Pitting of rural versus urban in relation to Los Angeles fires

The Los Angeles Times is reporting this morning that Cal Fire sent resources to rural California, prioritizing the state's remote reaches over the area destroyed in the Palisades fire.  Here's the lede for Connor Sheets' story: 

Since 2021, state authorities have repeatedly declined to fund wildfire prevention efforts in communities devastated by the Palisades fire, according to Cal Fire records, which show the agency instead poured money into projects in far-flung rural areas.

Records reviewed by The Times show Cal Fire elected not to fund more than $3.8 million in Wildfire Prevention Grants for Santa Monica Mountains communities including Pacific Palisades and Malibu over the last four years.

Meanwhile, many other projects in areas sometimes deemed by the state to be at lower wildfire risk received most or all of the amounts they requested — and in some instances even more. The sums, often in the millions of dollars, were allocated for a range of projects and tasks, including clearing brush with goats and distributing informational mailers.

* * * 

A Cal Fire spokesperson said a total of $17.8 million has been granted for 33 Wildfire Prevention Projects in L.A. County since the 2020-21 fiscal year, with nearly 125 acres of land within five miles of the Palisades fire “treated” with brush removal and other fuel reduction efforts over the last four years.

* * * 

Cal Fire declined to grant some of the funding the council requested because the initial proposal “included ‘home hardening’ — which is funded by an alternate grant program.”

For comparison sake, Sheets includes this information:

Meanwhile, also in August, Cal Fire awarded the Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District $86,000 more than the $1.7 million it had requested to “mechanically remove trees” on 682 acres outside the city of Yreka. Home to fewer than 8,000 people near Mt. Shasta, the surrounding area has seen large fires in recent years.

As part of the same grant program, the state agency in August awarded nearly $300,000 more than the $1.78 million Mariposa County — which has a population of around 20,000 — requested to manage vegetation along county-maintained roadways.

I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this in the coming days, but for now I'll just express regret over this pitting of rural versus urban.  I also wonder about the extent to which places like Los Angeles are seen as a lower priority because of their more robust metro fire departments.  I also note that the fires now raging in Los Angeles County have been characterized by FEMA not as wildfires, but as conflagrations fueled by structures.   That said, I believe these fires are thought to have been ignited in brush or woodlands that are part of the Santa Monica Mountains. 

US DOJ announces Access to Justice Prize to close "Rural Justice Gap"

This is from the Department of Justice press release.  

The Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice today announced the launch of the Access to Justice Prize, a year-long prize competition that aims to foster innovative solutions to address critical gaps in access to justice across the United States. The inaugural competition will focus on access to justice gaps faced by rural communities across the country, aiming to advance general public awareness about rural access to justice gaps; prompt and support the development of new and innovative solutions; and promote the replication and expansion of strategies that work.

“Through our engagement with courts, justice practitioners, legal aid providers, academic institutions and other organizations across the country, we’ve heard loud and clear that solutions to close the rural justice gap must begin with rural communities themselves,” said Director Rachel Rossi of the Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice. “Through the Access to Justice Prize competition, we further this approach, empowering those who best know the barriers their communities face to drive the effective solutions that will ensure access to justice for all, regardless of geography.”

Nationwide access to justice barriers are often exacerbated for rural Americans, especially when unique circumstances like long travel times, limited internet access or lack of attorneys are too often overlooked. A 2022 study by the Legal Services Corporation revealed that 77% of low-income rural households experienced at least one civil legal problem in the previous year, with 94% receiving inadequate or no legal help. Additionally, rural criminal justice systems are strained by part-time judges, contract defense counsel and lacking prosecutorial resources. Studies demonstrate that recruitment and retention challenges are increasing for criminal justice careers in rural areas, including for public defenders, prosecutors and law enforcement. And rural courts face rising caseloads, delay, uneven workloads among judges and lack of resources.

The 2025 Access to Justice Prize aims to inspire and support innovative ideas that address these challenges by engaging those closest to the issues — rural courts, practitioners and organizations. Eligible participants are encouraged to submit proposals for any solutions that expand access to justice, including, for example, solutions to:

• Expanding access to legal representation, legal assistance, or legal information 
• Utilizing alternatives to counsel or other innovative legal assistance models

Breaking down barriers to accessing legal systems, including barriers disproportionately faced by rural Americans, like lack of proximity to a courthouse, ability to travel or access to broadband

Simplifying legal processes, systems, forms, or language

Reducing disparities among those navigating, or impacted by, legal systems

Reducing the need for interaction with civil and criminal legal systems or developing efficient alternatives to justice processes

Reducing any harmful effects of legal systems

Accessing and utilizing technology to expedite and promote efficiency within courts and legal systems

Advancing cost-saving strategies

Expanding language access, utilizing written, spoken, and sign languages, as well as auxiliary communication aids and services

Expanding access for people with disabilities

Expanding access for specific rural populations, such as Tribal communities, low-income communities, communities of color, or other historically underserved communities

Identifying and establishing innovative cross-sector, cross-agency, or otherwise unique partnerships to expand access to legal systems

Reducing financial or economic barriers to accessing legal systems or economic conditions imposed on those impacted by legal systems

Improving legal or other supports for victims and/or survivors

Expanding access to legal systems by taking court/legal processes or assistance to communities, outside of the courtroom

Expanding access to basic and collateral needs for those in rural communities who interact with legal systems, including, for example, housing, food, employment, etc.

Promoting efficiency of systems or processes through customer or user experience strategies

More information and additional examples can be found here. 

The competition will run on a one-year cycle, starting in January 2025, and will feature two judging phases:Finalist Selection: Up to five finalists will receive $5,000 each and then refine their proposals over a six-month phase in preparation to compete for the grand prize.

Grand Prize Selection: Finalists will present their solutions at an Access to Justice Showcase, where judges will select the grand prize winner to receive $50,000.

Below is the timeline for the year-long Access to Justice Prize competition cycle:

• Jan. 7: Submissions open
• March 31: Submission deadline
• April 30: Finalists announced
• May 1 – Oct. 31: Refinement Phase
• Early December 2025: Grand Prize Showcase and winner announcement.  

A rural-ish California region neglected by both political parties

Brawley, California mayor Gil Rebollar wrote a powerful op-ed in the Los Angeles Times a few days ago about one of the state's out-of-the way, agricultural regions--a place often labeled "disadvantaged."  The headline is "In Imperial County, we’ve been abandoned by Democrats and Republicans," and some key excerpts follow about the politics and economics of this primarily Latina/o county in southeastern California, on the Arizona state line.  With a population of 179,702, the county is metropolitan, but widely thought of as rural because of the dominance of agriculture.    

Since the conclusion of the election, much of the media have painted Imperial Valley as having dramatically shifted its politics. With President-elect Donald Trump jumping from 37% of the 2020 vote in the region to 49% this year, many now claim that it has “flipped” from blue to red. Are we a once-blue county making a revolutionary realignment toward the Republican Party, or one growing more purple?

The truth is neither. The Imperial Valley is not living through a left-versus-right war, a storyline far too easy and convenient for pundits to resist as they lazily view our region as a political novelty. Trump’s strong local finish does not mark a sudden conservative awakening, just as the region’s previous Democratic lean did not reflect an unwavering progressive faith.

The truth is more damning. The Imperial Valley is neither red nor blue. Instead, it is a place that feels betrayed by both parties.

Imperial County is the youngest county in California, forgotten in its southeast corner. We have long been treated like the runt of the litter, distancing ourselves from politics and known for having low voter turnouts.

* * * 

Lithium extraction in the northern part of the county, dubbed “Lithium Valley,” is supposed to help save us from our employment and economic woes and power the country’s clean energy transition. Yet local leaders have to fight desperately for support from the state and federal government.

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have designated “Lithium Valley” and all Imperial County surrounding the Salton Sea as the Southeast California Economic Region to better align state and federal support surrounding affected communities and clean energy development in the area. The same month, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy Loan Programs Office awarded $3 billion in grants for domestic battery production — not a single dollar of which made it to Imperial Valley.

* * *

This election is not a cautionary tale for the Democrats, nor a success story for Republicans. It is a warning to both.

The Imperial Valley is not a prize to be brandished after each election cycle. Our plight is not red or blue; it is human. This is our home, our community, and we have a future worth fighting for.

The author, Mr. Rebollar, represents the seven incorporated cities of Imperial County on the Southern California Assn. of Governments Regional Council.  Brawley's population is 27,849. 

On the occasion of Jimmy Carter's death, looking back at his truly rural attachments

On the occasion of his death, I'm re-upping here every mention of former President Jimmy Carter from Legal Ruralism.  I'll start however, by noting the comments of a Georgia Public Radio journalist on NPR shortly after Carter's death was announced.  The journalist contrasted Carter's rural Georgia upbringing with his progressive record on race rights--as if being progressive on race is not what you'd expect from a rural resident.  (I've looked for the direct quote, but I cannot find it). 

Here are some highlights, beginning with a few excerpts from Kai Bird's biography of Carter, The Outlier.  

Jimmy’s father, James Earl Carter Sr., had a tenth-grade education before dropping out to join the army. In 1903, when Earl was only 10 years old, his father, William Archibald Carter, was shot dead during a violent brawl with a business rival. They had been arguing over who was the rightful owner of a desk. Earl was certainly not country “white trash”—but neither was he part of the southern plantation aristocracy. By the late 1920’s, he made more than a comfortable living growing peanuts, corn, and cotton and drawing “rents” from his Black tenants. He managed to expand his farm acreage even during the boll weevil blight of the 1920’s, which wiped out many cotton farmers.

Jimmy Carter was apparently a fan of William Faulkner.  Here's a salient passage from page 20 of the Bird biography:   

More than most white southerners, the rural folk of South Georgia had defied assimilation and loyalty clung to their native culture as a matter of principle. They had their own vernacular and distinctive accent. And they had their own religion, and unvarnished, evangelical southern Protestantism that affirmed the supremacy of the white race in society and patriarchy at home.

Two generations had passed since the Civil War, but that conflagration continued to define their collective identity. “The past is never dead. It's not even past”—so says Gavin Stevens, a character in Faulkner's novel Requiem for a Nun.  Curtis Wilkie, a celebrated journalist from Mississippi who later covered the Carter administration, wrote in his memoirs, “We deliberately set ourselves apart from the rest of America during the Civil War and continue, to this day, to live as spiritual citizens of a nation that existed for only four years in another century.” The South had lost the Civil War but most if not all white southerners unashamedly celebrated what they revered as the “Lost Cause”. On the eve of the Civil War, Georgia was the South's leading slave state with some 462,000 slaves, or nearly 45% of the population. It was also the last southern state to rejoin the union, in July 1870. It was all about slavery. The South was preoccupied with a history heavily laden with questions about guilt, evil, and sin. History mattered to these Georgians.

There are more passages from Bird's book that use the words "rural," "country," "redneck," and such.  You can search for those words on the Kindle edition to learn more.  

Here's another post about Bird's writings on Carter, this on the occasion of Carter going into hospice nearly two years ago.  In it, I also discuss a NYT story by Rick Rojas which focuses on what Carter meant to Plains, Georgia:  In short, lots of tourists and thus economic development.  The excerpt leads, however, with what Plains was to Carter:   

The appeal of Plains, Mr. Carter has said, was its promise of the kind of humble, small-town existence he desired after the presidency. 

* * *  

As much as Mr. Carter wanted a semblance of a regular life, the result of his living in Plains turned it into no ordinary town. The signs marking town limits boast that Plains is home to the 39th president. The farm where he was raised just outside of town is a National Park. His modest house is surrounded by black security fencing and guard posts.

Other small towns in this part of Georgia, linked together in a constellation of country roads, have withered or have streets lined with fast-food joints and convenience stores. The center of Plains has a cafe and a row of gift shops that bustle with tourists.

Without Mr. Carter, “you wouldn’t have the downtown atmosphere that you have,” said Jeff Clements, an owner of the Buffalo Peanut Company, a commercial peanut sheller and seed treater that owns what was once the Carter family’s warehouse.

And here's a 2018 post about Carter, "the uncelebrity president."  This post includes data on the racial makeup of Sumter County, home of Plains.  It's majority Black, with about 6% Latino/a.  

And this post is based on a 2015 column by Nicholas Kristof.  In it, I query if Jimmy Carter can be rehabilitated without also rehabilitating the rural South. Note that I asked this question before the rise of Donald Trump, along with the crediting (or blaming) of rural America for that phenomenon.  

The reference to Carter in this 2023 post is less central; the post is more about responses to his policies--and from California, no less.  The next few posts are about Carter's historical significance, including in relation to presidential primaries.  

Rural-ish outreach by California Governor?

Mark Barabak in the Los Angeles Times today writes under the headline, "Newsom is acting more like a governor should. Will that boost his White House prospects?"  Here are the introductory blurbs, which both highlight "rural"of a sort:  

• Ever since the election, Gov. Gavin Newsom has made a concentrated effort to show up and deliver policies for red California.
• The move, as Democrats seek to rebuild their depleted rural support, can’t hurt if the governor decides to run for president in 2028.

And here's more, which reflects what I've been thinking about Newsom's latest moves:

Things changed after Nov. 5, following Donald Trump’s triumph and California’s notable shift toward the center-right on election day. Suddenly, Newsom started appearing in places such as Bakersfield, Redding and Colusa, among the ruddiest parts of red California.

It’s something the governor should have done a long time ago, rather than strutting and preening on the national stage. There are millions of Californians — politically outnumbered, geographically far-flung — who have long felt derided or ignored by Sacramento.

* * * 

And if he’s interested in really, truly running for president in 2028 — when the Democratic contest looks to be a wide-open affair — it’s not a bad place to start.

Barabak continues: 

In promotional materials, the governor’s office describes the program as a “bottom-up strategy for creating good-paying jobs and regional economic development.” The plan follows lengthy consultation with locals in 13 parts of the state and aims to streamline programs and spur economic growth through a series of tailor-made initiatives.

The unveiling in the red reaches of California was no accident.

With Trump’s victory, Democrats have begun to reckon ever more seriously with their diminished standing among union members and working-class voters and the party’s catastrophic collapse — decades in the making — across rural America. There’s a new urgency “to solve problems and meet people where they are,” as David McCuan, a Sonoma State political science professor and longtime student of state politics, put it.

In other words, if building bridges is in order, why not start with a bridge across the rural-urban divide.  Indeed, when this Barabak column came across my news feed this morning, it dovetailed with this blog post I'd already begun to write with a similar theme:  Newsom going rural--or at last, ruralish. Below is part of that draft:  

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently traveled to Redding, California to announce a new "career passport" initiative.  Here's coverage from the Los Angeles Times.

Initiatives to expand college and career education have drawn bipartisan support. State Assemblywoman Heather Hadwick (R-Grass Valley) appeared with Newsom on Monday, expressing excitement for more opportunities for youth in her rural community — some areas so remote that the nearest Costco is a three-hour drive away, she said.

Here's a compelling--but not surprising--data point from the new plan: 

California has one of the largest economic divides in the nation...with the top 10% of California earners making an average of $300,000 annually compared with the bottom 10% at $29,000 annually.

And here's a further quote from the plan: 

The economic divide underscores the imperative for a more coherent career education infrastructure. Degree attainment cannot be the only pathway to stable, well-paid work. Even though individuals with bachelor’s degrees earn significantly more over their lifetimes than those without, degrees are not a panacea, particularly in the absence of practical experience and social capital.

Prior to his visit to Redding, Newsom visited Fresno.  Admittedly, it's one of the state's largest cities, but it's also associated with conservative politics and rural California, to the extent that rural is equated with agricultural in the Golden State.  

Hakeem Jeffries mentions farmers (!) in comments announcing deal to fund the government

A bi-partisan deal to finance the federal government was finally agreed late today.  In his announcement of the deal, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York City (NY-8) mentioned--of all groups-- farmers.  Here's the quote:

House Democrats have successfully funded the government at levels requested by President Biden in order to meet the needs of the American people in terms of their health, safety and economic well-being. House Democrats have successfully fought for families, farmers, first responders and the future of working-class- Americans. House Democrats have successfully fought for $100 billion in disaster assistance in order to make sure that those everyday Americans whose lives have been turned upside down in terms of hurricanes, storms, tornadoes, wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events can get the assistance that they need to address the problems they’ve been confronting. House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working-class Americans all across the land.

He then asserts that Democrats' rejection of a GOP proposal to suspend the debt ceiling would undermine Republican efforts to cut Social Security, Medicare, and nutritional assistance programs.  Thus, the reason Jeffries mentions families and the working class is clear.  Presumably Jeffries mentions first-responders in relation to the disaster assistance funds.  

But why does Jeffries name farmers in particular?   Probably because the government-funding deal included $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers and extended the farm bill, which expired in September, 2024, till September 2025. 

In any event, it's nice to hear the uber-urban Jeffries mention farmers--to call them out as if they matter--even as he is (in the accompanying photo) flanked by his urban deputies Katherine Clark, the Democratic House Whip from greater Boston, and Pete Aguilar, Democratic Caucus Chair from Greater San Bernardino, California.  

On whether Trump's policies will hurt rural America and ultimately cost him rural support

Ronald Brownstein wrote yesterday in The Atlantic under the headline, "Trump Is About to Betray His Rural Supporters."  Of course, it's conceivable that the journalist is wrong--that Trump won't be bad for rural people and places.  That said, Brownstein does bring the receipts regarding specific policies on trade (as relates to agriculture), immigration, health care, and education.  Here's the key paragraph in that regard: 

Agricultural producers could face worse losses than any other economic sector from Trump’s plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports and to undertakewhat he frequently has called “the largest domestic deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants “in American history.” Hospitals and other health providers in rural areas could face the greatest strain from proposals Trump has embraced to slash spending on Medicaid, which provides coverage to a greater share of adults in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas. And small-town public schools would likely be destabilized even more than urban school districts if Trump succeeds in his pledge to expand “school choice” by providing parents with vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

Brownstein later unpacks and provides more information on each of these issues.  In addition, He provides data on how Trump's support from rural voters has grown with each of the three times he ran for president:  

Trump’s vote share in the nonmetro areas exceeded even his commanding 66 percent there against Joe Biden in 2020 and 67 percent against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump’s advantage in the small metros outstripped his margin over Biden and equaled his advantage over Clinton.

The story also includes data on other geographies, including small metropolitan areas [here citing The Daily Yonder]:  

In the second most-rural grouping, small metropolitan areas, Trump won 60 percent of the vote compared with Vice President Kamala Harris’s 40 percent. In the top most-rural category, nonmetropolitan areas, Trump beat Harris even more resoundingly, by 69 percent to 31 percent.

Arkansas bureaucrat (essentially) calls state's rural residents "white trash"

In early November, the State of Arkansas announced the purchase of 815 acres in rural Franklin County where the Department of Corrections intends to build a 3000-bed prison.  The state government did not consult with people in the region about the decision when the land was being purchased and the project planned.  My understanding is that they announced it after the land deal was done.  

Since then, local opposition has arisen, most prominently from an organization called the Franklin County and River Valley Coalition (Franklin County straddles the Arkansas River).  That organization's Freedom of Information Act requests surfaced offensive emails from Jonathan Duran, Deputy Director of the Arkansas Geographic Information Systems office, a division of the Arkansas Department of Transformation and Shared Services.  Some prior coverage of the controversy is here and here. 

Below are some excerpts from today's coverage of the matter in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, beginning with more back story on the emails:  Duran  emailed his boss a "'white trash' clip from the satirical animated TV show "South Park..

With the subject line "Franklin County town hall meeting," the first email from Duran states: "Do you think a possible townhall meeting in Franklin County about the proposed state prison might go a little like this?"

Below that in the email is a link to YouTube to a segment from "South Park" titled "They Took Our Jobs!"

* * * 

One of the characters is labeled "pissed off white trash redneck conservative." The cartoon characters in the clip repeatedly chant, "They took our jobs!"

Below the link Duran provided in the Oct. 31 email to Johnson [his boss], Duran typed: "They took our land!"

Yesterday, the River Valley coalition released a second email from Duran.  It says, "Do y'all feel like spy plane pilots now?" A smiling face emoji with a wink is inserted at that point.   "Is that an outhouse or an old refrigerator to the right of the house in the drone pic?" 

The coalition commented: 

His email was intended to mock and belittle the hardworking, law-abiding citizens Duran serves, undermining the integrity of public service in Arkansas. Such a comparison is a gross disrespect to the people he represents.

The coalition is calling for Duran to be terminated because what he said "disrespects rural Arkansas."  Their statement read: 

A simple apology or reassignment will not suffice. Duran's behavior demands more decisive action: the complete removal of Jonathan Duran from his position.  We call on Governor Sarah Sanders to take immediate action to uphold the values of professionalism, respect, and fairness within Arkansas' leadership.

The coalition's attorney declared,"The people of Franklin County and the River Valley deserve public servants who treat them with dignity and respect."  I could not agree more.  

I looked up Mr. Duran, and I see he proudly claims his status as a native of Arkansas, and with a degree from the University of Arkansas at Monticello, he may be from rural Arkansas himself.   That makes it even more disappointing, in some ways, that he's now the city boy ridiculing his country cousins. 

It will be interesting to see where all of this goes--both the prison siting and the State of Arkansas bureaucrat ridiculing rural folks--given Governor Sanders' popularity with rural voters--at least up until now.   

Here is a link to the Arkansas Times coverage of these events, including information on the land purchase being concealed until it was a done deal.  And here is Arkansas Democrat-Gazette coverage from on December 12, revealing that most of the locations the state considered were in Western Arkansas--and several were metropolitan by some measure, including a number in greater Fort Smith, on the Oklahoma state line.  Here's the "short list"; note that the Alma sites are in Crawford County, which has a population of just over 60,000, but is part of the Fort Smith metropolitan area:  

* Alma -- ball field;

* Alma -- train tracks;
* Alma -- south of ball field;
* Clarksville [Johnson County];
* Fort Smith -- end of airport/industrial park;
* Fort Smith -- Stephens;
* Fort Smith -- Treece;
* Greenwood -- Holland Farm 2;
* Huntington -- Holland Farm;
* Mansfield;
* Menifee -- ruled out due to water availability;
* Mulberry; and
* Rudy

The story also notes the search criteria for a site:  

* Minimum of 250-300 contiguous acres, relatively flat and not in a floodplain;
* Not within 60 miles of an existing state Department of Corrections facility (to avoid workforce cannibalization);
* Available regional workforce based on commute times;
* Availability of primary infrastructure (water, electric, feasibility of wastewater treatment, etc.); and
* Proximity to emergency services and medical facilities.

The document states that the Franklin County site "meets or exceeds our search criteria."  However, "[a]ccording to the site assessment, research and the whittling down of an initial 25,000 'candidate parcels', 6000 were within "[two] miles of a U.S. or Interstate Highway."  The Franklin County site ultimately chosen is 22 miles from the nearest Interstate, which is I-40, via the city of Ozark. 

Location, Location, Location Revisited: More Needs to be Done

For this post, I am going to revisit a post I made seven years ago in which I discussed the role that law schools can play in alleviating the rural lawyer shortage. While academia has made some progress, namely in the establishment of rural legal clinics, it has not tackled the problem in a way that could lead to meaningful change. 

Many of the underlying statistics from seven years ago are still true. Data from the Occupational Employment Statistics within the Bureau of Labor Statistics still bears out that the rural lawyer shortage is practically universal around the country. As it was in 2017, Southwestern Montana is an exception. There is one additional exception, the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. As with last time, I am measuring the shortage by location quotient, which provides a good approximation of an area's employment in a given sector compared to the national average. The Location Quotient controls for population so you can do a direct comparison between rural and urban employment. 

While the media has spoken a lot about people migrating to rural communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, this migration has not been even. An analysis from The Daily Yonder suggests that rural communities whose economies depend on recreation saw the greatest increase from this migration. While rural America continues to grow after the pandemic, a further analysis from The Daily Yonder shows that between 2023-2024, population growth was concentrated in rural counties that border metropolitan areas. Neither of these developments are particularly helpful to the vast majority of rural counties. 

One huge difference that I have seen in the last decade that I have been writing about this issue is an increase in general awareness. Some states are actually offering incentives to practice in rural spaces and law schools are increasingly offering rural practice clinics or similar such opportunities. A report to the Maine Legislature in January 2024 quantified the impact of the University of Maine's Rural Practice Clinic in Fort Kent, in the remote northern part of the state. These opportunities are important and do help tremendously. However, the students are only there for a portion of their law school experience, often as little as a semester. The jury is still out as to whether or not these types of programs actually increase the number of lawyers who opt to live and work in rural spaces. 

I have long advocated for the establishment of law schools in rural communities so students can spend three years immersed in a rural space, learn what it means to be part of a rural community, and have more time to extern in the small practices and/or local governments that dot the rural landscape. 

The Current Landscape

In the past seven years, there has not been a single rural law school established. However, there also hasn't been a rural law school closure. So, we have kind of been stuck with the status quo over the past few years. By my count, there are 11 ABA Accredited law schools located outside of metropolitan areas, though some of these are in larger college towns: 

• Appalachian School of Law (Grundy, VA)
• Ohio Northern University (Ada, OH)
• Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA)
• Penn State Dickinson Law (Carlisle, PA)
• University of Idaho (Moscow, ID)
• University of Mississippi (Oxford, MS) 
• University of New Hampshire (Concord, NH)
• University of South Dakota (Vermillion, SD)
• University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY)
• Vermont Law and Graduate School (South Royalton, VT)
• Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA)

There are 198 fully accredited ABA law schools so roughly 5% are located outside of metropolitan areas. There are some law schools in areas that might be considered more remote - Cornell University in Ithaca, New York is a good example. Students at those schools would have more opportunities to be exposed to small town practice than a student in a major metropolitan area. However, these areas are still metropolitan areas and job centers in their own right. 

Exposure, Exposure, Exposure

I still believe many of my original points from 2017 - there is no better way to expose students to the issues facing rural communities than prolonged exposure. Becoming immersed in a community for multiple years is the best way to understand its problems. As I said then, even if a student does not remain in the rural community after law school, they still leave with a greater understanding of the challenges that the legal profession faces in those spaces. They can become advocates for actually addressing the problem. 

Law Schools Are Needed in Rural Spaces

If you've been online long enough, you have read the line that we have too many law schools. I'm not sure I agree, and my reasons are the same that they were seven years ago. We have too many law schools in metropolitan areas and too few law schools in small towns and rural communities. We need more law schools in small towns and rural communities. 

What should this look like? A scan of the schools listed above shows a potential solution. Only two of the schools, Vermont and Appalachian, are private standalone schools without a parent university. And both have experienced financial issues within the last decade. In response, Vermont Law decided to reinvent itself by offering master's degrees in areas such as public policy and becoming a "law and graduate school." As I did seven years ago, I believe that schools like Appalachian and Vermont play a key role in the solving the rural lawyer shortage. 

But there is stability in the backing of a major university system, and I believe that the path forward is for state university systems to leverage their resources and state backing to put law schools on their rural campuses. This would provide a financial shelter that a standalone school would not have, and it would provide stability for the students who opt to attend these schools.

I'll use my home state of North Carolina as an example of how this could look. North Carolina has one of the most expansive university systems in the country with every public university being considered a part of the University of North Carolina system. In total, there are 17 campuses with four located outside of metropolitan area: 

• Appalachian State University (in Boone)
• Elizabeth City State University 
• University of North Carolina at Pembroke
• Western Carolina University (in Cullowhee)

The idea of establishing a new graduate school on one (or more) of these campuses would not be without recent precedent. Just this year, UNC Pembroke established a Doctor of Optometry program in order to alleviate the rural medical provider shortage.

A law school on any of these campuses would address the access to justice issue in a historically impoverished portion of the state. Appalachian and Western Carolina serve Appalachia while Elizabeth City State and UNC Pembroke serve Eastern North Carolina. A law school on a small rural campus also allows for specialization in rural lawyering. Unlike a law school on a flagship state university campus, it won't necessarily attract students who are looking for urban opportunities. A smaller, most focused school should yield the best results for both the students and local community. 

The Raging Current 

But it would be naive to assume that establishing a new rural institution isn't swimming against an already roaring current. 

There is an epidemic of closures and mergers of small rural institutions over the last several years. In 2023, the Hechinger Report estimates that at least a dozen rural, non-profit institutions had closed or announced plans to close since 2020.  In Vermont (a majority rural state with one small metro area), there have been five non-profit college closures since 2019. Keeping a small rural school afloat is becoming a gargantuan task. 

But the closures and mergers aren't just limited to private schools. Public universities are also closing and merging. You can look at Vermont to see a spate of mergers that ultimately involved four public colleges becoming one. In 2018, publicly funded Lyndon State University merged with Johnson State University to form Northern Vermont University. In 2023, two more rural colleges, Castleton State University and Vermont Technical College merged with Northern Vermont University to form Vermont State University.

Even the schools that are staying open are cutting majors and ultimately opportunities. Dr. Pruitt posted about this issue a couple of weeks ago. Her post linked to a story that discussed the struggles of a student at Delta State University, a public university in rural Mississippi, who saw her planned major cut. The story discussed majors being cut at rural public universities in places as far flung as New York, Minnesota, North Carolina, Alaska, and Arkansas.

Rural education is in trouble and convincing lawmakers to invest further is going to be a challenge. I did provide an example above of a rural public university investing in graduate education so it's not impossible.

Conclusion

To successfully solve the rural lawyer shortage, it is essential that lawmakers realize the value of investing in a public rural law school. These schools not making money should not be seen as detriment but rather a key investment. 

A public rural law school would ensure that students are exposed to rural issues for all three years of their education, and a small public rural law school provides an opportunity to further specialize in small town practice and attract students who are interested in (or at least open to) the idea of small-town practice. 

Frisch reflects on his losses in Colorado's 3d Congressional district

Adam Frisch is the former Aspen City Council Member who nearly unseated Lauren Bobert in 2022.  In 2024, he lost to a more boring Republican by 5 points.   Here, Frish reflects to Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post on what he learned from all the 77,000 miles he drove across 27 counties talking to voters.  A quote focusing on Frisch's reflections follows: 

[To Frisch], the story of this election can be told in the people he met. Farmers and ranchers. Small towns in southern Colorado with predominantly Latino populations — some newly arrived and some who have been there for nine generations.

One person who stands out in his memory, he told me, was an electrician in northwestern Colorado, the hub of the state’s natural gas industry. The man, who was in his mid-60s, was working at a hotel, making about $18 an hour — a drastic cut from the $62 an hour he had been earning in the gas fields, where employment has been declining in part because of government-driven efforts to transition to clean energy.

But it was not just the financial hit that bothered him, Frisch said. He also resented what he felt was liberal animosity toward the very nature of his work in the fossil fuel industry.

Of voters like him, “I get asked all the time … ‘Why did they keep on voting against their interests?’ And what I think people mean is ‘Why do non-college-educated, working-class people, why did they vote for people that don’t have their economic back?’” Frisch said. “And I’m like, ‘As important as pocketbook issues are, pride and dignity will trump pocketbook issues all day long.’”

The story also includes some data on the history of Democratic losses in rural counties. Bottom line: it's been worsening over the decades.

Some rural voters resist school choice, prioritizing rural schools

Boone County, Iowa, October 19, 2024
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

The Wall Street Journal reported this week under the headline "Trump’s School-Choice Agenda Hits 

Pushback From Red-State Voters."  The gist of it is that some voters in "red states"--often thought of as synonymous with rurality--voted against school choice measures even as they supported Trump and his agenda, which includes "school choice."  Here's an excerpt from Matt Barnum's story: 

President-elect Donald Trump has made school choice a core tenet of his plan to remake education—but it isn’t clear his voters are on board.

Trump has indicated that he supports public funding of private schools and other options outside traditional school districts. “We will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want,” Trump said in a campaign video. “It’s called school choice.”

Yet school-choice ballot measures lost in three states in the November election, including in two that went strongly for Trump, Kentucky and Nebraska. The results suggest a divide between Republican lawmakers and voters, many of whom have said in opinion surveys that they are generally dissatisfied with what they view as a “woke” agenda in public education but still like their own children’s local schools. 

To school-choice supporters—which include some parents, Republican politicians and conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation—subsidizing private or other options outside traditional school districts gives parents more say in their children’s education. Teachers unions, Democrats and some public-school parents say that giving families money to go elsewhere drains needed resources from public schools.

About a dozen prior posts linking so-called school choice to the well-being of rural schools--written over the course of more than a decade, are here.