A new bill in Pennsylvania would provide money for public defenders, who say they're struggling to take on the cases of people charged with crimes who can't afford an attorney.

Senate Bill 1317 would create the Indigent Defense Advisory Committee, and a Grant Fund to provide state-level funding for the public defender system. Currently, the counties kick in to provide this funding, while state dollars go to the state prosecutors.

Sara Jacobson, executive director of the Public Defenders Association of Pennsylvania, outlined why this potential change has taken so long to come to fruition.

"It's some combination of a lack of political will and the amount of money it will take to fund indigent defense adequately," said Jacobson. "It's kind of easy to say, 'Oh well, the counties should take care of that,' and then consider it a problem solved, I guess. I'm glad that our legislators are taking a look at this now."

According to a 2021 report from the state's Legislative Budget and Finance Office, Cameron County spent just over $35,000 on indigent defense in 2020 - a county with a rate of 1,600 crimes per 100,000 residents.

The bill has passed out of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, but Jacobson said it faces an uphill battle in the General Assembly.

The current system has caused the Luzerne County public defenders to stop taking new cases because of a lack of funding. And Jacobson said this is the second time in a decade that budget deficiencies have caused this to happen.

She said she feels the current method of funding public defense is failing the people who need it most.

"Public defenders in Pennsylvania have more cases, more clients, than they can handle," said Jacobson. "This is a job that's required by the Constitution. The Constitution says that the government must provide assistance, and effective assistance of counsel, in criminal cases - and Pennsylvania is falling short."

Pennsylvania is one of only two states where the state doesn't help fund indigent defense. Jacobson said changing the system would allow public defenders to do their jobs more effectively.

By nearly every measure, voter fraud in U.S. elections is rare, but that isn't stopping the Texas Legislature from considering dozens of bills this session, some of which a voter rights group calls "extreme."

The Texas Republican Party has made election security one of its legislative priorities this year, with bills introduced to further restrict access to the ballot box. In contrast, Democrats are pushing legislation to expand voting access.

Texas ACLU senior attorney Matt Simpson said he believes some of the bills, including one to change the penalty for illegal voting from a misdemeanor to a felony, will create fear and intimidate people at the polls.

"If you take a step back, and you try to identify where the election fraud is that's being targeted - all of these proposals, more or less, amount to solutions in search of a problem," he said, "and Texas hasn't really had an election-fraud problem."

Following the defeat of Donald Trump by President Joe Biden in 2020, Texas' GOP-dominated Legislature approved multiple new voting restrictions including rules for voting by mail, a prohibition on drive-through and 24-hour voting, and a reduction in local initiatives meant to make it easier to vote.

One Republican proposal would create a new law-enforcement unit to prosecute election crimes, modeled after a law authorized by Florida's Republican governor. The Texas unit, to be led by state "election marshals," would prosecute election and voting crimes.

Simpson, who has monitored actions at the Capitol since 2009, isn't convinced it's needed.

"There's, like, a very small segment of Republican voters that that's a priority for," he said, "and yet we're seeing just this large number of proposals - a lot of conversation about it - and I just wonder where the mismatch is."

A 359-page audit of the 2020 election was released by the Texas secretary of state's office. It reviewed the two largest Democratic counties and two largest Republican ones and found some "irregularities," but concluded they were largely related to holding an election during a pandemic.

North Dakota is expected to see continued debate in the coming weeks over a plan to ban certain items from public libraries.

While the plan has its supporters, there appears to be a large amount of opposition amid concerns surrounding censorship. The proposal would ban what are described as "sexually explicit books."

The bill's supporters said they are especially concerned about children accessing certain materials, pointing to a well-known illustrated book advising teens on sex-related topics.

Cody Schuler, advocacy manager for the ACLU of North Dakota, said this approach is problematic, adding it is a First Amendment issue.

"When we tell someone else what to think, when we impose our religious or moral beliefs on other individuals, that's infringing on freedom of thought," Schuler pointed out.

He added there is no practical way to enforce the proposed law. The bill also seeks to ban books with visuals dealing with matters such as gender identity. The measure's Republican sponsor testified he believes it is not a political issue, but rather a way to protect kids.

However, the American Library Association has argued a national movement to ban books is part of a coordinated effort to silence marginalized voices and deprive young people of a chance to learn about challenging matters.

Despite what the bill's sponsor said, Schuler feels it is a "culture-war" issue, which is not needed. He argued it is because many of the examples provided by supporters do not meet the legal definition of pornography.

"A children's book talking about human sexuality that would have friendly drawings, that would help children understand their bodies, is not child pornography, is not obscene," Schuler argued.

The ACLU added the U.S. Supreme Court has raised the bar very high when it comes to the constitution and defining obscenity.

Most of those who testified during a committee hearing on the bill this week opposed the idea, with some saying if children do not receive adequate sexual education in their school, they need another place to lean important information.

Black teenagers ages 15 to 17 are six times more likely to be searched by police compared with their white counterparts, according to a report from the California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board released this week.

The board crunched the numbers from more than 3 million traffic and pedestrian stops done in 2021 by 58 police agencies.

Melanie Ochoa, outgoing vice chair of the board and the director of police practices for the ACLU of Southern California, said about 94% of police stops were self-initiated, not in response to a call for service. And 87% of those are traffic stops.

"It's a low-hanging fruit," Ochoa contended. "It's easy to find someone who is potentially committing a traffic violation, when it's actually intended to do more basic searches without any evidence of other criminal activity being present at the time."

The data showed Black people were stopped at more than twice their percentage in the population, and Latinx people at 7% more, whereas white people were stopped at 4% less than their population level. The report recommended police agencies cease making what are called "pre-textual" stops, where there is no reasonable suspicion or probable cause of criminal activity.

Ochoa added research shows contact with law enforcement can be traumatic.

"Interacting with officers correlates with higher distress, anxiety, trauma, depression, increased risk of suicidal ideation, paranoia, post-traumatic stress and trauma-induced sleep deprivation, particularly for youth," Ochoa explained.

The Los Angeles Police Department revised its policies last year to reduce the number of pretextual stops. The report also recommended police agencies move to ban so-called consent searches, and instead limit searches to cases where there is probable cause.


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