Civil rights and environmental coalition challenges rule curbing law clinics

A COALITION OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND environmental groups has joined a Tulane University professor in filing suit against the Louisiana state supreme court over a rule restricting law clinics. Rules of practice written by the state's high court govern law clinics in Louisiana, through which third-year law students gain hands-on experience by assisting low- and moderate-income residents with legal claims.

In recent years, law professor Robert Kuehn and his colleagues at the environmental law clinic run by Tulane University have rankled some state political and business moguls by representing local citizens in legal challenges to large chemical manufacturers. The clinic has contended that petrochemical facilities set up shop in predominantly black and poor areas and contaminate surrounding communities with toxic discharges. Such claims prompted Louisiana's governor, Mike Foster, to denounce the professors and law students at the Tulane clinic as "a bunch of outlaws trying to shut everything down." He has also urged Tulane alumni to protest the university's funding of the law clinic, and he has cast doubt on continuance of the university's tax breaks from the state.

Amid such calls from political leaders, the court revised its rule on law clinics in June 1998. The new policy reduces the income threshold of potential clients and forbids clinics from soliciting clients. Citizens must now have incomes below a poverty-level ceiling to secure the clinic's services. An organization seeking to qualify as a client of the clinic would have to quiz its entire membership to ensure that a majority falls below the income threshold.

The suit against the revised rule, filed in federal district court in April, comes amid growing faculty opposition to the policy.

Risk to academic freedom is among the reasons plaintiffs cite in seeking to block the rule. "The rule," says Kuehn, "interferes with the ability of students to learn from cases, whole categories of which we are prohibited from pursuing. It also interferes with the ability of professors to teach by preventing us from approaching people and disqualifying communities whose cases might best dramatize a particular lesson."

Responding to the rule change and the politics behind it, the Louisiana state conference of the AAUP adopted a statement in April "condemn [ing] in the strongest terms the actions of state officials." The resolution also criticizes the governor's threat to curtail university funding of the Tulane clinic, calling the rule change "retaliatory against Tulane University and its environmental law clinic."

The Association of American Law Schools has also condemned the rule change, claiming that it has produced "the most restrictive practice rule in the nation in several respects" regarding student law clinics. The state's bar association and attorney general have weighed in as well, urging the court to halt implementation of the revised rule until more debate can take place.

For professors, however, danger from the new policy extends far beyond the law faculty, according to Linda Carroll, president of the Tulane chapter of the AAUP. "The inhibitory effect has several layers," she says, referring to the fear of reprisal against the university raised by the governor's criticism. "When you face these types of pronouncements, you can't help but be rattled as a faculty member. I know people, such as in the sciences, who have already begun to pull back in their research." And whatever the outcome of the suit, Carroll warns of the enduring impact of events surrounding the rule change. "For many," she points out, "self-censorship is the ultimate outcome."