WHEN NOT RAPPING, Kevin De Liban is the Director of Advocacy at Legal Aid of Arkansas, nurturing multi-dimensional efforts to improve the lives of low-income Arkansans in matters of health, workers' rights, safety net benefits, housing, consumer rights, and domestic violence. With Legal Aid, he has led a successful litigation campaign in federal and state courts challenging Arkansas's use of an algorithm to cut vital Medicaid home-care benefits to individuals who have disabilities or are elderly. In addition, he and Legal Aid of Arkansas, along with the National Health Law Program and Southern Poverty Law Center, successfully challenged Medicaid work requirements in federal court, ending the state's unlawful use of red-tape that stripped health insurance from over 18,000 people. Kevin regularly presents about imposing accountability on artificial intelligence and algorithms and was a featured speaker at the 2018 AI Now Symposium with other leading technologists, academics, and advocates. In 2019, Kevin received the Emerging Leader award from the national community of legal aid lawyers and public defenders. His work has appeared on or in the PBS Newshour, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, the Economist, the Verge, Flash Forward, and other publications and podcasts.
CASES AND ISSUES: Kevin has also undertaken a variety of campaigns and cases to support workers’ rights (including stopping wage theft and discrimination), access to safety net benefits (including Medicaid, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and SNAP), kids’ rights to special education, and the rights of domestic violence survivors. Here are some example cases:
Federal Court
Disability Rights, Institutionalization, and Government Accountability—3:19-CV-155 (E.D. Ark.): Lawsuit against the state Medicaid agency for depriving elderly clients with disabilities of key Medicaid in-home care services. This lawsuit is attempting to break through the state employees’ “qualified immunity” to hold them individually liable for violating the plaintiffs’ due process rights. We prevailed against the state’s efforts to dismiss the lawsuit. The state has appealed, and the case is now pending before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (Case No. 21-1826).
Anti-Immigrant Discrimination and Language Access—5:20-CV-5221 (W.D. Ark.): Lawsuit against the state unemployment agency for discriminating against a Spanish-speaking immigrant and making her wait over a year for a decision about her benefits. The case is still ongoing.
Health Care—1:18-CV-1900 (D.D.C.) (opinions available at 363 F. Supp. 3d 165, 171 (D.D.C. 2019) and 950 F.3d 93 (D.C. Cir. 2020): Lawsuit undertaken by several partnering organizations against the federal government to stop so-called “work requirements” on Medicaid recipients. Prior to the successful litigation, 18,000 low-income Arkansans lost health insurance in only 5 months. The lawsuit has saved tens of thousands more people from losing health insurance.
Algorithmic Justice—3:16-cv-119 (E.D. Ark.): Successful lawsuit against the state Medicaid agency for using an algorithm to deprive elderly clients with disabilities of key Medicaid in-home care services. As a result of the victory, over 1,000 people got to keep in-home care.
State Court
Unemployment Benefits—No. CV-21-4507 (Pulaski County Circuit Court): Lawsuit to restore federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits to 70,000 people whose benefits were prematurely cut by state government. After the plaintiffs won preliminary injunctive relief, the governor and legislature convened a special legislative session to change the law forming the basis of the lawsuit. The plaintiffs are now challenging the constitutionality of the new law.
Algorithmic Justice—No. CV-17-183 (Pulaski County Circuit Court) (Arkansas Supreme Court opinion available at 2017 Ark. 308): Lawsuit to invalidate an algorithm the state implemented to cut Medicaid in-home care services to people who were elderly or had disabilities. After winning preliminary injunctive relief, we won on summary judgment and invalidated the algorithm entirely. As a result, the state moved away from that algorithm-based system.
***NOTE***: This site is run by Kevin in his personal capacity, not as an employee of Legal Aid of Arkansas. Kevin cannot provide legal advice. Kevin does not accept private clients. If you need legal assistance, please contact a local attorney. If you do not have enough money to hire an attorney, you can contact your local legal aid organization to apply for services. Look here: https://www.lsc.gov/grants-grantee-resources/our-grantees