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April 21, 2023

The hidden history of race and the tax code : Planet Money : NPR

: [POST-PUBLICATION CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this episode wrongly implied the extent of what we know about how the IRS chooses whom to audit. According to the IRS, the agency audits about 1{c024931d10daf6b71b41321fa9ba9cd89123fb34a4039ac9f079a256e3c1e6e8} of returns that claim the earned income tax credit.]

SYLVIE DOUGLIS, BYLINE: NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF COIN SPINNING)

KENNY MALONE, HOST:

It is tax week in America. And, you know, a couple of months ago, there was this pretty eye-popping/troubling discovery in the world of taxes.

GENE DEMBY, HOST:

And it came from a study by a bunch of university researchers and a couple of people from the U.S. Treasury Department.

DANIEL HO: I’m Dan Ho. I’m a professor here at Stanford.

MALONE: Daniel Ho was part of this team, part of this study, which decided to take a look at IRS audits.

DEMBY: Specifically who the IRS audits.

HO: And the big thing that we found in the paper – it’s a really disturbing finding – is that Black taxpayers are 3 to 5 times as likely to be audited as everyone else.

DEMBY: Three to 5 times more likely to be audited by the IRS if you are Black.

MALONE: This finding was a big deal, made headlines. It was also a bit of a puzzle because the IRS does not collect data on taxpayer race. Like, they are not allowed to even do that.

HO: We don’t think that what is going on here is any evidence of explicit bias – after all, IRS doesn’t observe race and ethnicity of the taxpayer – but really stem from sort of existing institutional priorities and selection processes for how audits get surfaced.

DEMBY: Specifically, this disparity has to do with something called the earned income tax credit.

HO: The earned income tax credit is a program really meant to assist lower-income wage earners, particularly lower-income wage earners that have dependents.

DEMBY: So if you don’t earn a lot of money and you have a kid, you are very likely eligible for this break on your taxes. And the IRS does disproportionately audit this pool of taxpayers. And this pool of taxpayers, it is disproportionately Black.

MALONE: Yeah. However, we don’t know specifically how they choose who to audit. They don’t make that public, you know, in part ’cause that would help tax dodgers also dodge tax audits. But Daniel says it is easy to imagine some factors that may lead the IRS to do more audits of people who claim this earned income tax credit.

DEMBY: Right. Like, for one, it’s cheaper and easier to audit low-income people, like someone claiming the earned income tax credit. In those cases, all the IRS has to do is send a letter, like a piece of mail to you, that basically says, hey, are you sure you qualify for this tax credit? Can you send us a bunch of documentation?

HO: If a taxpayer does not respond, they are deemed ineligible for that credit. And that happens at fairly high rates, either because taxpayers are in fact ineligible or because it can be a significant burden on taxpayers to try to find that documentation, to respond to the IRS and engage with that audit process.

DEMBY: And also, I imagine if you’re just a poor person – right? – you get an envelope, maybe you are housing unstable.

HO: Exactly.

DEMBY: Maybe you have like – it’s just like there’s a million ways in which that mail might never – not ever cross your field of vision, even if it was sent to you.

HO: Exactly.

MALONE: You know, there’s this term that some researchers have used when talking about this audit-by-mail thing. The term is a doom loop. So you can imagine a situation where the IRS sends out mail audits, some chunk of people who really do qualify for the earned income tax credit, they don’t see that audit letter, or they mess up their documentation or whatever. But to the IRS, this just looks like a successful audit catching a problematic taxpayer.

DEMBY: So then the next year, the IRS might send even more mail audits and so on and so on. This is the doom loop.

MALONE: And, you know, again, we do not know for sure how the IRS does its audits. But it is true that as the budget for the IRS has been cut, the agency has shifted towards these cheaper audits of lower-income taxpayers.

HO: So much so that in the most recent years, nearly 50{c024931d10daf6b71b41321fa9ba9cd89123fb34a4039ac9f079a256e3c1e6e8} of audits are of taxpayers who claim the earned income tax credit.

DEMBY: Wow, 50{c024931d10daf6b71b41321fa9ba9cd89123fb34a4039ac9f079a256e3c1e6e8}?

HO: Yeah.

DEMBY: Wow.

HO: It’s really – it is – it’s a really jaw-dropping rate of audits.

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DEMBY: What’s good, y’all? Welcome to PLANET MONEY. I’m Gene Demby.

MALONE: And I am Kenny Malone. And, Gene, to celebrate, mark – I don’t know, what’s the right word here? – something…

DEMBY: (Laughter).

MALONE: …Something tax week, we are partnering up with you and the Code Switch podcast because you all recently did a whole episode about the history of race and of taxes.

DEMBY: Yes, we did. And today on this show, we’re going to talk to the lawyer who inspired Daniel Ho’s research to look at the way taxes interact with buying a house, with getting married and going to college, and the way that race is braided into all of that.

MALONE: That conversation is after the break.

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MALONE: Today’s episode comes from our colleagues at NPR’s Code Switch podcast, who recently interviewed a Georgetown law professor named Dorothy Brown. Dorothy is a tax lawyer and wrote a book called “The Whiteness Of Wealth: How The Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans And How We Can Fix It.” And Dorothy’s work, it’s sort of the inspiration for that big tax audit study that we talked about earlier with Daniel Ho. And we’re just going to let Code Switch hosts Gene Demby and Lori Lizarraga take the story from here.

DEMBY: Daniel’s study on race in audits kicked off a furor in Washington, but he says all this really started with Dorothy Brown.

LORI LIZARRAGA, BYLINE: Yeah. Daniel said Dorothy was a pathbreaker in illuminating how race shapes America’s tax system.

DEMBY: And what’s bananas, Lori, is that Dorothy became an expert on this completely by accident.

DOROTHY A BROWN: I wanted a job in law where I didn’t have to deal with racism because, growing up in the South Bronx, I dealt with racism a lot. So I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. And I decided, well, I want to do law that has nothing to do with race. I know. I’ll be a tax lawyer because the only color that matters is green. And here I am. Race is a critical component of tax, and it just hasn’t been thought of that way.

DEMBY: I wanted to know more about Dorothy’s superhero origin story, and she said that her revelation about how much race gets braided into our tax policy came about when she sat down to help her parents do their taxes. So I asked Dorothy to set the scene.

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BROWN: Yeah. So, you know, as a result of having an accounting degree, I did my – you know, like every good child, I did my parents’ tax returns. And every April – you know, every time I did their tax returns, I was struck by the idea that I thought they paid too much in taxes, that I couldn’t figure it out. So my mother was a nurse in a nursing home, and my father was a plumber for the New York City Housing Authority. So each of them made roughly equal amounts of income, and each of them made half of what I made. So, you know, I would – whenever I did their taxes, this issue came up. But I had a real job, right? So I didn’t have time to sit and think about why they were paying too much in taxes. But I – it always nagged at me.

And fast forward – when I was a law professor, I actually had time. So I decided to just start reading race publications, to start reading about race and to put my tax lens on the race data to see if I could make the connection that way ’cause there’s lots of race data but not viewed through a tax lens. And I came across a study put out by the Commission on Civil Rights on the economic status of Black women. And I’m reading it, and it says that married Black women contribute 41{c024931d10daf6b71b41321fa9ba9cd89123fb34a4039ac9f079a256e3c1e6e8} to household income. And that was my eureka moment. That means nothing to anybody else but to these tax eyes, oh, my gosh.

My mother and father earned roughly equal amounts. And what our tax law does to those married couples is cause their taxes to increase when they marry. So when I saw that, I said that’s why my parents are paying so much money in taxes – ’cause they’re married to each other. If they were single, living in a household, their tax bill would not have been as high as it was because they were married.

LIZARRAGA: OK, so Dorothy’s lightbulb moment came about when she realized that couples earning the same or similar wages get hit harder when they file their taxes jointly, right?

DEMBY: Yes. Sometimes getting married and filing jointly can bump a two-income couple into a higher tax bracket. And that could also phase out some benefits and credits.

LIZARRAGA: But we know that, historically, Black married couples were way more likely to have two income-earners because, well, you know, racism. I mean, Black people were paid less for their labor. Both spouses needed to work to make ends meet. So all those Black married couples were being paid less and paying more in taxes?

DEMBY: Listen, listen. This is what made my brain explode out of my ear when I was reading Dorothy’s book. Like, isn’t being married supposed to help your financial situation?

LIZARRAGA: Right.

DEMBY: I mean, marriage is such a huge part of the discourse around Black economic stability that there was even a policy by the George W. Bush administration trying to get Black folks to get married because the argument was it would help Black people build wealth and to catch up with white folks. And Dorothy and I got into all of this in our conversation about how the marriage benefit in taxes has really been a marriage penalty if you’re Black.

BROWN: In fact, you know, one of the reasons people on the right argue Blacks are living in poverty is because we’re not married, right? Then what you find out is, yeah, when we’re married, our taxes go up. So that’s not – marriage isn’t helping us. And how it works is, there are certain couples that get tax cuts when they get married. Those are the single-wage-earner households, where one spouse works in the paid labor market, and the other spouse stays at home.

DEMBY: Right.

BROWN: We don’t tax the value of the stay-at-home services. We just tax the wages of the paid-labor spouse. Those are the married people who get a tax break from marriage. When you have two spouses working and contributing roughly equal amounts, their tax bill goes up. They’d be better off living together, as the right would say, in sin and paying less taxes and building wealth.

DEMBY: And so there’s a point in the middle 20th century in which married white women start entering the workforce, too, right? And so you would think that this penalty that married, double-income partners are facing would hit white people, too, right? Like…

BROWN: Oh, you’ve nailed it. When I first started doing this research, there was always a category of married white couples who looked like married Black couples, in terms of their spouses contribute roughly equal amounts. That number was small in the beginning, and then grew over time.

DEMBY: And then came the Trump tax cuts, which Dorothy says suddenly fixed some of those marriage penalties that more white couples were now experiencing, too.

BROWN: So what the 2017 tax cuts did was eliminate the marriage penalty for married couples who make less than $600,000, except for the Earned Income Tax Credit couples. Those couples are still hit by the marriage penalty. But if you’re outside of the Earned Income Tax Credit household, you’re not paying a marriage penalty because of the Trump tax cuts.

DEMBY: So one of the arguments you make in the book is that the tax code has historically worked specifically against Black folks.

BROWN: Yes.

DEMBY: Can you explain how that has happened?

BROWN: Yes. So in the beginning, only the rich people paid taxes. And then, basically, we had World War II. We had to move from only the richest Americans to basically everybody else. So you had this expanded tax base. But think about it. Black Americans are paying taxes, too, to a federal government that excludes them from New Deal provisions. And nobody’s offered to give us our money back, right? We’re paying for second-class citizenship. We’re paying for separate but equal, right? So we’re paying for discrimination.

DEMBY: During the New Deal, the FHA, the Federal Housing Administration, began insuring home mortgages. They would only insure those mortgages in white neighborhoods, turning red-lining into federal policy. And when the GI Bill came along with World War II, it was implemented in ways that kept Black veterans coming back from the war from receiving benefits.

BROWN: So we’re paying taxes that’s funding the government that’s making sure that, you know, my parents weren’t eligible for an FHA-insured loan, or my grandparents – right? – that were making sure that returning Black veterans didn’t have access to home loans. But those Black veterans, when they were working, was paying taxes into a system that was disadvantaging them. And it was paying for a system that was propping up the expanded homeownership rate. So from 1940 to 1950, we saw a minority of white homeowners become a majority of white homeowners with the assistance of federal policy and with Black taxpayers helping to foot the bill.

So for example, think about the tax subsidies for homeownership that came in – well, that have been in the code since the beginning. And then there’s a certain provision if you sell your home at a gain that came in 1951. Well, in 1951, the majority of white Americans were homeowners. So they could benefit from that provision. We have never had a point in time where the majority of Black Americans were homeowners. So any tax subsidy for homeownership is a tax subsidy designed for white Americans.

DEMBY: So, I mean, it seems like it’s basically impossible to, like, extricate home ownership from taxes, right?

BROWN: Yeah.

DEMBY: And the wisdom goes, you know, buy a home. You get a bunch of tax breaks.

BROWN: Yes. Yes.

DEMBY: That helps you build family wealth. It’s really central to the way, as you know – like, the way you talk about…

BROWN: Yes.

DEMBY: …Fixing the wealth gap…

BROWN: Absolutely.

DEMBY: …is, like, getting Black people into homeownership.

BROWN: Sure. But it starts with the backdrop of where you started, that there’s this idea that because white Americans were able to build wealth through homeownership, Black Americans can mimic that. And Black Americans cannot mimic being white, which is what really is the reason why white Americans have built homeownership wealth.

Where we live is in different neighborhoods. So most Black homeowners live in racially diverse or all-Black neighborhoods. Most white homeowners live in all-white neighborhoods. And since the majority of homebuyers are white homeowners or prospective white homeowners, their preferences make the market. They’re not interested in buying homes in all-Black or racially diverse neighborhoods. They’re only interested in buying homes in neighborhoods with very few Black Americans. So if you are the only Black homeowner in an all-white neighborhood, then that’s a really good financial investment for you. You’re going to build wealth the way your white peers do. But it’s going to come at a price.

DEMBY: Yes.

BROWN: Your white neighbor may call the cops on you.

DEMBY: Yep.

BROWN: If you have children and you send them to school, they’re going to get tagged as delinquents, even though they’re engaging in the same behavior that their white peers are. So there’s all this racism you’re going to have to deal with. Whereas, if you buy in an all-Black or racially diverse neighborhood, you don’t have those issues, but you have issues of being able to sell your home or being able to borrow against it so that you can put your kid through college, right? So homeownership for Black Americans does not work the same way as it does for white Americans. It just isn’t – it isn’t the same as, well, it worked for them; it should work for us.

DEMBY: I’m going to turn to student loan debt.

BROWN: Yes.

DEMBY: So a lot of discourse around student loan relief, student debt relief has centered on the racial justice angle, that, you know, Black folks carry a bigger debt burden because we have so much less household wealth than white families. And so, when we go to college, we…

BROWN: Yes.

DEMBY: …Have to take out more loans to finance college. But you say that how much debt that people are carrying because of their race is also shaped, in a bunch of invisible ways, by tax policy. So how are taxes part of that story?

BROWN: So, you know, one of the biggest breaks is an interest deduction for student loans. The problem is it’s capped at $2,500. And when you look at the average debt load of a college graduate, it’s higher for Black Americans than white Americans. So they usually have more debt, and they’re capped out, right? So the $2,500 does not allow…

DEMBY: Yeah.

BROWN: …Most Black taxpayers their full interest deduction, right? And it’s worse. If two Black college graduates get married, when they were individual filing, they each had a $2,500 cap. When they get married, they both have a total $2,500 cap.

DEMBY: Wait. I’m sorry.

BROWN: Yes. Hello.

DEMBY: Why? Why would they – why would that go – why wouldn’t that just be, I mean, debt…

BROWN: Hello.

DEMBY: Well, I guess their credit becomes…

BROWN: It’s like, the idea that you don’t make an accountability for two people being married with student debt is ludicrous, right? That’s a tax policy angle that could be fixed, right? But – you know, so the worst of all possible worlds is for two Black college graduates to get married, right?

DEMBY: Oh, my God.

BROWN: Because they’ve got this high debt load (laughter), and then they can’t take the interest deduction. So that’s, like…

DEMBY: So I’m imagining a scenario where two Black college graduates get married, can’t take an interest deduction on their debt load.

BROWN: Yes.

DEMBY: They buy a house, right?

BROWN: Yes.

DEMBY: They have all these – right? And then they also are dealing with the marriage penalty because they probably make…

BROWN: (Laughter) Yes.

DEMBY: So I’m like, oh, my God.

BROWN: I once had a student say, so, professor Brown, are you saying that we shouldn’t get married? I said, do not go home and tell your grandmother that. I did not say that.

(LAUGHTER)

DEMBY: Like, all these students come to a tax law class, and they come out of class like, our professor told us not to get married, not to buy a house and that college was going to be – might be a drag on our earnings down the line.

BROWN: (Laughter).

DEMBY: They’re like, oh, my God, what did I sign up for?

BROWN: And the most depressing chapter in my book was the college chapter because that’s when I came across the statistic that said 60{c024931d10daf6b71b41321fa9ba9cd89123fb34a4039ac9f079a256e3c1e6e8} of Black students who start college don’t graduate.

DEMBY: That’s me. Yeah.

BROWN: And they leave with huge amounts of debt. It was heartbreaking. That statistic just blew me away.

DEMBY: So I’m a Black college dropout, and I still carried a big debt…

BROWN: Yes. See?

DEMBY: …You know, once I applied to college and didn’t finish. How does the tax system show up in the way I file my taxes? How does that affect our financial outlooks?

BROWN: Right. You know, there’s research that shows the student debt load is a drag on Black folks and, therefore, increases the racial wealth gap, that by forgiving student debt, you’d make quite a dent in the racial wealth gap.

DEMBY: So you just named, like, all these ways, these sort of landmines built into our tax policy, like, our…

BROWN: Yeah.

DEMBY: …Economic system. Is there a way – can we quantify how much that means over generations for Black folks, like, the way that this drag that tax policy exerts on Black people and non-white people more broadly?

BROWN: You know…

DEMBY: Do we know how much that is?

BROWN: The easy answer is no. The easy answer is no. But I could imagine at some point, Gene, some economists having an answer to your question. This is how much – this is the quantification of it. And part of why I wanted to make the book accessible and I wanted – is I wanted other people to pick up the charge, right? So my book focuses on Black and white. I want other people to focus on Hispanic Americans. I want AAPI, Indigenous Americans – there’s all kinds of systemic racism that’s built into the code where taxpayers of color are disadvantaged, not just Black taxpayers. So I’m excited about the other research that’s been done.

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DEMBY: After the break, the research that Dorothy has already inspired – that research by Daniel Ho about race and IRS audits – causes a little drama on Capitol Hill.

All right, y’all. It’s worth me and Lori jumping back in right quick to remind you that it was Dorothy’s research that led to the study that Daniel Ho and a team of researchers released in January.

LIZARRAGA: So much so that Senator Ron Wyden, the head of the Senate Finance Committee, put Daniel Werfel, the new head of the IRS, on the clock to get to the bottom of these racial disparities.

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RON WYDEN: This is something the IRS has to address. If you’re confirmed, what will you do to uncover the reasons for the racial disparity in audit selection and what we do to correct it?

DANNY WERFEL: Right now, not being at the IRS, I don’t yet have a good sense of what the issue is, what the causes are…

WYDEN: Let’s do this – will you commit, within 60 days of being confirmed, that you will get back to us and give us the underlying reasons, in your view, why there is this discrimination and what you’ll do to correct it within 60 days?

WERFEL: I will absolutely, as soon as I get to the IRS, talk to those individuals that are working this issue and report back to you on what we’re finding.

WYDEN: Sixty days.

WERFEL: Understood, Senator.

WYDEN: All right.

DEMBY: Just as we were finishing up this episode, the IRS announced an $80 billion plan to modernize the way that it collects taxes. And part of that plan is meant to find ways to analyze whether the IRS is discriminating in its auditing.

LIZARRAGA: Which sounds vague, like the IRS is making a plan to look for the racial discrimination Daniel Ho and his team already found. But I will say in terms of the larger plan, we are hearing the IRS actually acknowledging racial disparities in a way that we haven’t before, which, you know, I guess does give me some hope that some of these disparities will actually begin to be addressed. And it’s all kind of wild that Dorothy was responsible for lighting the match that started all of this.

DEMBY: Right? Like, she went into law specifically to stay away from race. That’s why she went into tax law. And now race and taxes – that’s kind of her legacy.

BROWN: So, you know, every April 15, the tax code, which disadvantages Black taxpayers while advantaging white taxpayers, increases the racial wealth gap. So we could solve the racial wealth gap tomorrow, but it would be started again next April 15. So we cannot solve the racial wealth gap without making sure it’s not perpetuated by our tax policies. And people tend not to draw the connection between those two. It’s the silent wealth killer for Black families.

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DEMBY: This episode was produced by James Sneed with help from Olivia Chilkoti. It was edited by Dalia Mortada and Courtney Stein and engineered by James Willetts and Brian Jarboe. And we would be remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the Code Switch massive. That’s B.A. Parker, Veralyn Williams, Leah Donnella, Kumari Devarajan, Karen Grigsby Bates, Christina Cala, Alyssa Jeong Perry, Jess Kung and Steve Drummond. Our art director is LA Johnson.

MALONE: Thanks again to our colleagues at Code Switch for this episode. You can hear more, including a very fun Dungeons & Dragons episode, by subscribing to Code Switch wherever you get your podcasts.

DEMBY: I’m Gene Demby.

LIZARRAGA: I’m Lori Lizarraga.

DEMBY: Be easy, y’all.

LIZARRAGA: Call your dad.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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Posted on April 11, 2023
Documents raise questions about man’s claims : NPR

A Texas man says three women helped his now-ex-wife obtain pills for an abortion last year “without his knowledge,” and he’s suing them for $1 million each.

The wrongful death lawsuit, believed to be the first of its kind since the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed abortion rights last summer, highlights concerns about digital privacy and reproductive health. And it comes as a battle over the future of access to medication abortion plays out in the federal court system.

And now, experts say a close analysis of documents related to the case appears to undercut some of the man’s claims.

Pages of ‘janky’ text messages

Marcus Silva says that last July – just weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – three women helped his then-wife secretly get abortion pills and illegally end her pregnancy.

Silva and his lawyers have claimed repeatedly that his then-wife took the pills behind his back.

“There is a very strong issue here, that a man had a child; he did not know about it, and the child was killed,” one of Silva’s attorneys, Peter Breen, told NPR after the lawsuit was filed in March. “So his fatherhood of that child was terminated without even his knowledge.”

Silva’s legal team declined to comment for this story.

Experts say the text messages included in the lawsuit appear to have been directly photographed by a second device. In some, a thumb or finger appears visible on the right side.

from a lawsuit filed in Galveston County, Texas

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from a lawsuit filed in Galveston County, Texas

Text messages included as exhibits in Marcus Silva’s lawsuit may offer clues about when they were captured.

from a lawsuit filed in Galveston County, Texas

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from a lawsuit filed in Galveston County, Texas

Silva made a similar claim in his lawsuit, which was filed in Galveston County, Texas, a few weeks after the couple’s divorce was finalized. In the suit, Silva says he “recently learned of the defendants’ involvement” and that his ex “decided to kill the unborn child without Marcus’ knowledge or consent.”

But several forensic and legal experts interviewed by NPR say key documents related to the case suggest that Silva may have known his wife was planning an abortion before it took place by accessing her text messages. The messages, in which the woman shares intimate details with her friends, are included as exhibits in the lawsuit.

Lana Ramjit, director of operations at the Clinic to End Tech Abuse at Cornell, which works to prevent technology-based stalking and abuse, says it’s hard to know exactly when or how most of the messages were captured or who captured them. But there are some clues, she says, including a glare on the screen and what looks like a thumb, suggesting someone used another device to take pictures of the messages.

“They are pretty clearly photos of a phone,” Ramjit says, describing the photos as “janky,” noting the lopsided framing or cropping apparent in some of them.

Ramjit pointed to one message in particular, with a timestamp reading, “Today, 6:38 p.m.,” which she says suggests someone photographed the message soon after it was sent. It comes at the end of a long exchange where the women appear to be talking about the need to hide both the pregnancy and the abortion from Silva.

“So we know those photos were taken the same day as the message,” Ramjit says.

A note, a pill and a police report

A police report taken July 18, 2022, in League City, Texas, details a complaint from Marcus Silva about materials he said he found in his then-wife’s purse nearly a week earlier. Personally identifying information has been redacted.

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Silva’s lawyers have declined to say how he got access to the text messages. But a new document obtained by NPR may shed some light on that question.

A police report from League City, Texas, dated July 18, 2022, states Marcus Silva told officers that six days earlier, he found a Post-It note in his then-wife’s purse with the phone number for an abortion clinic.

Silva said he went through her phone and “saw text messages between his wife and several other people” planning the abortion. The next day, July 13, Silva said he went through her purse again and found a white pill with the letters “M-F.” He searched online, according to the report, and concluded it was the first pill used in the medication abortion process. In other words, mifepristone.

Silva also said he was “upset that she did not at least have this conversation with him,” according to the police report.

Other police documents obtained by NPR suggest a pattern of ongoing tension between the couple. In one incident earlier this year, Silva’s ex-wife called police to complain that Marcus was threatening to come to her home with the police to collect belongings she said he thought he should have received in their divorce.

League City police say after Silva’s report last July, they determined that there was not enough evidence to pursue any further action.

Authorities in Galveston County also say they have no plans to press criminal charges related to Silva’s abortion lawsuit.

Considerations for a potential jury

It’s not clear when exactly the abortion took place; the lawsuit says only that it happened sometime in July 2022.

But if Silva knew about the abortion ahead of time, as the police report seems to suggest, that could undermine his argument that he should be awarded damages, according to Mike Golden, director of advocacy at the University of Texas School of Law.

“If the jury comes to the conclusion that he knew full well that this was going on and did nothing about it, that strongly suggests that he suffered little to no emotional distress as a result of this happening,” Golden says.

Even if Silva obtained the messages without his wife’s consent, Golden and other legal experts interviewed by NPR say it’s very likely they are admissible in court under rules for civil lawsuits in Texas. But Golden adds that it’s another factor a jury might consider unfavorably.

Virtual, but not hypothetical, risk

Whatever the outcome of this case, the fact that the women’s text messages are part of it underscores how digital communication can make people legally vulnerable, said Chinmayi Sharma, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and scholar in residence at UT Austin’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law.

“I think there should be awareness of how big of a risk this is, and how much it’s not just hypothetical — it is absolutely happening,” Sharma said.

Sharma noted that in one exchange, Silva’s ex-wife appears to share her ovulation calendar with her friends, “which is another thing that is a big concern if you’re in a state where the timing of the abortion is relevant.”

Silva isn’t suing his ex-wife because Texas law contains exemptions for people who terminate their own pregnancies. But others can be targeted for helping someone get an abortion.

Rusty Hardin, a Houston-based defense attorney, is representing two of the three defendants. He says it’s unfortunate that his clients have been caught up in this case for trying to help a friend.

“It just shows that these are not simple matters. These are family and personal women’s issues. They are not the business of the rest of the world, quite frankly,” Hardin said.

A fundraising email from Peter Breen and the Thomas More Society dated March 28 highlights the Silva lawsuit.

Thomas More Society email

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Thomas More Society email

A fundraising email from Peter Breen and the Thomas More Society dated March 28 highlights the Silva lawsuit.

Thomas More Society email

Silva’s lawyer, Breen, has said the lawsuit’s goal is to establish that anyone who assists with an abortion in states like Texas where it’s now illegal could face civil liability — or even, he hopes, criminal prosecution.

In a recent fundraising message emailed to supporters of his conservative Catholic group, the Thomas More Society, Breen tells readers the lawsuit targets women who helped Silva’s former wife get an abortion “behind Marcus’ back.” It also describes the lawsuit as “groundbreaking.”

The message asks readers to send their prayers — and their donations.

Posted on March 26, 2023
GEO Group is accused of exposing ICE detainees to chemicals : NPR

People today wander outside the U.S. Immigration and Enforcement Processing Center operated by GEO Team Inc. in Adelanto, Calif. The firm is going through a lawsuit for the alleged use of dangerous substances in the facility all through the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Persons walk outside the U.S. Immigration and Enforcement Processing Heart operated by GEO Group Inc. in Adelanto, Calif. The business is struggling with a lawsuit for the alleged use of harmful chemical compounds in the facility through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Richard Vogel/AP

A new lawsuit filed from a single of the nation’s major for-profit prison operators, GEO Group Inc., alleges the corporation improperly employed harmful chemical compounds to thoroughly clean its detention centers, leading to inmates to get ill.

The Social Justice Lawful Foundation is representing 7 at present and formerly incarcerated people of the immigration detention facility in Adelanto, Calif. Attorneys for the business claim that even though Adelanto experienced made use of the chemical, HDQ Neutral, for at least 10 years, workers at the facility improved the spraying of the product at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

The lawyers for SJLF allege that owing to the detainees’ months-very long, close to-consistent exposure to this chemical from February 2020 to April 2021, they experienced signs or symptoms like persistent cough, throat and nasal irritation, pores and skin irritation, rashes and complications.

Plaintiffs say they uncovered blood in their mouths and saliva, experienced from debilitating complications, felt dizzy and lightheaded, and now deal with very long-phrase long-term wellness challenges as a end result of their publicity to the chemical.

A spokesman for GEO Group Inc. claimed the enterprise strongly rejects the allegations “that GEO uses any dangerous chemical substances as cleansing products and solutions in our ICE Processing Facilities.”

The spokesman reported, “In all our ICE Processing Facilities, GEO uses cleansing solutions that are controlled by the EPA and are normally applied in accordance with the manufacturer’s pointers, as very well as all relevant sanitation specifications set by federal government’s Efficiency-Primarily based Countrywide Detention Specifications.”

But in 2021, the EPA issued a warning against GEO Team for the “use of a registered pesticide in a method inconsistent with its labeling” immediately after an inspection spurred by detainees’ complaints about sickness immediately after exposure to HDQ Neutral.

What is allegedly occurring in Adelanto is section of a pattern of carry out by GEO, Social Justice Lawful Basis Government Director Shubhra Shivpuri informed NPR.

GEO Team Inc. has faced quite a few lawsuits by inmates and households of prisoners around the a long time because of to alleged problems at its prisons and immigration detention services. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is GEO’s largest source of consumer income streams.

GEO Group Inc.’s Adelanto facility has also been topic to scathing criticism by federal authorities watchdogs. Reviews have emerged that detainees’ well being and security were being at chance though at Adelanto and that solitary confinement was utilized for extended intervals of time in violation of ICE’s very own benchmarks, among other complications. Inspite of these prior issues, ICE renewed and expanded a deal to keep the Adelanto facility open up.

GEO Group’s spokesman explained allegations such as the types offered by SJLF are section of “a extended-standing, politically motived, and radical marketing campaign to assault ICE’s contractors, abolish ICE, and close federal immigration detention by proxy.”

Detainees get in a frequent area in 2019 at one particular of the housing models at the Adelanto ICE Processing Middle in Adelanto, Calif.

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Detainees assemble in a typical region in 2019 at one of the housing models at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, Calif.

Chris Carlson/AP

Workers at Adelanto sprayed HDQ Neutral “indiscriminately”

The Environmental Safety Company considers HDQ Neutral corrosive and a chemical that can lead to irreversible eye harm and skin burns. The company, Spartan Chemical, warns end users not to inhale or ingest it, or get it on eyes, pores and skin or clothing.

Team commenced making use of HDQ Neutral “to a startling degree” in February 2020, according to the lawsuit.

The “chemical spraying was a near-constant and invasive presence at Adelanto. GEO personnel sprayed HDQ Neutral every 15 to 30 minutes from vats strapped to their backs and from scaled-down spray bottles. GEO personnel sprayed this chemical into the air and onto all surfaces, like food contact surfaces, telephones, rails, doorway handles, bogs, showers, and sinks,” the lawsuit proceeds.

“GEO team sprayed when folks had been taking in, and the chemical mist would slide on their food items. GEO personnel sprayed at night time, on or all around the bunk beds and cells in which persons slept. And on at the very least a single celebration, GEO employees sprayed persons as a disciplinary measure,” the grievance alleges.

GEO ignored repeated issues from detainees of their signs from the sprays, “denying and misrepresenting the use and results of the poisonous chemical to individuals detained and regulators alike,” the SJLF alleges.

The firm’s spokesman maintains the cleansing solutions made use of are risk-free “and broadly applied in the course of the country in many different options, which include hospitals, nursing houses, youth facilities, and schools and universities.”

The SJLF desires the lawsuit to be licensed to turn out to be a course motion so that other people today detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Centre who are believed to have been harmed by the use of the chemical can receive damages, health care costs, and lawyers charges, amid other awards.

Posted on March 8, 2023
5 women say Texas’ abortion bans put their lives and health at risk. : NPR

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, speaks near the Texas Capitol in Austin in the course of an celebration to announce that her team is suing the point out on behalf of five females and two medical doctors.

Sarah McCammon/NPR

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Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, speaks around the Texas Capitol in Austin during an event to announce that her group is suing the condition on behalf of five ladies and two medical doctors.

Sarah McCammon/NPR

AUSTIN — Five females who ended up denied abortions beneath Texas legislation though experiencing health-related crises are suing the point out, asking a decide to make clear exceptions to the rules.

“[The women] have been denied required and likely daily life-saving obstetrical care for the reason that professional medical experts through the point out dread legal responsibility below Texas’s abortion bans,” says the lawsuit, submitted in condition courtroom by the Middle for Reproductive Legal rights on behalf of the five gals and two medical doctors.

“Just since Roe v. Wade is no extended the regulation of the land does not imply that women and expecting folks are without constitutional and standard human rights,” suggests Molly Duane, senior team legal professional with the middle. “We are speaking about folks who are in healthcare emergencies, who have to have urgent clinical treatment and whose medical professionals are too afraid to provide that treatment because of the state’s regulations and because of the state’s failure to supply any clarification around what its law usually means.”

The fit names Texas Lawyer Common Ken Paxton as a plaintiff. His business office responded Tuesday by expressing Paxton “will carry on to defend and enforce the guidelines duly enacted by the Texas Legislature” and by forwarding a “steering letter” on the state ban induced by the U.S. Supreme Court docket selection in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Well being Organization.

Narrow exceptions

Texas was the to start with point out to employ a in the vicinity of-total abortion ban with a regulation regarded as SB 8, which took influence in September 2021. The regulation enabled individuals to file civil lawsuits value tens of countless numbers of pounds in opposition to any one discovered to have presented an abortion, or aided a client get 1. The regulation features constrained exceptions for healthcare emergencies.

Last June, the Dobbs choice allowed about a dozen far more states’ abortion bans to acquire influence. That integrated the “bring about ban” in Texas, which made virtually all abortions a felony, and allowed only slim exceptions to conserve a expecting woman’s lifetime.

‘Somebody is heading to die eventually’

Two of the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, Anna Zargarian and Lauren Miller, have earlier advised their tales to NPR.

For a story revealed in early 2022, just months right after SB 8 took impact, Zargarian spoke to NPR using only her initial title out of worry of repercussions for herself or her medical doctor she agreed to go general public with her whole identify as component of the lawsuit. Zargarian’s medical professionals denied her an abortion after her water broke at 19 months — also early for the fetus to survive. Fearing the prospect of severe infection, she flew to Colorado for a termination.

Zargarian explained to NPR that she arrived forward mainly because “it’s crucial to share this tale. Because anyone is likely to die sooner or later.”

In the months that adopted, additional Texas clients with medically complicated pregnancies have been turned absent, and many of those people faced daily life-threatening circumstances. Miller and a next client, Ashley Brandt, each individual confronted complex twin pregnancies in which doctors explained to them that terminating one twin would provide the best opportunity to maintain the lifestyle and wellbeing of the other twin, as nicely as the expecting ladies.

4 of the five women of all ages in the long run remaining Texas to look for abortions in other states, amid them Colorado and Washington.

Doctors fear fines, prison

Two Texas doctors, Damla Karsan and Judy Levison, also are suing the condition on behalf of them selves and their clients. The lawsuit notes that health professionals who violate Texas’ abortion bans could experience critical penalties.

“With the threat of losing their health care licenses, fines of hundreds of countless numbers of pounds, and up to 99 several years in prison lingering over their heads, it is no marvel that medical doctors and hospitals are turning clients away—even sufferers in healthcare emergencies,” the suit reads.

Faced with issues from physicians who say they’re not able to offer abortions in emergency predicaments for dread of working afoul of condition regulation, some abortion legal rights opponents have accused clinical groups of failing to assist health professionals make sense of what the legal guidelines involve.

Talking to NPR very last year, John Seago of Texas Right to Everyday living — a important drive in pushing SB 8 by means of the point out Legislature — reported it was “politically advantageous for some of these teams that oppose the monthly bill … to just say this is unreasonable.”

Searching for clarity

At the time, teams this sort of as the Texas Affiliation of Obstetricians and Gynecologists pushed back, stating the guidelines have been as well imprecise to give doctors with assurances they would not confront lawful penalties.

Duane, with the Heart for Reproductive Rights, claims the goal of the new go well with is to obligate the state to provide crystal clear recommendations for Texas medical professionals whose expecting clients face critical health-related issues.

“What is a health care provider to do in Texas appropriate now? They had no choice but to appear forward and seek clarification,” Duane states. “They experienced enormous bravery in executing so.”

Posted on March 8, 2023
Fox News says loss in $1.6 billion defamation case would harm all media : NPR

Posters bearing the images of Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, from left, adorn the front of Fox Corp.’s headquarters in New York City. The stars’ panic as viewers fled after the 2020 elections has become a core element of a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox.

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Posters bearing the images of Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, from left, adorn the front of Fox Corp.’s headquarters in New York City. The stars’ panic as viewers fled after the 2020 elections has become a core element of a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Outside legal observers say the Fox News Channel finds itself in real legal jeopardy in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by an election tech company over lies broadcast about the 2020 presidential race.

The amount and weight of evidence is perhaps without equal among other major, recent defamation cases.

“How often do you get ‘smoking gun’ emails that show, first, that persons responsible for the editorial content knew that the accusation was false, and also convincing emails that show the reason Fox reported this was for its own mercenary interests?” says Rutgers University law professor Ronald Chen, an authority on constitutional and media law.

Fox News has endured one humiliation after another from the rolling revelations in the case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Private communications made public in legal filings demonstrate the network’s producers, stars and executives — even controlling owner Rupert Murdoch — knew the claims they were broadcasting were false, and at times unhinged. A trial in the case is slated for next month.

Fox attorney: “We don’t suppress the speech that we don’t think is right”

Fox’s legal team is grounding much of its defense in a claim that it was merely reporting allegations by the most newsworthy public official of all, then-President Donald Trump.

“We err on the side of speech because the more and more speech you have, the better chance of having people actually getting the opportunity to point out what’s right and what’s wrong,” attorney Erin Murphy, one of the senior figures on Fox’s defense team, tells NPR in an interview. “And that’s why we don’t suppress the speech that we don’t think is right.”

A loss for Fox would make it harder for all journalists to serve the public, she says.

“At the end of the day, it’s going to hinder the ultimate objective of the First Amendment, of getting to the truth,” Murphy argues.

The case may serve as a test for the elasticity of that argument.

Dominion alleges great reputational harm from false accusations

Fox News was the first major television outlet to project that then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden would win Arizona on election night 2020, which all but put victory out of Trump’s reach. Dominion has alleged that Fox embraced the conspiracy theories about election fraud to try to make up for angering millions of pro-Trump viewers with the Arizona call. Many peeled away to other right-wing outlets.

In the ensuing weeks, Fox repeatedly invited Trump ally and attorney Sidney Powell on its programs to allege Dominion’s voting systems had switched votes from Trump to Biden. Yet Fox hosts and executives privately dismissed her as unreliable and unhinged. Powell had shared with hosts Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo a memo to justify her allegations. Even the memo’s author called the claims “pretty wackadoodle.”

Top executives, including Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, told one another they could not bluntly confront their viewers with the facts because that could alienate them further.

Dominion says the baseless claims of fraud have destroyed its reputation for electoral integrity with much of the voting public.

“To simply say Fox is a bunch of liars … is a slippery slope”

Even with that record, set out with voluminous documentation, some media lawyers say Fox’s attorneys may be right in predicting that a loss would constrict the media’s freedoms.

“No matter how much I might personally deplore what Fox is alleged to have done, I worry a lot more about the longer term-ramifications,” says University of Minnesota media law professor Jane Kirtley, a former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“To simply say Fox is a bunch of liars — that they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this and their wild speculations should not be reported and should not be protected — I just think that that is a slippery slope,” says Kirtley.

Were Fox to lose, “there would be a scramble by other news organizations to distance themselves from Fox’s techniques and Fox’s editorial decisions,” Kirtley says. “But the problem is that by lifting the veil on the editorial decision-making process, we are now going to see all news organizations called into question going forward.” She says she believes such a verdict finding Fox liable for defamation would encourage more such cases.

Dominion’s legal team shared a statement stating that the voting tech company believes in the First Amendment and its protections, but that Fox crossed a line after the 2020 election: “As long-settled law makes clear, the First Amendment does not shield broadcasters that knowingly or recklessly spread lies.”

It’s hard for plaintiffs to win defamation suits but that could change

Media outlets rarely lose defamation cases in court. Under a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the New York Times, plaintiffs have to prove the claims made about them were false and damaging to their reputation. Additionally, they have to prove that those making the statements in question either knew the assertions were untrue or had good reason to know they were untrue, and willfully ignored that information. That’s known as “actual malice,” under the late Justice William Brennan’s decision.

Brennan also argued Americans should have latitude to get some things wrong in talking about public officials and politics, in order to ensure free and robust debate.

Two current Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, have indicated they would be open to making it easier for plaintiffs to prevail in defamation suits. A third, Elena Kagan, published her own musings years before she joined the court that the protections for the press might be too strong.

The idea of “actual malice,” Murphy says, requires Dominion to prove specific people directly involved with the broadcasts knew the statements they aired were wrong. For instance, Murdoch’s sworn statements that he had dismissed the claims of election fraud as bogus, and affirmed under oath that some of his star hosts had nonetheless endorsed them publicly, carries no legal weight, she says.

“Anybody would have to acknowledge that what the president and his lawyers were doing was newsworthy in and of itself, regardless of whether the allegations were ultimately going to be anything they could prove,” Murphy says. She invoked what journalists consider the safe ground of “neutral reporting” — just telling their audiences what others are saying.

Law professor: The financial motives to present lies “probably destroy” Fox’s defense

In its legal briefs, Fox leans heavily on the idea that news organizations must be allowed to convey allegations by major public figures to their audiences — even wild allegations. Rutgers’ Chen says that doesn’t hold up if Fox was motivated by profit instead of the newsworthiness of the claims being presented in its programs.

“The fact that there was arguably a motive by Fox to publish these accusations against Dominion based on its own economic interests in retaining Trump viewers would, if believed by the jury, probably destroy that argument,” Chen says.

He’s not the only legal scholar skeptical of Fox’s argument that a loss would ripple through journalism.

“Even if Dominion makes their case and convinces a jury to shovel truckloads of Fox’s money to [the election tech company], nothing in this case presents a meaningful threat to the First Amendment,” says Charles Glasser, who was global media counsel for Bloomberg News for 14 years and now teaches journalism and media law at New York University. “It really comes down to the facts about how the story was crafted and disseminated.”

In his sworn responses to questioning from Dominion attorney Justin Nelson, Fox Corp. boss Murdoch acknowledged that four of his star hosts — Dobbs, Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — had endorsed the baseless claims of election fraud, at least “a bit” in the case of Hannity. He referred to them as commentators. Opinions have even more latitude under case law than straight-ahead reporting. (Dobbs left his post at Fox Business Network a day after a second election tech company, Smartmatic, filed its own $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox. That case is not as far along as Dominion’s.)

Yet Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum also were deeply concerned about the loss of viewers and deliberated about how to win them back, evidence uncovered by Dominion’s attorneys and separate reporting by the New York Times‘ Peter Baker show.

Legendary media lawyer sees Fox News case as “bizarre” exception to the norm

When news outlets do lose defamation cases, they often result in retractions or apologies and settlements while they’re still on appeal. The two most prominent defamation cases of recent years resulted in divergent outcomes.

In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine settled separate cases filed by a University of Virginia dean and a campus fraternity after a collapse of standards in reporting on what turned out to be a source’s fabricated account of campus rape.

A year ago, the New York Times prevailed against former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin after an editorial wrongly linked her advertisements from her political action committee to a mass shooting months later.

“Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to permit a wholesale inquiry into newsroom decisions as a whole, and also I include ownership as part of that inquiry,” James Goodale, the legendary New York Times general counsel who advised the paper to publish the Pentagon Papers, tells NPR in an email. “Newsroom decisions, including ownership decisions as to news judgment, should be protected by the First Amendment.”

Libel and defamation cases override such protections, he notes.

“The Dominion case is such a strange case it provides an exception to the general rule,” Goodale says. “Let us hope we don’t see such a bizarre case as this one again.”

Posted on February 8, 2023
Green card applicants are likely to face fee hikes under proposed changes : NPR

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services relies nearly entirely on fees to operate.

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services relies nearly entirely on fees to operate.

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After two decades of waiting, Patricia Ramirez of New Mexico was filled with joy when she finally became eligible for a green card a few months ago. To Ramirez, who came to the U.S. undocumented, becoming a lawful permanent resident would give her more security living in the U.S., allow her to visit her family in Mexico, and put her one step closer to becoming a U.S. citizen.

Now, the main obstacle getting in her way is the cost of applications. Ramirez, a house cleaner, has been saving for months to afford the $2,225 in fees for a green card and other forms. Under a new federal proposal, her paperwork may become even more expensive.

“It’s already been a very difficult process, difficult to get information, difficult to save money,” Ramirez told NPR. “I’m so worried and stressed about this and what sacrifices I’ll have to make to afford this.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that oversees legal immigration, is planning to raise costs for an array of applications including ones required for citizenship naturalization, to obtain a green card, or to legally work in the U.S. as a noncitizen.

The increases vary, but many immigration attorneys are concerned that the fee hikes could place an undue burden on low-income immigrants — particularly those seeking lawful permanent residency, commonly known as a green card, which allows immigrants long-term stay in the U.S. It is also an important step to become eligible for citizenship.

Under the proposal, Ramirez’s applications will cost $1,500 more than before, according to legal representative Shalini Thomas, who represents Ramirez through the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.

She added that Ramirez is not the only one who finds the immigration applications unaffordable.

“I’ve had plenty of clients come in and I say, ‘We believe you’re eligible, here is everything that you need, including the fees,’ and I just never hear from them again because I know they can’t save up,” she told NPR. “These changes do not make that better.”

The new costs have not been finalized. USCIS is currently holding a public comment period until March 6.

The federal agency says it needs the increased fees to deal with backlogs and a budget crunch

USCIS primarily relies on fees to operate — which proved to be an issue during the pandemic.

As fewer people applied for immigration benefits, the federal agency’s revenue plummeted, leading to widespread furloughs and a backlog in immigration cases.

To fully recover, the federal agency said it needs to raise application fees, adding that the proposed prices are expected to generate $1.9 billion more per year than current application costs.

“This is the amount necessary to match agency capacity with projected workloads, so that backlogs do not accumulate in the future,” USCIS wrote in its proposal released in early January.

The federal agency generally updates its fee schedule every few years, the last time being 2016. During the Trump administration, there was an attempt to raise costs dramatically, as well make it harder for poor immigrants to qualify for fee waivers, but federal judges eventually blocked those changes.

Karen Sullivan, the director of advocacy at Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., said she wants to see USCIS fully funded, fully staffed and operating efficiently, but questions whether low-income immigrants should have to bear that responsibility.

“All of us should want migrant communities to have access to the benefits that they qualify for,” Sullivan told NPR. “So, I think that Congress should take notice, as far as appropriations go, in helping USCIS with additional funding.”

In fiscal year 2022, the federal agency did receive $275 million from Congress to reduce the current backlog. USCIS expects to continue needing congressional support to fully eliminate it.

The proposed fee changes are a means to allow USCIS to keep up with incoming inventories and avoid future backlogs, the agency said.

A family of four would pay up to $7,460 for green cards and work permits

Under the proposal, applying for a green card with biometrics, or biological measurements, will go up from $1,225 to $1,540. Biometrics — which include fingerprints, a photo and signature — are often required for green cards and other forms.

Although people are currently allowed to apply for a green card and work permit together, the proposed rule will unbundle the forms — which would, in turn, raise costs.

Applications to apply for citizenship may go up by $120; visas for religious workers may increase by $555; and petitions to remove conditions on residence with biometrics, which can allow spouses of green card holders to transition to lawful permanent residents, would increase by $515.

Those fees can especially add up for families filing together.

According to Kathy Klos, an attorney with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, a family of four applying for green cards and two work permits would currently pay $3,950 in fees if filing on paper. That price would go up to $7,460 if they file on paper, and $7,270 if they file online.

“From under $4,000 to almost $7,500 is ridiculous,” Klos told NPR.

The hefty price tag is only one of the hoops to jump through in order to gain legal status in the U.S. Forms can be complicated, processing times can be long and appointments for biometrics or interviews can be a serious inconvenience to students or working adults.

“For people who are born here and never had to deal with the immigration system, they don’t have a great understanding of how difficult it really is,” Klos said.

Fee waivers only help to some extent

USCIS does offer fee waivers to some low-income immigrants and fee exemptions for humanitarian reasons, such as for refugees, asylum-seekers and domestic violence victims.

Generally, households that make less than 150{c024931d10daf6b71b41321fa9ba9cd89123fb34a4039ac9f079a256e3c1e6e8} of the federal poverty line are eligible for discounted applications to a number of immigration benefits. That could include a single adult who makes less than $21,000 per year or a family of four that earns $45,000.

USCIS expects that more than a million applicants — about an eighth of the total — will benefit from fee exemptions or fee waivers each year. But some say the process to apply for one can be long and difficult.

“The fee waivers are not automatic, they add more time to your case,” Daniel Santiago, an attorney with Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice in Boston, told NPR. “And our clients are desperate to get the paperwork done.”

Under the proposed changes, some applications filed online will be cheaper than on paper. USCIS says online applications are easier and cheaper to process than paper ones. But some immigration attorneys find that unfair.

“To offer a discount if you’re filing online helps the most privileged of immigrants, but truly doesn’t help the most marginalized,” said Thomas of the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.

Thomas said her client, Ramirez, is ineligible for a fee waiver because she is applying for a green card through a family member.

Ramirez has been waiting for an opportunity to become green card eligible for 22 years. Although she’s close to filing the paperwork, Ramirez has a sense that the process has just begun.

“It took me months to pay the current costs. If they go up, I might have to look for another job or get a loan,” she said. “Right now, my plan is to get my application done as soon as possible.”

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