Pro Bono: Staking a claim for Elkton's homeless campers

Matthew G. Summers was reading through e-mails listing pro bono opportunities in March 2007 when he came across a request to help a group of homeless people in Elkton who had been forced out of a makeshift campground by town officials.

"That piqued my interest," said Summers, 32, who remembered hearing about the incident when it happened in August 2006.

Summers and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, representing nine homeless clients, are still seeking damages for property taken during the incident. Last September, however, the town repealed an ordinance against loitering that Summers and the ACLU had challenged.

"We viewed it as an escalation of a real effort to get the homeless population of Elkton to move somewhere else," Summers said. "It was not a defensible loitering ordinance."

That Summers could make such a point is a result, he said, of re- learning constitutional issues he had not seen since law school. His practice focuses on bankruptcy, and his previous pro bono efforts had been representing debtors in Chapter 7 proceedings.

The Elkton case was a chance to do something different, Summers said, and in the process it also opened his eyes to the homeless.

"It's almost like you live in a parallel universe," he said. "It's easy not to think about them."

Summers' ongoing work in the case resulted in his receiving an award from the Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland during the Maryland State Bar Association's annual meeting this month in Ocean City.

"Matt's commitment of time and energy to the cause, his easy ability to move from courtroom to soup kitchen to backwoods camp, and his rapport with people from all walks [has] been critical to the successes thus far achieved," Deborah A. Jeon, legal director for the ACLU of Maryland, wrote in nominating the Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll LLP associate for the award.

Access and a voice

Summers first heard his clients' stories in April 2007. The forcible removal caused "an uproar" among advocates and the homeless in Elkton, he said.

"You couldn't help but feel for people who lost everything they owned," he said. "It wasn't much, but everything was taken from them."

Summers was preparing to file a lawsuit when the town instituted the anti-loitering ordinance last June. He quickly shifted his efforts, seeking to enjoin the ordinance first in Cecil County Circuit Court and then in the Court of Special Appeals before the case was moved to U.S. District Court.

The town dropped the ordinance days before it was to respond in federal court.

Four or five of the nine clients remain homeless in Elkton, Summers said, while the rest have either found housing or moved elsewhere. All of them are happy with the legal proceedings so far, as is Summers.

"The whole series of events stirs up a lot of emotions for them," he said. "To be able to give them access to the court and a voice and a chance for vindication, that's been the most rewarding part for me."

Summers plans to work on the Elkton case until it is finished, which he said does not leave him any time for additional pro bono opportunities. But once the case wraps up, he plans to read through his e-mails again.

"I'll certainly be looking for the next interesting pro bono case," he said.

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