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<p>HARRISBURG &#8212; The ACLU has dropped a suit against Luzerne County, bringing an end to litigation that began in 2012 over what the organization portrayed as unfair practices in the county&#8217;s public defender&#8217;s office.</p><p>The announcement came in a press release sent out by the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday afternoon. The suit was originally brought by attorney Al Flora, who was chief public defender in 2012, against both the county and its then-manager, Robert Lawton.</p><p>According to Flora&#8217;s original suit, the county&#8217;s public defender&#8217;s office was, in the early 2010s, struggling with limited resources and &#8220;climbing caseloads.&#8221; Several attorneys left the office due to the caseloads, and a hiring freeze in 2012 prevented those lawyers from being replaced.</p><p>This eventually led to the public defender&#8217;s office turning away clients with minor charges in an attempt to keep caseloads down.</p><p>Flora was fired by Lawton in 2013, the year after his suit was filed, which, on appeal, eventually led to Flora being removed from the case as the main plaintiff.</p><p>This, the ACLU said, was one of the chief reasons for the dropping of the suit.</p><p>&#8220;The ACLU always weighs the costs of proceeding with a lawsuit against the benefits of encouraging the government to voluntarily address violations of citizens&#8217; rights,&#8221; said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, in a statement. &#8220;In this case, once Al Flora was no longer chief public defender, and, as a result, dismissed by the courts as a named plaintiff in the case, the litigation faced additional challenges.&#8221;</p><p>Additionally, Shuford wrote, the county&#8217;s public defender office had made &#8220;good faith efforts&#8221; to improve working conditions. The statement from the ACLU says the office has increased staff, with both more attorneys and more support staff, under the latest county administration.</p><p>&#8220;We weighed continuing to pursue the litigation against what we perceived as good faith efforts on the part of the county government to improve the public defender office&#8217;s operations and decided to build on the progress that has been achieved by engaging in cooperative efforts with the county,&#8221; Shuford wrote.</p><p>Despite this, though, the ACLU says there is more work to be done, but this is partially the responsibility of the state.</p><p>Pennsylvania is the only state, the ACLU says, that requires the counties to pay the full cost of public defense without any state funding. The ACLU claims that this leads to excessive caseloads in nearly every Pennsylvania county, and the ACLU hopes Luzerne County will join it in pushing for state funding of public defense.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Flora </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/web1_flora.jpg</photo0><caption0>Flora </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Patrick Kernan</p><p>pkernan@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Patrick Kernan at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter @PatKernan</p></shirttailMeta></div>

ACLU drops suit against county over public defender office