LSC. For example,
an individual who makes more than $10,738 is ineligible for our services. A
family of four making more than $22,063 would also be ineligible. The goal of
the program is to bridge the access to justice gap that the poverty population
has historically fallen into and to provide basic legal services that the
majority of the population, however expensive, can pay for.
As part
of this “bridging the justice gap” effort, DPLS is also seeking to educate and
inform citizens about their legal rights and obligations. While blissful,
ignorance complicates the workings of a democratic society and jeopardizes
citizens’ rights. DPLS feels that educated citizens will be more able to avoid
legal problems and thus not need our services as often. This thought has lead
to the Law Notes column, which is distributed to about 20 South Dakota
newspapers.
We thank
this newspaper for printing this column and hope that you learn something each
month. An educated and informed populace will maintain our great country and
all it represents.
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