By Joe McLean, ACLU-NC Legal Intern

When he signed the General Assembly’s budget on July 26, Governor Pat McCrory should have considered that he was further weakening the institution that protects one of our state’s most vulnerable populations – and, in doing so, the state may be violating a constitutional right.

Prisoner Legal Services is a non-profit law firm that is tasked with providing free legal assistance to people incarcerated by the Department of Corrections and responding to claims from more than 37,000 inmates in the state. The organization had its beginnings in 1986, after a federal court ordered North Carolina to create PLS to provide inmates with access to the court system. Throughout its history, PLS has sought justice for inmates who have no other options. In 2005, for example, the organization reached a settlement on behalf of women who were beaten and assaulted by other inmates while prison authorities did nothing. In 2009, PLS sued prison administrators to remedy pervasive problems of rape, groping, threatening, and humiliation of female inmates.

But under the new budget, funding to PLS has been cut by 30%. The organization is already chronically underfunded, and the new cuts will almost certainly mean layoffs. Since PLS has to prioritize post-conviction cases challenging inmates’ individual sentences, it is likely that the cuts will gut PLS’s civil division and bring an end to the type of cases seen above.

This is unfortunate for our state’s indigent inmates, who may lose the opportunity to get reliable legal help if they are mistreated in prison. It’s also unfortunate for the Department of Corrections, since PLS plays a valuable intermediary role in the prison system. By providing general information to inmates and their families, discouraging unnecessary litigation, and negotiating many disputes outside of court, PLS makes the prison system run more efficiently.

The 30% cut also means that the state may violate a fundamental constitutional right: the right for inmates to have access to the legal system. In Lewis v. Casey, the Supreme Court said that in addition to claims that attack their sentences, this right must include the ability for inmates to “challenge the conditions of their confinement” via civil lawsuits.

North Carolina, in particular, should be well aware of the consequences of violating this constitutional right. The legal dispute that eventually resulted in the creation of PLS slogged through federal courts for more than 13 years. Why did it take so long? Because, in the 4th Circuit’s words, North Carolina officials had “history of foot-dragging” when the state had to fulfill the rights of inmates. By signing this budget, Gov. McCrory may have reopened the door to that litigation all over again.