NC budget takes aim at Legal Aid. Why critics say that will empower domestic abusers

Buried deep in North Carolina’s new state budget is a provision that would ban the North Carolina State Bar from giving money to civil legal groups, essentially slashing the budgets of organizations that help low-income people facing eviction, domestic violence and other legal issues.

For the biggest such group, Legal Aid of North Carolina, the proposal would mean a loss of $6 million annually, the group says. It’s not the group’s entire budget, but it’s a large chunk of it.

Republican state lawmakers didn’t publicly explain their reasoning behind the idea, which only became public a day before the state Senate voted to approve it Wednesday along with hundreds of other provisions packed into the state budget. After it passed, Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, was asked by reporters and said the groups having their funding cut are free to look for grants or donations elsewhere.

Critics say it’s a short-sighted decision that harms thousands of people — particularly victims of human trafficking and domestic violence who rely on Legal Aid and similar groups for help getting restraining orders, or others who turn to them for any number of legal problems.

“We represent seniors who are being scammed by people selling them fake insurance,” Ashley Campbell, Legal Aid’s chief executive, told WRAL in an interview Wednesday. “We’ve represented thousands of people displaced by hurricanes Florence, Matthew and Helene. And we’re not going to be able to do that work anymore.”

The U.S. Constitution guarantees a lawyer to people in criminal cases, but not in civil cases. So private groups have stepped in to help people who can’t afford to hire lawyers for civil cases. There are several nonprofit law firms around the state that provide civil legal assistance to low-income people.

In addition to Raleigh-based Legal Aid, which operates statewide, there are similar civil legal groups with smaller, more regional missions, such as Pisgah Legal Services in the mountains and Inner Banks Legal Services on the coast. They receive money from multiple sources, including the State Bar, which is in charge of licensing and overseeing lawyers among other duties.

The legislature voted several months ago to temporarily freeze the State Bar’s contributions to the organizations, which caused Legal Aid to lay off staffers and shut down eight of its offices around the state. While the group has been able to continue operating with fewer lawyers and fewer clients, this change will make that freeze permanent. Campbell said they’ll keep doing the best they can, even though it means they won’t be able to help everyone they’d like to.

“We’re still here,” she said. “We’re deeply committed to the people we serve.”

Sen. Sydney Batch, D-Wake, criticized Republican senators Wednesday for the cuts. During debate on the Senate floor, none responded to her criticism. Batch, a family law attorney, said she’s represented multiple clients who were only able to get themselves and their children out of abusive homes because of Legal Aid’s help.

“This bill takes critical help away from all of those victims, and all of those children,” she said. “And it was done quietly in a spending document.” She alleges it was done in such a way that “nobody would notice.”

Legal Aid handled more than 25,000 cases in 2025, before the legislature froze its $6 million from the Bar, according to its annual report. The report shows it disproportionately represents Black, Hispanic and Native American clients, relative to their population statewide.

Nearly 80% of its clients are women, and the main issues Legal Aid helped them with last year were domestic violence, housing disputes and help after escaping from human trafficking.

It’s the Bar that’s under fire in the new budget, particularly a program called IOLTA, or the Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts program.

Lawyers handle their clients’ money through trust accounts, and collectively those accounts — for legal bills, or settlements, or home purchases or any number of other issues — contain quite a bit of money. The interest they earn totals millions of dollars a year. But for ethical reasons the lawyers can’t keep that interest for themselves. So they give it to the Bar, which then uses it to fund various programs including grants for Legal Aid and similar groups.

The new budget shuts it all down. The IOLTA program will now be required to only pay money into the fund that pays for criminal defense lawyers for people who can’t afford a lawyer. It will be allowed to spend any money left in reserve on civil groups, but the budget also blocks any of that money from going to groups that help immigrants or transgender people, and it sets up a group of Republican political appointees to sign off on any grants.

The executive director of the IOLTA fund, Mary Irvine, told WRAL the budget language will set the state back decades in terms of helping those in need.

“The language as written is absolutely devastating for the tens of thousands of North Carolinians who need civil legal aid to navigate critical issues they are facing,” Irvine said. “This will set back more than 40 years of progress in funding a stronger, more accessible, fairer justice system where individuals can access legal help when they need it most.”

Republicans have recently begun voicing skepticism about IOLTA, claiming it funds groups with liberal agendas. Berger said Wednesday it seemed easier to just shift all its money to criminal lawyers for low-income defendants, which the state is constitutionally obliged to fund anyway.

“The members had serious concerns about how that money was being utilized,” he said. “And we have another issue, that requires additional dollars, that provides assistance to folks who can't afford [criminal] lawyers. So we felt that that was something that didn't have the same kinds of controversies that some of the grants that came out of the IOLTA money.”

Campbell said Legal Aid doesn’t engage in any political advocacy, since it also receives some federal funding and would lose that if it did. Her group does represent some immigrants, she said, but in human trafficking cases — something Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike have pushed for. She said the new rules blocking it from receiving any final grants were shocking to her and many others in the field.

“We do a significant amount of human trafficking work, which has bipartisan support at the legislature,” she said. “… But because we do that work, we would not be eligible for these grants.”

In a previous hearing at the legislature, Rep. Harry Warren, R-Rowan, said he had a problem with other groups IOLTA had funded, other than Legal Aid, that did immigration advocacy. He also expressed concern that the State Bar expressed support for diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We've heard from a number of folks that IOLTA does good work, and we have seen evidence of that,” Warren said at the time. “But IOLTA has also gone somewhat rogue, awarding grants to leftist groups with leftist ideologies.” 

Critics of the new changes, however, noted that with this budget Republicans will be taking money away from groups that help domestic violence victims get restraining orders, and now instead funneling it to a group that pays for representation for people accused of committing crimes, including domestic violence.

“We are taking private money — not public money, not taxpayer money,” said Sen. Jonah Garson, D-Orange. “We are taking it away, and we are giving it to folks who are facing criminal charges.”