In the News
Community HeLP Clinic helps crime survivors with visas - Tuesday, February 4, 2020
The Community Health Law Partnership Clinic recently helped two clients with their preliminary approval for U Visas, which provide a path to lawful status for noncitizens who are the victims of serious crime and are helpful to law enforcement in the investigation or prosecution.
According to Jason A. Cade, the clinic’s director and holder of a Hosch Associate Professorship, when the statutory backlog is cleared the clients will have full U status. “In the meantime, they can now reside and work lawfully in the United States,” he said.
Current Community HeLP Clinic students James C. Berrigan and Lisa C. Garcia marshaled the evidence needed to achieve this successful outcome for both clients. Former clinic students and 2018 law school graduates Michael D. Aune, Caroline A. Jozefczyk, Clayton C. McClain and Christopher D. “Chris” Johnson assisted with earlier stages of the case.
The successful effort on behalf of these clients was made in conjunction with bilingual therapists from UGA’s College of Education working at the Mercy Health Clinic, where the Community HeLP Clinic operates a medical-legal partnership addressing social determinants of health.
Cade publishes article in the Georgia Law Review Online - Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Hosch Associate Professor Jason Cade published "Teaching Tomorrow's Lawyers Through a (Semi-) Generalist, (Mostly-) Individual Client Poverty Law Clinic: Reflections on Five Years of the Community Health Law Partnership" in 53 Georgia Law Review Online 143 (2019).
Community HeLP Clinic assists clients in obtaining citizenship - Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Congratulations to the Community Health Law Partnership (HeLP) Clinic for assisting two clients from Egypt with their citizenship cases. Third-year student Sarah A. Mirza and Onur Yildirim (J.D.'18) helped prepare the initial applications last year. Third-year student Amy E. Buice and second-year student William D. Ortiz worked to prepare the pair for their naturalization interviews and attended the naturalization ceremony in 2019. The cases were supervised by clinic Director and Associate Professor Jason A. Cade.
Cade presents on enforcement policies at the southern border - Friday, March 1, 2019
Associate Professor Jason A. Cade presented on the consequences of enforcement policies at the southern border for asylum-seekers and other migrants at the 2019 Emory International Law Review Symposium titled "Continued Relevance and Challenges of the 1951 Refugee Convention on Global, Regional, and Local Levels" during February.
Cade publishes article in Northwestern University Law Review Online - Monday, February 18, 2019
Associate Professor Jason A. Cade published "Restoring the Statutory Safety-Valve for Immigrant Crime Victims: Premium Processing for Interim U Visa Benefits" in 113 Northwestern University Law Review Online 120 (2019) (with Mary Honeychurch, a 2018 graduate of the School of Law).
Cade publishes article in Washington and Lee Law Review - Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Associate Professor Jason A. Cade published "Judicial Review of Disproportionate (or Retaliatory) Deportation" in 75 Washington and Lee Law Review 1427 (2018).
Cade publishes article in Northwestern University Law Review - Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Associate Professor Jason A. Cade published "Sanctuaries as Equitable Delegation in an Era of Mass Immigration Enforcement" in 113 Northwestern University Law Review 433 (2018).
Cade presents at Fordham University School of Law - Monday, November 19, 2018
Associate Professor Jason A. Cade presented "Sanctuaries as Equitable Delegation in an Era of Mass Immigration Enforcement" at the 2018 Cooper Walsh Colloquium titled "Remodeling Sanctuary: Urban Immigration in a New Era" held at Fordham University School of Law during November.
Cade, Flanagan publish article in Richmond Public Interest Law Review - Monday, April 2, 2018
Associate Professor Jason A. Cade and Meghan L. Flanagan have published "Five Steps to a Better U: Improving the Crime-fighting Visa" in 21 Richmond Public Interest Law Review 85 (2018). Flanagan (J.D.'17) is a current fellow in the Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic.
The law school’s Community Health Law Partnership Clinic recently achieved a significant administrative legal victory that could have far-reaching implications beyond their initial client who experiences a disability.
In the December 2017 ruling, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services did not provide reasonable accommodations – required under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act – for the clinic’s disabled client when applying for aid through the SNAP (food stamps) program. The USDA has given DFCS three months to implement system-wide procedures for tracking requests for reasonable accommodations, resolving grievances and ensuring that all front-line agency staff receives civil rights training including ADA/504 compliance.
Associate Professor Jason A. Cade, who directs the clinic, says this resolution will benefit many persons with disabilities throughout the state of Georgia. “Due to the ruling, it is anticipated that DFCS will be implementing a range of procedures and policies to bring them into compliance with federal law, which will ultimately make things easier for those with disabilities seeking to access DFCS administered programs. The Community HeLP Clinic often represents persons with disabilities and greatly welcomes this action,” he said.
Law students involved in achieving this momentous, multi-year victory for the clinic’s client were: 2017 graduates R. Larkin Taylor-Parker and Alessandra P. Cunha, third-year students Christopher D. “Chris” Johnson and Clayton C. McClain, and second-year students Gabriel Justus and Slaton Wheeler. The Community HeLP Clinic’s mission is to address the social determinants of health for indigent individuals by tackling a range of legal needs that impact patients, including immigration, disability rights and benefits.The clinic provides a first-rate learning opportunity for law students by giving them responsibility for handling all aspects of their clients’ cases, under Cade’s supervision.
Congratulations to Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law Harlan G. Cohen and Assistant Professor Jason A. Cade. Both were part of UGA interdisciplinary teams that received research awards through the Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grant Program. Only 12 faculty teams were selected out of more than 150 that submitted proposals.
Cohen’s project is titled “Forecasting the threat of cyber attacks, nation by nation,” and his team includes faculty members from UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Public and International Affairs as well as a political scientist from the State University of New York.
Cade will collaborate on a project titled “Building a network of cultural liaisons to improve the health and well-being of Athens-area Latinos” with faculty from the College of Education, the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, the College of Pharmacy, the College of Public Health, the School of Social Work, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute and the J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development.
The review team selected winning proposals based on demonstrated potential to address key grand challenges and to generate new external funding in the future. Inclusion of public service and outreach components also was considered, among other criteria.
School of Law faculty member looks for legal solutions to health issues - February 27, 2017
When Jason Cade was offered the opportunity to start the Community Health Law Partnership (Community HeLP) Clinic at UGA in 2013, he jumped at the chance. The clinic, which seeks to address health-harming legal needs of low-income individuals, provides a much-needed service in the Athens area.
“The whole idea behind this clinic is that both short- and long-term health outcomes can be related to legal problems,” Cade said. “Our goal is to reduce chaos in a family’s life, to bring stability and to maximize their income potential or their support. These are things that can make a really big difference in a family’s health especially when you are talking about very low-income persons.”
Cade and the law students, who gain client and work experience through the Community HeLP Clinic, primarily work with professionals at Mercy Health Center, which provides medical care and other support for low-income and uninsured people in Athens and the surrounding areas.
As an illustration, Cade offered the situation where a person has access to asthma medication but lives in a house with severe mold issues, noting the medication will not alleviate the source of the asthma.
“There is often a social circumstance that is connected to a person’s health, and sometimes those social circumstances have a legal solution,” Cade said.”Those are the kinds of cases we work on.”
Students in the Community Health Law Partnership Clinic, directed by Assistant Professor Jason A. Cade, recently won first place and $500 in a contest sponsored by UGA’s College of Public Health Institute of Gerontology. The effort sought to recognize creative solutions to combat senior hunger in Georgia.
The Community HeLP Clinic’s winning entry focused on the implementation of a single streamlined process to assist older adults at senior housing communities with applying for Medicare, food stamps and an underused deduction for out-of-pocket medical expenses, which is intended to help persons receiving food stamps who are disabled or at least 60 years old.
To develop the idea, the clinic partnered with Georgia Cares, the Athens Community Council on Aging and local attorney Nancy Lindbloom from the Georgia Legal Services Program. Clinic students successfully piloted the program with Kristi Bates, a Medicare specialist with Georgia Cares, at a senior housing residence in Athens.
The law students involved in various aspects of developing, implementing or writing up the project were: second-year students John E. Farmer Jr., Mary S. Honeychurch, Christopher D. “Chris” Johnson, Clayton C. McClain and Laney J. Riley; and third-year students Pedro Dorado, Alessandro F. Raimondo and Ashley A. Rudolph.
The award committee called the Community HeLP Clinic’s proposal “brilliant,” and committee members praised the clinic’s guidance and recommendations for best practices and implementation statewide.
Focus On Faculty Profiles: Jason Cade - April 2, 2017
Students in assistant professor Jason Cade’s Community Health Law Partnership clinic gain practical experience providing legal services to low-income patients at community health centers.
What are your favorite courses and why?
I teach two courses and love them both. One is an intensive two-semester clinic called the “Community Health Law Partnership” (also known as “Community HeLP”). Working under my supervision (I’m a licensed attorney in Georgia), each year eight law students in the clinic provide a variety of civil legal services to low-income patients at local community health centers serving Athens and surrounding counties. The students gain deep experience with real-life lawyering in this course, representing individuals in all aspects of their cases. Many of our clients are facing crisis situations and all of them are in poverty. Every semester the cases are different, which means I have to be very flexible in keeping the curriculum relevant. I structure the clinic so that students continually practice and reflect on skills and experiences, learning collaboratively from each other’s challenges as well as their successes. The students gain tools in the process that I think translate to almost any kind of legal work. Just as importantly, they tend to end up embracing the core value that all clients deserve outstanding representation—including, and perhaps especially, those who cannot afford to hire an attorney.
Teaching the doctrinal immigration law course is very rewarding, too. That subject matter aligns with my primary research areas, and I love having discussions with students about how well the goals underlying the immigration system align with the on-the-ground realities of immigration law and procedure.
What interests you about your field?
Although the Community HeLP clinic engages in many aspects of poverty law, my primary area of research and practice has been immigration law. As a scholar, I try to make sense of the roles and responsibilities of the many officials who implement the sprawling, rigid immigration code and to think about the complexities of how we use immigration law to define our national community. I’m particularly interested in examining how our legal institutions operate for noncitizens who encounter the criminal justice system or who lack a path to lawful status under current law.
As a still-practicing lawyer, many things interest me about immigration law. You have to be very creative and you have to be a good storyteller in this field. The work typically involves figuring out solutions to complex problems and helping clients effectively communicate their stories in ways that are accurate, compelling and legally significant. Also, when you have success in an immigration case, frequently you’ve achieved life-changing results for your client, which is very gratifying.
- Read the full interview.
Community HeLP Clinic offers assistance to Athens Housing Authority residents - Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Georgia Law’s Community Health Law Partnership, led by Assistant Professor Jason A. Cade, took on a substantial advocacy project during November to benefit residents of Athens Housing Authority in addition to its current work with patients at Mercy Health Center.
State law changed on Oct. 1, allowing households with elderly or disabled members to qualify for additional SNAP (food stamps) benefits based on unreimbursed medical expenses. Second-year student Christina A. Cason and third-year student Andrew B. McClintock led a presentation on the newly changed law to residents of AHA, and shortly after, the entire clinic screened AHA residents who expressed food insecurity at the presentation. As a result, the clinic has accepted 10 residents as new clients and provided advice to numerous others regarding their eligibility for food stamps and the medical expense deduction. Cason and McClintock, with assistance from other clinic students, also developed a standard form to help applicants and advocates calculate qualifying expenses. The form has been shared with the Georgia Legal Services Project in hopes that it can be used to assist qualifying individuals throughout the state.
The clinic plans to continue its presentations and screenings on this issue in 2016.
Community HeLP Clinic caps successful year with win - Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Congratulations to Georgia Law’s Community Health Law Partnership for finishing its first year with a win in a contested SNAP (food stamps) case. During the spring semester, third-year students Ricardo A. “Richie” Lopez and Carrie A. Moss advocated on the behalf of a disabled clinic client and achieved an almost $200 monthly increase in benefits.
Lopez and Moss also uncovered multiple agency errors leading to significant underpayments dating back almost one year. Three days after graduating from Georgia Law, Lopez returned to the clinic to represent the client in an administrative hearing, during which the agency relented on all issues and agreed to reimburse the client for back benefits totaling almost $1,600.
Directed by Assistant Professor Jason A. Cade, the Community HeLP Clinic provides an innovative approach in addressing the social determinants of health for indigent individuals. Law students partner with health care professionals to tackle a variety of legal needs that affect patients. Over the course of the 2014-15 academic year, students in the clinic assisted approximately 40 low-income persons in the Athens area in overcoming a range of health-harming legal needs, including issues relating to food stamps, disability benefits, and immigration.
