Deborah Harris joined MLRI as Staff Attorney in the Benefits Practice Group in 1990 and is currently the Sr. Staff Attorney for the Benefits team. She specializes in cash assistance and other public benefits issues and the intersection of public benefits and child support. From 1976 to 1990 she was a staff attorney at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. Deborah has led legislative campaigns that have brought tens of millions of dollars to very low-income families and their communities. These included repealing the state welfare family cap rule that barred benefits for children conceived while the parent received assistance and raising cash assistance grants after a twenty-year freeze. Her work at MLRI has also encompassed numerous successful challenges to federal and state rules denying benefits, services, and jobs to low-income people. For example, she was lead counsel in MLRI’s lawsuit that stopped the state from using stale and erroneous wage records to terminate SNAP benefits and ordered the state to pay $9.4 million in SNAP to 17,000 households who were illegally terminated. In addition to many analyses and articles on welfare and child support issues, she is the author, together with other MLRI and legal services advocates, of the TAFDC Advocacy Guide. Deborah is a nationally-recognized expert in public benefits legal and policy matters and has won numerous awards.