They called it the “Trail of Tears.” Packed into a crowded legislative hearing room in the Washington state capitol on a balmy day this March were dozens of advocates representing practically every worthy cause imaginable. They had all converged on Olympia to plead with members of the Senate Ways and Means Committee to reconsider slashing their funding as a way to offset the state’s huge projected budget deficits.

A month earlier, Washington Gov. Gary Locke, a Democrat, had announced what would become known as the Valentine’s Day Cuts—a whopping $60 million in reductions in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) spending. Social welfare programs such as childcare, job training, and alcohol and drug treatment programs bore the brunt of the cuts. 

Also included in Gov. Locke’s proposal was a $2.4 million (or roughly 50 percent) cut in the state’s legal services budget, which compelled the highest ranking judicial officer in Washington to trade in his judicial robe for a well-pressed suit and a lobbyist’s agenda that day in March. 

“The whole room was filled with people,” Gerry Alexander, Chief Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, remembers of the somber scene. “I felt sorry for them. It was tough because there are all sorts of good programs out there.”

But as Alexander would tell committee members, state-funded legal aid is more than merely a good government program. He expressed this in a Feb. 27 opinion piece in the Seattle  Post-Intelligencer: “Until now, the legal services system has been able to support only an estimated 20 percent of those who need our help. It is unfathomable to think about the impact of further cuts. It is obvious that every social and human services budget will suffer from very painful cuts as a result of the current budget crisis. But legal services are not just social programs, they are justice programs…Each time a poor person is denied access to the justice system—to assert or defend important legal rights—a small piece of our democracy dies.”

Alexander has sat on one bench or another in the state of Washington since 1973. He was elected Chief Justice in January 2001, around the same time that economic reports began to foreshadow what would become the state’s most serious budget crisis in years. 

As the problems worsened, Governor Locke publicly committed himself to righting the $1.6 billion projected shortfall without raising taxes. This posed a serious problem for lawmakers, since the state’s two-year budget amounted to just $22.5 billion. Locke, a respected governor entering his sixth year in office, was forced to make some difficult and unpopular choices. But slicing in half the already massively under-funded legal aid budget was not a choice Chief Justice Alexander could quietly stomach. 

In the state of Washington, judges are permitted to lobby the legislature on matters relating to the administration of justice. When Alexander pondered the toll a $2.4 million budget cut would take on low-income Washingtonians seeking the protections of the law, he decided to speak out. “Our system is an adversarial system,” he says. “If you only have an adversary on one side, it doesn’t work very well.”

Lawmakers heard the Chief’s message. When the legislature finally passed the state budget in April, the Senate and House restored $1.5 million in TANF cuts for legal services, bringing total state support to $4 million. Although $900,000 was still removed from last year’s budget, the restored funding was seen as a major save in a state long regarded as a national leader in equal justice support.

“This is not the same as vying between charities,” says Patrick McIntyre, executive director of the Seattle-based Northwest Justice Project. “The pledge of allegiance doesn’t say health care for all children. We’re not going to argue that our clients’ cases are more important than fixing a kid’s broken arm, but the point is, without reliable state funding, we can’t go on.”

McIntyre praised the legislative action and noted that one positive, long-term effect will be that legal services funding will no longer be reliant on TANF, a risky pool of money. Instead, it will be taken from a more steady funding stream, which McIntyre says is critical to serving the legal needs of Washington’s 1.2 million eligible clients. 

Though Alexander doesn’t think that the Governor singled out legal services for cuts, he does think that some legislators singled out legal aid funding for reinstatement. “When I went over and testified, a couple senators followed me out into the hall and thanked me,” he says. “When I testify about the Supreme Court budget, nobody thanks me.”

Alexander’s testimony was the capstone accomplishment of a months-long push by the Seattle-based Equal Justice Coalition (EJC) to preserve legal services funding. EJC is comprised of representatives from the private bar, the pro bono community, legal aid groups, and the judiciary. Members have been working all year to address the funding crisis. 

Alexander took the fight to as many public venues as possible. The Chief Justice wrote opinion pieces in six newspapers across the state, presenting evidence that poor people’s legal needs go chronically underserved. He even wrote about a case he heard in 1980 in which the state health department had agreed to pay for the removal of a man’s teeth but then refused to subsidize his dentures. A legal services attorney represented the toothless man and, alas, persuaded Alexander that the health department should foot the bill for new choppers. “Justice was served,” Alexander declares.

While Alexander was preparing his hearing testimony and opinion pieces, EJC was turning up its high-voltage campaign to oppose the Valentine’s Day cuts. Members organized luncheons, letter-writing campaigns, phone blitzes, and media coverage. They explained the funding crisis to anyone who would listen.

Their successful efforts were even more important in light of other recent developments. Low interest rates have generated much smaller amounts of funding from Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) than in years past. Kay Frank, who heads the Washington foundation that administers IOLTA, reports that the program is expected to take in only a fraction of the $6 million generated last year. Private contributions to legal services totaled just under a million dollars this past year, McIntyre says, and even if they went up dramatically, they cannot be expected to cover anticipated shortfalls. 

Understanding the urgency of the funding situation, Washington lawyers sprung into action. Prompted by the EJC, dozens of attorneys wrote letters to their state legislators and the Governor’s office. Even William H. Neukom, Microsoft’s general counsel during last year’s federal antitrust case, weighed in as the first signatory on a letter from a group called Washington State Corporate Counsels for Legal Services. 

Chief Justice Alexander, referencing the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 Gideon v. Wainwright decision, speaks favorably about establishing a “civil Gideon” that would extend the same constitutional right in serious matters now enjoyed by every defendant in criminal proceedings. He believes the state should explore the possibility of adding civil justice funding to the judiciary’s budget, like judge’s salaries, courthouse maintenance, and the public defender program. He sent a resolution to Gov. Locke alluding to this idea, asserting that legal services are a “critical government function.”

Once a year, the EJC makes a trip to the other Washington—the nation’s capital—to shore up support with the Congressional delegation and make the push for funding increases at the federal level. A trip this April by Alexander, McIntyre, Frank, State Bar President Dale Carlisle, and EJC Chair Wayne Blair brought coalition representatives into the offices of all 11 members of the Washington congressional delegation. The group got face time with Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and seven House members; two Congressmen with scheduling conflicts sent staff representatives in their stead.

Other states could no doubt learn from Washington’s outreach and coalition-building success. “I don’t want to tell other states just to follow us,” Chief Justice Alexander says. “That’s a bit conceited.”

Or perhaps it’s just prudent advice, coming from a man who helped save $1.5 million for equal justice.