Public Defenders Say Budget Bump Wouldn’t Make Up for Past Cuts

Some federal public defenders say the judiciary’s proposed fiscal 2025 budget wouldn’t be enough to fix the fallout from deep cuts implemented over the past eight months.

The judiciary’s administrative arm is asking Congress for $1.7 billion to fund defender services, an increase of nearly 20% over the assumed funding level for the rest of this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

A spokesperson for the federal courts’ administrative office said that amount “restores shortfalls” that were expected during the current fiscal year. The spokesperson said the request “would provide 237 additional staff in federal defender organizations to restore positions assumed lost in” in this budget year, “and allow for additional staff to address critical workload requirements.”

The request says that amount “includes funding to maintain current services and support federal defender organization staffing requirements,” as well as pay attorneys who are appointed to represent criminal defendants who can’t afford a lawyer under the Criminal Justice Act. The actual funding for federal defenders will be set by Congress.

In a letter to Senate Democrats dated March 7, judiciary officials also urged Congress to separately fund a request for this fiscal year.

“If Congress funds this request as the Judiciary proposes, there will be no budget crisis in the Defender Services program in FY 2024,” wrote Judge Robert Conrad, the new head of the judiciary’s administrative head, joined by Judges Amy St. Eve and Cathy Seibel, who chair judicial committees on the budget and defender services, respectively. All members of Judicial Conference committees are federal judges.

The officials also pointed to the judiciary’s new proposed budget for fiscal 2025. “We assure you that full funding of the FY 2025 request will provide the necessary resources to support the requirements” of the defenders services program, they said.

The March 7 letter was in response to one sent earlier by Senate Democrats, calling on the courts to rethink funding requests for federal public defenders over those “dire” budget shortfalls.

Melody Brannon, the federal public defender for the district of Kansas, said in an email that while defenders are “relieved” that the judiciary is pushing for full funding for their offices, the proposed fixes for 2024 and 2025 “does not fix the 2024 shortfall.”

Brannon, who is the defender chair of the Defender Services Advisory Group, said that offices across the country implemented strict cost-cutting measures, including a hiring freeze, when they learned in July they were facing a potential shortfall in funds.

Those issues would have created cuts of 9 to 12% for defenders, and a Federal Judicial Center report published last year suggested the accounting issues stemmed from how the judiciary calculates its budget.

“Full funding may mitigate the crisis; it cannot not fix the challenges we face today, and or remedy the damage our program has endured the last eight months,” Brannon said.

Even with the sought increase in funds, Brannon said it’s “still far below the staffing levels the judiciary deemed necessary” for the defenders to adequately defend their clients. “The idea that this will fix the damage that has already been inflicted reflects a failure to appreciate the nature of our work,” she said. “It fails to ensure the right to counsel promised by the Sixth Amendment.”

There are currently 82 federal defenders organizations in the US, employing over 3,700 lawyers, investigators, paralegals and other support staff, according to a federal judiciary website.

Jodi Linker, the public defender based in San Francisco, said that while the tight budget has been difficult over the past few months, she was glad the issue got the attention of Congress, and a response from the judiciary.

“My hope is that it really is a recognition and an acknowledgment that when things get tight, and we’re fighting again over budgetary issues in the country of how we’re going to allocate money, then we’re not the easy one on the chopping block because we shouldn’t be,” Linker said. “We provide a constitutionally mandated and important service to the public. We make do with very little. And so to cut us would be horrific and I hope that doesn’t happen for 2025.”