Bairefoot, et al., v. City of Beaufort, et al.

In 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of South Carolina, and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough filed a class-action lawsuit challenging South Carolina municipal courts’ unconstitutional practices of denying lawyers to people who are sentenced to incarceration and can’t afford private attorneys. On October 8, 2019, we announced a settlement with the City of Beaufort and the Town of Bluffton. The agreement requires the municipalities to provide meaningful representation to those who need it and is an important step toward dismantling wealth-based "justice" systems in South Carolina.