PUBLIC JUSTICE CENTER INC

We advocate to protect and expand eligibility for healthcare coverage and access to appropriate, affordable, effective and culturally competent healthcare. We seek to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes and access to benefits.

We defend renters facing eviction, demand repair of unsafe housing conditions, and represent renters seeking systemic relief from predatory landlord practices. We advocate to change the law regarding evictions and to demand the development of equitable and sustainable affordable housing.

We advance justice and equity in the workplace by defending and expanding the rights of vulnerable workers. We enable workers to stand up to wage theft and demand payment of unpaid wages. We advocate to make work pay for low-wage workers through policies that ensure workers’ access to the courts and promote safe and healthy working conditions.

We advance racial equity in public education by combatting the overuse of exclusionary school discipline practices, like suspension and expulsion, that disproportionately target Black and brown children and push students out of school. We also seek to eliminate barriers to school enrollment and success confronting homeless children and children in foster care.

We lead a national coalition that seeks to establish the right to an attorney for low-income people in civil cases when basic needs are at stake, such as housing, child custody, or physical safety. (civilrighttocounsel.org)

We aim to make pretrial detention rare, brief, and humane. We work in coalition to reform the money bail system in Maryland. We also advocate to ensure quality healthcare and sanitary conditions in pretrial detention in Baltimore City.

We advocate in appellate courts to influence the development of civil rights and poverty law. This advocacy offers the potential to reform law that affects many thousands of people. The project is staffed by the Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr. Appellate Advocacy Fellow.