For the better part of seven years now, Kansas attorney Kris Kobach has been urging municipalities and states to pass the draconian laws he writes that are aimed at so badly punishing undocumented immigrants that they will “self-deport.” Even as governments went into debt to pay his fees and the cost of defending his dubious statutes, Kobach insisted that if they hung tough, they would win in the end.
Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is a blow to Arizona’s anti-immigrant law and similar copycat laws that have sprung up in other states. The court’s decision affirms that much about these laws is unconstitutional because many of their provisions are preempted by federal law. The decision also shows the court has significant concerns about the one provision they allowed to stand.
With chronic budget shortfalls, dangerously overcrowded prisons and the nation’s biggest municipal bankruptcy filing, folks here in Alabama have a lot on our minds. But at least we can cross one worry off the list: Thanks to a new and little-noticed state law, our property cannot be confiscated by the United Nations – not, at least, without due process.
Activists and academics from Latin America are gathered at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., for an intensive, week-long conference to share strategies for fighting racism and discrimination.
The Southern Poverty Law Center asked a federal court late yesterday to block efforts by House Republicans to further delay a decorated 12-year U.S. Army veteran in a legal same-sex marriage from seeking the same benefits provided to other married veterans and their spouses.
The Southern Poverty Law Center announced today that Alabama’s Jefferson County Board of Education abolished its unlawful policy banning male students from wearing earrings – a policy that discriminated on the basis of sex and violated students’ free-speech rights.
Mary Bauer, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the Obama administration’s announcement Friday to delay deporting young immigrants is a positive step, but against a backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment and harsh laws in many states, much more remains to be done.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies asked the Tennessee Supreme Court today to block an agreement between Nashville and federal authorities that violates state and local laws by allowing the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office to enforce immigra¬tion law.
School officials in Savannah, Tenn., in response to a letter from the Southern Poverty Law Center, have recognized the right of students to express acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students, including the right to display slogans and symbols expressing such acceptance.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and Advocates for Children’s Services filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against North Carolina’s Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) for discriminating against Latino students with Spanish-speaking parents.
