A growing number of jobless Americans are filing lawsuits against their respective states seeking to restore a pandemic relief program that paid out an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits and some are winning.
Judges in Maryland and Indiana have ruled the two states must resume paying the extra jobless aid that had been halted earlier this year until the lawsuits are resolved. The rulings mean that roughly 500,000 unemployed workers in those states should see a continuance of their benefits, according to an estimate from the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
Maryland and Indiana are among a group of 26 states, all but one led by Republican governors, prematurely ending one of three federal unemployment programs that provided jobless workers with an extra $300 a week, on top of their regular state benefits, and extended eligibility for contract workers as well as those who had exhausted their regular state benefits.
Unemployed residents in Indiana were the first to take legal action in an attempt to block the state’s push to end pandemic unemployment benefit programs; in mid-June, two nonprofit groups sued Gov.
