Category: Administrative law

President Biden orders DOJ to facilitate voting for people in federal custody or under supervision

On election day in 2016, Crystal Mason, a Texas mother of three, cast a provisional ballot. She was unaware that Texas considered her ineligible to vote because she was on federal supervised release at the time. Six months later she was arrested. A year and a half later, she was convicted of voter fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. Mason, who is Black, believes that her prosecution was “politically and racially charged.” An appeals court upheld the conviction, ruling that whether Mason knew she was ineligible to vote was irrelevant to the case against her. She is pursuing further appeals. At trial, one of Mason’s supervision officers, Ken Mays, testified that he had not informed her that she could not vote in Texas while on federal supervised release because it was not part of standard procedure: “That’s just not something we do.” Now, a few years later, a new executive order issued by President Joe Biden will change standard procedure to require the notice Ms. Mason never received. The order also directs the Justice Department to facilitate voting for people in federal custody or on supervision who are eligible to vote in their state of residence. In recent […]

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Applying for SBA COVID-19 relief with a criminal record in 2021

Last Updated: September 9, 2021 In December 2020, Congress authorized additional COVID-19 financial relief for small businesses and nonprofits, available through the Small Business Administration (SBA). The SBA’s two primary programs for COVID-19 financial relief are the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provides forgivable loans to small businesses and nonprofits to help keep their staff employed during the crisis; and the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, which provides advances and loans to small businesses and nonprofits that experience a temporary loss of revenue due to COVID-19. After the first COVID-19 relief bill, the CARES Act, funded these programs in March 2020, the SBA imposed broad criminal history restrictions on applicants. In the face of pressure, the administration relaxed those restrictions several times over the course of the following months.  In March 2021, the Biden Administration removed an additional restriction.  In this post, we review those developments and describe the SBA’s current criminal history policies, also available on the SBA’s website (PPP and EIDL). To summarize, as a result of developments to date, the SBA now excludes from PPP relief only a narrow category of people with a criminal record: those 1) actually incarcerated or with pending felony charges; […]

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Legislative Report Card: “The Reintegration Agenda During Pandemic”

CCRC’s new report documents legislative efforts in 2020 to reduce the barriers faced by people with a criminal record in the workplace, at the ballot box, and in many other areas of daily life. In total, 32 states, D.C., and the federal government enacted 106 bills, approved 5 ballot initiatives, and issued 4 executive orders to restore rights and opportunities to people with a record. Our Legislative Report Card recognizes the most (and least) productive state legislatures last year. Hands down, Michigan was the Reintegration Champion of 2020 with 26 new record reform laws, while Utah was runner-up, and seven other states were commended for their work.

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“The Reintegration Agenda During Pandemic: Criminal Record Reforms in 2020”

In each of the past five years, CCRC has issued an end-of-year report on legislative efforts to reduce the barriers faced by people with a criminal record in the workplace, at the ballot box, and in many other areas of daily life.[i] These reports document the progress of what has become a full-fledged law reform movement to restore individuals’ rights and status following their navigation of the criminal law system. Our 2020 report, linked here, shows a continuation of this legislative trend. While fewer states enacted fewer laws in 2020 than in the preceding two years, evidently because of the disruptions caused by the pandemic, the fact that there was still considerable progress is testament to a genuine and enduring public commitment to a reintegration agenda. In 2020, 32 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government enacted 106 legislative bills, approved 5 ballot initiatives, and issued 4 executive orders to restore rights and opportunities to people with a criminal record.

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SBA throws in the towel and Congress extends the PPP deadline

After Congress authorized hundreds of billions of dollars for small business relief during COVID-19, the Small Business Administration (SBA) by rule and by policy imposed restrictions on applicants with an arrest or conviction history.  As we have documented, these SBA barriers, neither required nor contemplated by Congress, unlawfully impeded access to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.  Over many weeks, the Administration stubbornly defended those barriers.  Finally, facing a bipartisan chorus of criticism including from members of Congress, and lawsuits in federal court, the Administration threw in the towel. On June 12, shortly after the SBA eased some of the PPP restrictions, lawsuits were filed in federal court by several Maryland business owners challenging those restrictions.  On June 24, SBA further relaxed its PPP barriers, this time in a far more significant fashion, notably making the business owners who had sued the SBA eligible.  But the latest policy change came with less a week before the June 30 application deadline. Then, just one day before the deadline, a federal judge ruled that the SBA’s criminal history restrictions on PPP, except for the June 24 policy change, were likely unlawful.  The court extended the […]

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