Meet the Community Partnership Group (CPG)! 

Since early 2020, the Income and Work Supports (IWS) team has been building our relationship with the Community Partnership Group (CPG). The CPG is a diverse collective of activists from across the U.S. who partner with nonprofits, administering agencies, and policymakers to ensure that their work is grounded in the expertise of impacted people. Each CPG member developed their expertise through direct experience with public benefits programs—whether through participation or discriminatory exclusion—and their ongoing anti-poverty advocacy. The CPG rejects systems rooted in oppression, classism, and white supremacy, instead centering equity through collectivism and co-creation. They believe that achieving restorative, anti-racist policy change is only possible when impacted people occupy positions of leadership and share systemic power. Check out their webpage and Twitter feed! 

This update comes at the heels of several U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have disproportionate consequences for people with low incomes. Because of its central role in allowing women and birthing people control over their own lives, reproductive justice is essential for economic justice. By overturning the long-standing constitutional right to abortion care, which has been settled case law for the past 50 years, the decision in Dobbs. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will allow states across the country to ban abortions. The state abortion bans already in place and those sure to follow will most harm people with the least resources, undermining their freedom and intensifying existing inequities. 

Given Justice Thomas’s explicit mention of contraceptives and gay marriage in the majority opinion, our team is following the guidance of partners who understand how central bodily autonomy is to the fight for reproductive justice and LGBTQIA+ liberation. You can read CLASP’s official statement here.  

In addition to Dobbs, the Court made worrisome rulings in several other cases: 

• West Virginia v. EPA - The Court ruled that Congress did not grant the EPA authority to regulate emissions from existing facilities based on generation-shifting mechanisms, thereby invalidating the Clean Power Plan. The EPA may continue to regulate emissions at existing power plants through emissions reduction technologies. In the ruling, the court did not directly reject "Chevron deference," which is the general principle that courts can't substitute their own interpretation of a law for a reasonable agency interpretation, but did open the door for more challenges to regulation across a range of policy areas.  
• Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta – The Court’s decision expands state governments’ authority to prosecute certain cases on tribal lands, undermining tribal sovereignty.  
• Vega v. Tekoh – The Court’s decision takes away people’s ability to sue a police officer who fails to issue a Miranda warning before they are taken into custody and interrogated, jeopardizing people’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. This decision disproportionately harms young people and people with disabilities who may be less aware of their rights and more likely to self-incriminate after taken into custody.  
• Shoop v. Twyford – The Court decided to deny people who are incarcerated the right to request to be transported outside the prison to develop new evidence that might aid them in proving their entitlement to federal habeas relief.  
• Kennedy v. Bremerton School District - The Court ruled that a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games. Less than a week ago, the court also ruled that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program. 

Amidst all these dangerous rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court did affirm in Biden v. Texas that the Administration can end the ill-advised Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program (formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols). This decision, which does not automatically end the failed program, paves the way for the Biden Administration to uphold the right of asylum seekers to seek safe haven at our border—and in doing so, allows the United States to once again welcome people with dignity and due process rather than cruelty and confinement. You can read CLASP’s full statement on this ruling here. The Court also dismissed requests by Arizona and other states’ to defend the Trump-era public charge rule, saying that the Court should not have accepted the case. 

These past few months, our team has been celebrating Disability Pride Month with our national partners. In June, Ashley Burnside moderated and participated in a Social Security Administration panel on nutrition and disability. Jessi Russell and Yolanda Gordon, a member of the CPG, are also helping organize a Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities (CCD) hill briefing on July 26--the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act--to discuss the ADA’s impact on accessible, integrated, affordable, and safe housing within the United States. The briefing will feature experts with direct lived experience, and we encourage everyone to look out for a registration email soon!