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Press Release

Undocumented women who are feeding the country with their labor routinely endure sexual harassment, wage theft and other abuses, according to a new report released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Jackson, MS civil rights attorney Robert B. McDuff today filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the for-profit operators of Mississippi's Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility (WGYCF), charging that the children there are forced to live in barbaric and unconstitutional conditions and are subjected to excessive uses of force by prison staff. 

Tuscarora Yarns Inc. of Mt. Pleasant, N.C. will enforce an improved sexual harassment policy as the result of a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on behalf of a Latina factory worker who was sexually assaulted and brutalized by the plant manager after she had earlier reported his sexual harassment to officials at the company.

The Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD) will make important policy revisions that will protect New Orleans students from abusive restraints, handcuffing and shackling. These reforms result from a settlement reached in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) took aim at anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) bullying Tuesday with a free community screening of its new film, Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case that Made History, at the historic Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.

Amid reports of teen suicides related to bullying, students at more than 2,800 schools across the country are taking a stand to make their schools more welcoming places by participating in the ninth annual “Mix It Up at Lunch Day” on Tuesday, Nov. 9.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL), the Community Justice section of the Loyola Law Clinic in New Orleans, and the Southern Disability Law Center filed a federal civil rights lawsuit today against the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) on behalf of all New Orleans students with special needs. The lawsuit details LDE’s systemic failures to ensure that students with disabilities have equal access to educational services and are protected from discrimination.

Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case that Made History premiered in Washington, D.C. at an event that highlighted the destructive power and the tragic consequences of anti-gay bullying.

Middle schools across the country are suspending children with alarming frequency, particularly in some large urban school districts, where numerous schools suspend a third or more of their black male students in a given year, according to a new study by education researchers Daniel J. Losen and Russell Skiba, and published today by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

In a lawsuit backed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a federal jury has found that imprisoned neo-Nazi leader Bill White and his now-defunct organization must pay $545,000 for racial slurs and threats directed against five black women.