CBA Record May-June 2020

pandemic and stay-at-home orders may be used as excuses to disenfranchise voters in this election year. The election system should be required to provide widespread education about the right of voters to cast ballots by mail and to extend state timelines for early voting. In addition, states should not be allowed to strike registered voters from rolls for the remainder of 2020. Without these types of protections, a huge number of voters will be denied access to the ballot, disproportionately impacting minorities, persons with disabilities, the poor, and the elderly. KathrynHuber Kenyon is a staff attorney in the Children & Families Practice Group of Legal Aid Chicago, one of the largest civil legal aid pro- viders in Illinois. Her work focuses on family law and civil advocacy for survivors of domestic violence and their children. The population I serve generally consists of people who are at or below the poverty line, which includes the working poor – people with full time jobs who make so little that they still require state assistance. The real- ity for our clients is that they are generally more affected and take longer to recover from economic downturns than the rest of the community. They frequently rely solely on public transportation and have to make choices such as whether to take a child on public transit to get to a grocery store, risk- ing infection for the whole family. There may be no one remaining at home for the child to stay with, and food benefits require the card holder to be in person at point of sale; SNAP benefits do not permit use of a grocery delivery service. The need for clients to access systems set up to assist them during quarantine is huge. For example, domestic violence victims are frequently sheltering in place with their abusers and cannot contact an organization for help without risking fur- ther abuse. It can be difficult to sit on hold for hours to get a hold of a government agency, like HHS, when you can no longer have an office appointment. The access to Kathryn Huber Kenyon Legal Aid

technology for low income people is much less than for wealthier persons, so it is hard for clients to even do basic things like check email, sign a pleading, etc. if the library and currency exchanges are closed. The issue of language barriers for clients is also exac- erbated when they cannot come into the office to talk to a staff member who speaks their native language. And even when there is access to the internet at home, some of our older clients just cannot quite wrap their heads around how to use Adobe Sign or phone scanning applications, hindering their ability to access relief from the courts or obtain new benefits. Legal Aid Chicago also serves many indi- viduals in need of consumer benefits (such as bankruptcy, consumer fraud issues – particularly for seniors). Isolation increases the risks for my clients because they are cut off from their support networks, which can make them more vulnerable to fraud or otherwise being taken advantage of. The isolation issue is also greater for clients who are living poor in the suburbs, as the lack of public transit or walking distance resources isolates them further. In the shorter term (but probably for much longer than we might think), we will see many more people needing – but unable to access – public benefits. And as interpersonal stress increases, so to will domestic violence, including intimate

partner violence, child abuse, elder and dis- abled person abuse, etc. Unless the public becomes more aware of and concerned about these issues, I am concerned that my clients may not see significant changes. We are in immediate need of volunteers, and we have structures for people to donate time remotely. The best way to do so is to go to https://www.legalaidchicago.org/get- involved/volunteer-opportunities/ Not only do we, as practitioners, need to be cognizant of new or increased vulner- abilities of our clients and communities in this unprecedented time, but we also need to remember that the fast changes to our community can be made permanent if we want them to. We need to see those negative impacts and act to mitigate them as quickly as possible. We are one com- munity, one city, one county, one state, one nation. and one world – and we can be the victors. Nina Fain is a member of the CBA Board of Managers and the CBA Editorial Board. She is counsel to the J.S. Schirn Family Trust and a Partner Alumna to Holland &Knight LLP. Clare McMahon is a member of the CBA Editorial Board and practices as a domestic relations attorney. She is a child’s representa- tive and solo practitioner.

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