"The stakes are too high, especially with environmental and health impacts, for Plaintiffs to be deprived of their opportunity to receive benefits and a means to hold the developer, Amazon, and other corporations that stand to profit accountable under the Community Benefits Ordinance (CBO)," said Tonya Myers Phillips, director of Partnerships and Development at the Sugar Law Center, which is representing the State Fairgrounds Development Coalition. … see full story at WXYZ, Channel 7
State Fairgrounds Development Coalition files lawsuit against city of Detroit over Amazon land deal
The [Sugar Law Center’s] lawsuit alleges that the city is looking to dodge the Community Benefits Ordinance — meant to address developments' negative impacts on ... see full story on Crain’s
Detroit’s Right to Counsel Victory Shows the Power of the People
by Tonya Meyers Phillips for The Detroit Right To Council Coalition
Political power. The Right to Counsel Movement is an inspiring and continuing story of how the Detroit Right to Counsel Coalition and ordinary Detroiters activated our collective power and won one of the most significant rights in Detroit’s history, a right to legal counsel for low-income Detroiters facing eviction. … full story at Riverwise
Law and Disorder Radio, July 11, 2022
Maurice Sugar was a workers’ lawyer and a socialist, one of the founding members of the National Lawyers Guild, the first General Counsel to the United Auto Workers and a staunch defender of working people’s rights. He was also a talented poet and songwriter of political songs and poems. In the 1950’s, during the height of the Cold War, Walter Reuther was elected President of the UAW. His first official action was to fire Sugar. Maurice and his wife Jane Sugar, who was an activist and union organizer of teachers, homesteaded over 100 acres of property in the Black Lake area of Michigan. At their deaths – he in the 1970s and she in the 1980s – a trust was created which formed the financial seed money for the founding of the Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice in Detroit, Michigan.
Guest – Executive Director of the Sugar Law Center, John Philo. John has litigated cases in dozens of states representing low-wage workers, communities, and injured persons on matters of employment, constitutional, and tort law. John is also a former president of the Detroit Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and a contributing author to the National Lawyers Guild’s Employee and Union Member Guide to Labor Law and the Institute of Continuing Legal Education’s Torts: Michigan Law and Practice. … see podcast interview at Law and Disorder
Brown, Murray Introduce Legislation to Improve Warn Act by Providing More Notice for Workers, Holding Employers Accountable
“The WARN Act intends to provide employees and their communities with fair notice of job loss so that they can take steps to avoid the potentially devasting effects of sudden wage loss and economic uncertainty. The Fair Warning Act recognizes that large employers today have thousands of employees working at smaller sites spread across many communities. The Act would close the loopholes that allow companies to avoid providing notice when hundreds or even thousands of persons lose employment and would provide more meaningful accountability to ensure that working people and their communities receive the fair notice that they deserve,” said John Philo, Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice. … see full story at Sen Sherrod Brown’s Newsroom
FEMA flood program could violate civil rights law
The Stafford Act clause also casts a wide net of protection by barring discrimination on the basis of economic status and English proficiency in addition to the protected classes of race, nationality, religion, disability and sex.
“They can’t discriminate against you because you’re poor. That’s unusual in most of the antidiscrimination clauses you see,” said John Philo, executive director of the Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice in Detroit, a nonprofit organization focused on low-income workers. “Usually it’s race, gender, age, military status and other things.”
Congress enacted the nondiscrimination provision in 1970 “to address rampant discrimination in federal, state, and private assistance programs after Hurricane Camille,” Perls wrote in her paper, referring to a devastating Category 5 hurricane in 1969 that made landfall in Mississippi. … see ful story at Politico
A new proposal would offer legal representation for Detroiters facing eviction
Tonya Myers Phillips, project leader for the Detroit Right to Counsel — a group seeking to guarantee legal representation for low-income renters facing eviction — argued Thursday during committee that the ordinance was legally sound.
“We need to bring our residents and our city one step closer to having housing security,” Phillips said.
Last week, Phillips told the Free Press that the ordinance, if passed, would be a “game changer.”
“A right to counsel is, simply put, just the right to have legal representation in a legal proceeding,” Phillips said, using the example of how those accused of a crime are guaranteed a lawyer if they can’t afford one. There isn’t an equivalent on the civil side and that needs to change for those facing eviction in Detroit, she said. … see full story at Bridge Detroit
Detroit City Council approves 'Right to Counsel' for renters facing eviction
The ordinance comes a long way after more than three years of drafting, said Tonya Myers Phillips, project leader for the Detroit Right To Counsel Coalition.
"Today is the day we can start a new chapter in our Detroit history and put forth systemic change to ensure that we are protecting our most vulnerable residents," Myers Phillips said. "This ordinance guarantees tenants the rug won't be pulled out from under them." … see full story at Detroit News
A new Detroit ordinance will pay for lawyers for low-income people facing housing issues in court
In Detroit an individual is 18 times more likely to remain in their home when they have a lawyer to help them during an eviction, says Tonya Myers Phillips, a leader of the Right to Counsel Coalition and one of the attorneys who helped draft the new rule. Myers Phillips says the ordinance is not only expected to keep Detroiters in place — it’s expected to preserve money in the city.
“Detroit receives an estimated $3,751 annually per resident in non-reimbursable federal funding,” says Myers Phillips. “So, when an individual is evicted and moves out of the city of Detroit, which is a trend that we noticed that’s happening as well, that federal funding is lost.” … see full story at WDET NPR
Why Michigan's pandemic unemployment aid problems seem like déjà vu
For unemployment advocates, Mauricio’s story reflects a sense of déjà vu inspired by the most recent round of pandemic-era problems at the Michigan jobless agency — as a wave of new errors and overpayment demands by the state unemployment agency follow the ebbing tide of false fraud cases from 2015.
“That’s what makes me think I’m losing my mind: The exact same thing happened all over again,” said Tony Paris, an unemployment lawyer at Detroit's Sugar Law Center for Social and Economic Justice. “The amount of calls, the desperation, the onslaught, the news coverage — it’s all the same.” … see full story at Detroit News