US House budget threatens over 600 public defender jobs, judiciary warns

Reuters

19 hours ago

July 30 (Reuters) - Federal public defenders would be forced to eliminate over 600 positions or defer paying court-appointed criminal defense attorneys for over two months under a proposed Republican-backed budget plan in the U.S. House of Representatives, a top U.S. judiciary official warned in an internal memo.
Judge Robert Conrad, the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, included those projections in a July 25 memo, opens new tab addressed to members of the judiciary after a House appropriations panel last week advanced an $8.9 billion proposed budget for the judiciary for the next fiscal year.
The proposed spending bill advanced by the U.S. House Appropriations Committee's financial services panel increases spending on the judiciary overall by 3.5% but falls "substantially below" what the courts requested, Conrad said.
Among the parts of the judicial branch that would suffer are federal public defenders, he said. The bill provides $1.57 billion in funding for the Defender Services program, which provides attorneys to criminal defendants who cannot afford their own lawyers.
Criminal defendants have a constitutional right to be provided attorneys under the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1963 ruling Gideon v. Wainwright.
Conrad said that while the $1.57 billion is up 8.2% from the 2025 fiscal year, it is $196 million below what the judiciary requested, which would force its Defender Services program to "downsize" by over 600 positions, or potentially more if staff cuts occur after the October 1 fiscal year begins.
"Reductions of this magnitude would inhibit the Defender Services program from meeting its constitutionally mandated mission," Conrad wrote.
He said the other possibility is that payments to court-appointed private attorneys who agree to serve on a court's Criminal Justice Act (CJA) panel will be deferred for 77 days, starting around June 11, 2026, the longest such pause in the history of the program.
Those payments are already on hold, as the judiciary this month announced that the program that pays CJA attorneys had run out of money, resulting in a three-month delay. The judiciary has requested $116 million in supplemental funding to address what it calls a "funding crisis."
The full House Appropriations Committee will not consider the bill until at least September. Senate appropriators have yet to release their own version of the bill.
Details of the memo were first reported by Bloomberg Law. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts did not immediately respond to a request for comment.