Are equal protection guarantees under attack by the Lee County Clerk of Court efile rules?

On April fools day 2013 Pro Se litigants in Lee county Florida were dealt an unfriendly hand by which some legal scholars would charge as unconstitutional. The

constitutional issue at hand is equal access to the law as provided by the 14th amendment to the Constitution. The new mandatory Lee Clerk efile rules only apply to attorneys and not Pro Se litigants. Under the new rules the following harsh realities are realized by the already overburdened and disenfranchised. Smiling attorneys rejoice as they sit back in their easy chair and submit case documents and motions with a click of a mouse. Heres the new reality imposed by the Lee County Clerk on residents who are fighting to keep their home. 1. Pro Se litigants cannot efile motions on the Lee County Clerks eportal. 2. Pro se litigants must file paper copies which either means traveling to the post office (whichever location that is lucky enough to still be open) to pay and mail them or to travel to the Clerks office in downtown Fort Myers. The attorneys (usually Plaintiffs attorneys) do not have to pay these extra gas and postage fees. 3. Attorneys DO NOT have to file paper copies.

4. Attorneys do not have to spend a day traveling to and from court to file paper copies. Lower gas bill and time and effort are less encumbering. 5. Pro Se litigants have to spend a day traveling to and from court to file paper copies. Higher gas bill and time away from work and children. Pro Se litigants work without reimbursement and are more encumbered by having to travel unnecessarily. Lets make no mistake and lets be perfectly clear; Anyone who spends time in court or has had time to research how things work in the 20th circuit knows that the majority of residential foreclosure defendants have been thrown to the curb in more ways than one and usually have to try and ward off the attack on their own without an attorney (Pro Se), we also know that well over 90% of the Plaintiffs in residential foreclosure litigation have myriads of revolving attorneys and stand ins (available when the real attorney fails to appear) working the case for banks that have proven to be as or less popular than congress. The questions arising from this research are;

1. Will the Lee County Clerk provide equal access to the courts and apologize for this harmful and prejudicial exclusionary rule? 2. Didnt the Lee Clerk realize when it decided to deny Pro Se litigants the same access to efiling that it was providing a much more favorable and comfortable position to the Plaintiff? 3. Is the notion of an even playing field something of the past?

In Summary, The Lee Clerks efile eportal mechanism that offers more efficient access to attorneys while simultaneously denying the already overburdened Pro Se litigant are exclusionary in nature and tend to disenfranchise the poorer litigant. Point of contention #2 It has also come to the attention of Lee County residents that to access and view the actual PDF/TIF documents filed in their cases they either have to Pay $105.00 quarterly or $300.00 annually to access online documents that bear their own name. The already

overburdened Pro Se litigant and any other person who wants to view documents regarding the largest transaction in people lives is hidden until the ransom is paid. The answer may be either; 1. We need to help pay for the infrastructure, upkeep, and IT costs associated with this separate system. This excuse has already been debunked and been shown nationally that the figures are 8 to 10 times higher than what it would actually costs to maintain such systems. The real story may be that of a sacred cash cow at the dangerous cost in denying free access to a public database. If it is a privately run database it should stated clearly on the Lee Clerks website as such. 2. The information is privileged. This is also false. The Lee Clerk represents the people of Lee County and for them to deny online access to court filings is for them to say, Tax payers pay the clerk to keep property records and litigation documents used to take property away from homeowners, yet to access them you must either pay up or physically travel to the city of Fort Myers to the clerks record office

during business hours only and pay $1.00 per sheet. The questions that arise are; 1. Why arent all the costs for services totaled and included in the Lee Clerks budget to allow free and fair access to all that seek access? 2. Why has this pay wall been erected and how can it be justified in an age with so many Pro Se litigants? 3. Who stands to benefit most from this privatized pay wall scheme and who stands to lose more often? 4. Where does this pay wall money go? 5. Is it true that the Lee Clerks financial situation is so dire that to allow such access would eliminate the reason to maintain this particularly delightful cash cow? 6. Does the cash cows intake color the decision to disallow free and fair access to court records? The answer is simple; free and fair access for all. If this government is actually of, by and for the people, the withheld public information stored with public money in a public building should be publicly available, period.

Another perfect idea would be to use part of the Florida Attorney Generals bank settlement funds to open access to the database for everyone free of charge. Homeowners certainly arent getting those dollars, even though that was who the money was supposed to be for. When will the ongoing damage toward homeowners be reversed? Does the clerk even care?