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Legal Responses to COVID-19
Coronavirus, Economic Justice, Education, Employment, Health Disparities, Housing, Immigrant Rights, Police Accountability, Race and Climate, Racial Justice, Voting Rights
Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) is launching a comprehensive legal and policy initiative across immigration, education, housing and the census to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on our most vulnerable communities. Specifically, we are advocating to:
- Secure demographic and racial data on coronavirus infections and death.
- Stop immigration raids, detentions, and deportation during the public health crisis. ICE has announced a moratorium on enforcement activities, but deportations are still happening in many immigration courts across the country.
- Ensure that low-income children have access to free breakfast and lunch during school closures. Many school districts are rolling-out site-based “grab and go” options, and we are now urging meal delivery to eligible children via bus delivery to their homes.
- Urge public transit to make service available for free during the state of emergency.
- Urge the Census Bureau to postpone key deadlines for Census 2020 to ensure a full and accurate count, particularly in hard-to-count communities of color, immigrant communities, and low-income zip-codes. The Census Bureau has agreed to move certain deadlines, but we need all deadlines meaningfully extended in light of the pandemic.
- Urge the Social Security Administration to extend deadlines for disability benefits.
- Urge the IRS to extend the April 15 deadline for individual returns. We applaud the IRS for moving tax day to July 15.
- Stop evictions so families can shelter in place and quarantine without disruption. We applaud the Housing Court for agreed to a moratorium on eviction proceedings.
- Secure public records from federal government officials to shed light on their slow response to the public health crisis, including efforts to cast COVID-19 as a “Chinese virus.”
LCR is actively providing free legal support to families, community groups, and small businesses in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Without interruption, we are continuing to offer free legal support via Zoom. Requests for legal assistance may be submitted online or by calling 617-981-4308.
We have also created a bilingual coronavirus landing page on our website with legal and community resources: http://lawyersforcivilrights.org/coronavirus/.
View our advocacy letters below:
LCR-DPH-Public-Records-Request-4.2.20203 Letter-to-DHS-and-ICE-Regarding-Response-to-Corona-Virus-Outbreak Letter-re-Census-Deadlines LCR-Letter-USDA-Waiver Letter-to-IRS-Requesting-April-15-Extension Letter-from-LCR-Regarding-MBTA-Fares Lawyers-for-Civil-Rights-FOIA-Request-Coronavirus ssa-letter1