Leslie Bailey

Director, Debtors‘ Prison Venture & Senior Attorney

Leslie A. Bailey is just a senior lawyer in Public Justice’s Oakland, Ca workplace, and Director for the organization’s Debtors’ Prison Project. Leslie litigates complex general public interest instances and appeals involving civil liberties and liberties, customer security, and court privacy. She’s got briefed, argued, and won situations in state and federal courts that are appellate the united states and it has testified both in homes of Congress. Leslie has talked on court privacy, personal probation, course actions, ethics, and forced arbitration at over three dozen nationwide and state conferences and CLEs.

Civil Rights & Criminal Justice: Leslie is aimed at fighting the criminalization of poverty as well as the jailing and exploitation that is financial of criminal defendants. Leslie could be the mind of Public Justice’s Debtors’ Prison Project, and this woman is presently counsel in Carter v. City of Montgomery, a putative course action in federal court in Alabama challenging the unconstitutional techniques associated with the City, its municipal court, and for-profit probation company Judicial Correction Services. The court in Carter has rejected the defendants’ motion for summary judgment payday loans in Connecticut direct lenders, discovering that the plaintiffs’ Due Process, Equal Protection, and Sixth Amendment liberties had been violated and therefore an acceptable jury could contain the City, probation business, and a agreement protection attorney liable.

She had been proud to be a part for the test group in Hankin v. City of Seattle, in which a jury discovered Seattle responsible for breaking the 4th Amendment legal rights of 200 calm protesters.

Court Secrecy: among the lawyers in Public Justice’s Court Secrecy venture, Leslie testified before subcommittees of this U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives how key settlements and sealed court public records threaten general general public safety and health. She ended up being interviewed by Andrea Cambron in the radio show EnlightenMe about how precisely NDAs and arbitration agreements are utilized to silence survivors of intimate attack and harassment–and exactly exactly how a #MeToo motion and pending legislation can alter that.

Leslie has represented general public interest teams in effectively blocking business efforts to full cover up proof of wrongdoing through secrecy instructions, including Remington Rifle Co. and Cooper Tires. Leslie had been co-counsel with Jennifer Bennett in Chrysler Group v. The Center for Auto protection, where the Ninth Circuit ruled that papers containing information bearing on the security of an incredible number of Chrysler automobiles should be unsealed unless the organization can show that compelling grounds for privacy outweigh the public’s presumptive right of use of court public records. Chrysler’s petition for certiorari into the U.S. Supreme Court ended up being rejected, nevertheless the region court declined to unseal just about all the papers, and unfortuitously that decision ended up being affirmed in a unpublished choice by a panel of this Ninth Circuit.

Leslie participated in an invitation-only conference at Yale Law School’s Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency about guidelines to make sure general general public usage of safety and health information in medical item litigation.

Consumer Rights & Payday Lending: Leslie served as co-chair regarding the Board of Directors of NACA, the nationwide Association for Consumer Advocates, from 2016-2018, so that as a board user from 2012-2016. She’s been counsel in a number of customer legal rights instances, including lead counsel on appeal in Rosas v. AMG solutions, Inc., a putative class action against an internet payday lender in Ca state court. The defendant—a payday loan provider that charged over 700% interest on short-term loans and that was managed by notorious kingpin Scott Tucker if the loans were made—claims that its nominal affiliation having a indigenous american tribe entitles it to talk about into the tribe’s resistance from state law. The Ca Court of Appeals rejected the defendant lender’s efforts to flee obligation, as well as the instance is now proceeding when you look at the test court.

The immunity that is“tribal defense is an ever more popular defense strategy among payday loan providers looking for how to carry on asking excessive interest on short-term customer loans while evading state customer security rules. Leslie conceived and directed the development of a kind that is first-of-its on tribal financing, “Stretching the Envelope of Tribal Sovereign Immunity?: A study for the Relationships Between on line Payday Lenders and Native United states Tribes.” This report that is 200-page that has been funded by way of a grant through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, features the absolute most comprehensive research and analysis done up to now regarding the relationships between payday loan providers and tribes.

Forced Arbitration: Leslie has also experience that is extensive the enforcement of unjust arbitration clauses in customer agreements. In April 2019, she won an unanimous success in the sc Supreme Court with respect to victims of insurance coverage frauds. The court held that the defendant insurance providers could never to force their claims into arbitration considering a clause in a agreement between those ongoing businesses and another defendant, in which the plaintiffs are not events along with never decided to arbitrate. Leslie’s dental argument can be considered right right here. She additionally argued and won Sgouros v. TransUnion Corp., when the Seventh Circuit struck along the arbitration contract of 1 regarding the biggest corporations into the country in agreement formation grounds; and FIA Card solutions v. Weaver, an in that the Louisiana Supreme Court held that the financial obligation collector cannot enforce an arbitration honor against a customer without demonstrating the buyer consented to arbitration.

Leslie in addition has successfully compared certiorari in a number of instances, lately TAMKO v. Hobbs, when the Missouri Court of Appeals held that consumers would not accept arbitration just by continuing to keep something, where in actuality the business didn’t offer any proof so it had because of the customers reasonable realize that they’d lose their directly to visit court should they kept the merchandise; and Beverly companies v. Cyr, when the Eleventh Circuit held that where an arbitration clause offers up arbitration “exclusively” before a forum that is banned from performing customer arbitrations, the Federal Arbitration Act will not demand a court to bypass the parties’ intent and designate an alternative forum.

Leslie authored Public Justice’s opinions towards the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid solutions (CMS) on why the Trump Administration should not cave to your medical house industry’s demand in order to force death that is wrongful away from court and into key arbitration.