Claire Johnson Raba

Thanks @ssrn.bsky.social! Disparate Debt is forthcoming in Volume 60 of the University of San Francisco Law Review.

[Abstract of article] Debt collection lawsuits increasingly dominate civil dockets in state courts, with default judgments frequently entered against consumer defendants. Analysis of case filing rates and metrics shows debt collection lawsuits and entries of default judgment disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic/Latino borrowers in California in comparison to their white neighbors when controlling for median household income. In the years following the pandemic, the configuration of the business of debt collection is changing, as more lawsuits are filed by originating lenders in an industry previously dominated by third-party purchasers of defaulted debt portfolios. An increasing number of cases are filed by subprime lending market-share leaders Capital One and Discover Bank, as well as subprime installment and auto lenders. When controlling for income, findings show disparate impacts demonstrating that non-white borrowers are more likely to be sued by lenders with large profiles of subprime debt. In debt collection lawsuits in state courts, ostensibly neutral procedural rules impose barriers to access to justice for unrepresented defendants, resulting in inequitable substantive outcomes that disproportionately burden Black and Hispanic/Latino defendants. This Article pairs a legal consciousness frame with an evaluation of the role that subprime non-mortgage consumer debt and racially discriminatory lending policies have historically played in contributing to financial instability to link disparate access to affordable credit with racially disparate filing rates and outcomes in consumer debt cases. Normative recommendations consider three policy approaches. The Article addresses the futility of disparate impact-based federal enforcement and rulemaking under White House Executive Order 14281, discusses debt abolition theory, and evaluates the value of partnerships among legal service providers, courts, and non-profit community-based organizations.

books on debt

My new empirical legal studies article is up on SSRN papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... and submitted to law reviews on Scholastica: Disparate Debt reports findings of racially disparate impacts in case filing rates, debt cases filed by subprime lenders, and case outcomes when controlling for income.

Civil asset forfeiture system hits low-income people of color harder Civil asset forfeiture processes are complicated and fall short of the due process rights provided in criminal court. Also, Alex Pretti, outdoor time for girls, SNAP, Bari Weiss' journalism and Soldie...

My letter to the editor this weekend in the Sun-Times on how the civil asset forfeiture system is unjust & hits low-income people of color harder chicago.suntimes.com/letters-to-t...

Thanks to @wttw.bsky.social for having me on #ChicagoTonight last night to talk about algorithmic pricing and consumer protection law. Be sure to read the new investigative report out by @moreperfectunion.bsky.social on Instacart's misleading and deceptive pricing! Video at the link below.

Pay to Plead, @claireraba.bsky.social and my article on California debt collection is available! Drawing on more than $2M debt collection cases covering 80% of CA's population from 2009-2020, we draw a detailed picture of how mass debt lawsuits operate as a regressive system of wealth transfer. 1/3

Law students and recent grads! Thinking about clerking? Don’t overlook state courts. State Court Report has a new resource w/ info and deadlines for 95 state supreme court justices. Check it out! @statecourtreport.bsky.social
statecourtreport.org/state-judici...

Periodic reminder that Justice Roberts and Co. blocked student debt relief for millions because of a single loan servicer that may or may not have been at risk of losing money if the program were implemented. No one was worried about nationwide injunctions then. #SCOTUS.

Thanks @pelfreyduryea.bsky.social for organizing our #AALSClinical2025 panel on legal needs assessments and how data collection and analysis help law school clinics better serve clients, students, & community!

Bodhi says hey fam.

Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More By slashing teams that gather critical data, the administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose con...

NEW: In agency after agency, the U.S. government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of policies.

By @alecmac.bsky.social

I have a new paper forthcoming in the Journal of Law in Society on students as co-researchers in the direct representation law school clinic. Clinics are where students learn the practice of law, and also where they learn how to study and critique the system of law. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This is what Reagan did with his "welfare queen" rhetoric. And it created enough public hostility toward welfare recipients that even Democrats embraced an anti-welfare agenda and revamped the program to punish families rather than supporting them in a time of need.

Don't let that happen again.

Why Trump Is So Desperate to Keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana Government lawyers would be happy to avoid a legal precedent set in the case of Ravi Ragbir during the first Trump administration.

And today in Civ Pro I and #teachthecrisis, in concluding the unit on venue, we talked about the Mahmoud Khalil detention and transfer and learned a bit about habeas law. Students really appreciated the chance to talk. theintercept.com/2025/03/14/m...

This is going cause severe harm (no payee means disruptions to housing, meds, etc.) to really vulnerable disabled people who live on very little needs-based SSI income. Yet again, the cruelty is the point.

Trump and Musk have fired Tara Twomey, the ED of the U.S. Trustee's Office, which serves as bankruptcy's "watchdog." You don't have to agree with every position that the Office took to be alarmed at the politicization of the Executive Branch. Here's a write-up by my colleague Bob Lawless:

Students in my Civ Pro I class were struggling w/ fed question and the concept of private rights of action so we reviewed CREW v. DOGE and other cplts on the @justsecurity.org compilation of cases v. the Trump admin. A reminder we can #teachthecrisis in all our classes.

Halfway through the semester in my @uiclaw #A2J and #LegalTech class! My students and I were lucky to have @abfresearch.bsky.social Director of Research for A2J Matthew Burnett join us to discuss legal profession regulatory reform and UPL challenges. Community-led legaltech design ftw👏👏👏

Cat helping research by climbing around the computer desk

#caturday morning research assistant #learningfromstrangers

Keep your eye on the ball:

The real reason for this is that the Trump administration wants to get rid of disparate-impact liability under federal civil rights laws for states and entities required to provide language access to people with limited English proficiency.

Think hospitals, courts, etc.

Nice vote by mail system you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

Small sleepy dog in front of books in the foreground, Large cats in front of more books in the background.

Reading Isola by Allegra Goodman on the new @bookshop-org.bsky.social e-reader app!

FANTASTIC

ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?)

You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have

www.datalumos.org/datalumos/

This is not good.

Taught Lassiter (& Mathews/Goldberg) & procedural due process in Civ Pro I today and talked about Hamdan and Hamdi and the ACLU case filed yesterday on behalf of Venezuelan Guantanamo detainees. We need to keep talking about *all of this* with our law school classes, not just the Con Law profs.

NIH In Your State - United For Medical Research Select a state on the map to see the impact of NIH funding across America.

NIH IN YOUR STATE

“Select a state on the map to see the impact of NIH funding across America”

www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...

💯 Fellowships are a key way to support new lawyers who want to go into public interest law. And public interest/impact lit orgs should recruit broadly to include fellowship candidates from state law schools. No need to create a new program - firms can fund #EqualJusticeWorks fellowships!

Personal Discretion Over the Treasury's Payments System Means the End of Democracy If the Court and federal workers fail to stop Elon Musk, we are heading for authoritarianism.

The NYT asked me to write an op-ed on Musk and the Treasury and then took a pass. I hope it will still get read.

So I teach Civ Pro and I'm going to share this, along with the brief filed here in Illinois by Organized Communities Against Deportation v. ICE, in class today. A little info on PIs and TROs & a little more on community organizing and impact litigation.

My @uiclaw A2J & LegalTech students came prepared with great questions for our guest speaker @theaugmentedlawyer.bsky.social. We talked RAGs, prompt engineering, UPL, and the role of lawyers in LegalTech & we are only on week 2 of class! It's going to be a great semester.

How *you* can protect democracy 29 concrete actions you can take right now to protect our system of government

Don't give up - do something. A great list for civic minded Americans, from @protectdemocracy.org

open.substack.com/pub/protectd...