Challenge to the Louisiana Workforce Commission’s Failure to Issue Unemployment Assistance During COVID-19
Plaisance v. DeJoie was filed in February 2021, challenging the Louisiana Workforce Commission’s failure to determine eligibility for unemployment benefits, hear appeals, and issue vital unemployment assistance during COVID-19. The Barbara McDowell Foundation’s High Impact Litigation Project was responsible for securing pro bono co-counsel for the case from Winston & Strawn to work with the National Center for Law and Economic Justice which joined the case after it was originally filed by two Louisiana personal injury attorneys who had correctly identified serious failures in the state’s Unemployment Insurance Program during and following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Winston & Strawn will help manage e-discovery, additional depositions, discovery-related motion practice, and secure any expert witnesses needed.
Specifically, the original lawyers found that the State arbitrarily terminates benefits without adequate notice, leaving claimants with no financial support during an appeal process that can last well over a year. Many of these claimants are entitled to benefits, yet they go without assistance because of the State’s systemic due process violations.
The original attorneys had done the work of gathering facts, finding plaintiffs, and filing a Complaint and Motion for Preliminary Injunction. The original Complaint named defendants who could not be properly sued—namely the Governor, the State, and the Louisiana Workforce Commission—and improperly sought monetary damages. There was real danger of the entire litigation being dismissed before any discovery could be done or any pressure could be exerted on the state agency to improve. There was also danger that given the degree to which monetary damages and injunctive relief were bound up together in the Complaint, incredibly damaging law could have been made. When NCLEJ joined the case, it immediately drafted and filed an Amended Complaint and opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. These filings cleaned up the claims and relief, eliminated the improper defendants, and enabled the case to survive the Motion to Dismiss and proceed to more than a year of additional discovery and motion practice.
The goal of the litigation was to transform Louisiana’s Unemployment Insurance process so that claimants—primarily low-income people of color—receive clear notice, timely benefits, and a prompt hearing prior to the termination of benefits. During the proposed class period, 1.3 million people filed claims. The insufficient notices potentially impact all of them. A smaller subset of class members, 14,000 people, were denied access to an appellate process between June 2020 and June 2021. For example, one of the name plaintiffs applied for benefits in April 2020—the day after her workplace closed in response to the pandemic—and did not receive any benefits until July 2021, more than one year later. At no point had she received proper notice regarding her benefits or the delays, nor was she given the opportunity to appeal her deprivation of benefits.
The State chose to defend the litigation aggressively. In response to the amended complaint, the State filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings. The Court did not enter a scheduling order for more than six months. It then set a tight time schedule for class discovery and briefing.
Unfortunately, the district court granted defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, resulting in the dismissal of the litigation. After consulting with the local legal services program and other experts in the field, Plaintiffs' attorneys elected not to appeal thinking that the Plaintiffs would not prevail in the Fifth Circuit and did not want to risk making bad law, expanding the ruling to other states within the Fifth Circuit, and undermining cases in other more favorable jurisdictions.
Despite the dismissal, Plaintiffs largely achieved their litigation goals. In March 2021, 2,628 initial appeals were filed in Louisiana, while only 2,170 were disposed, indicating a significant backlog in appeal processing. In September 2022, those numbers reversed to 1,305 and 2,177 respectively, indicating that Louisiana was actively resolving the backlog. Depositions revealed the agency’s efforts to improve operations by increasing staffing and cross-training other state employees to work on UI. The litigation was a significant factor in the agency taking such steps, and it prompted real improvements for Louisianans.