Poyner Spruill LLP has filed litigation on behalf of Pisgah Legal Services, Legal Aid of North Carolina, and the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy challenging recent legislative changes that undermine North Carolina’s Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program.
The lawsuit filed in Wake County Superior Court presents significant constitutional questions about whether the state legislature can nullify a unanimous order of the North Carolina Supreme Court creating the modern IOLTA program. The lawsuit also seeks to protect the First Amendment rights of organizations that have provided legal services to low-income North Carolinians for decades.
For more than 40 years, North Carolina’s IOLTA program has generated funding from interest earned on lawyers’ trust accounts to support civil legal services and other initiatives that improve the administration of justice. The lawsuit challenges legislation that redirects future IOLTA funds away from civil legal aid and imposes eligibility restrictions on organizations that have historically received IOLTA funding, based on speech and other expressive activities of those organizations.
Poyner Spruill attorneys Paul Cox, Drew Erteschik, Caroline Mackie, Andrea Schwehr, and Kayla Zollinger represent the organizations in the matter.
Additional information on the litigation is available in the public statements from each of the plaintiff organizations:
Legal Aid of North Carolina’s public statement, available here.
Pisgah Legal Services’ public statement, available here.
Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy’s public statement, available here.
