Since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented 75 domestic terrorist plots, most of which involved individuals with extreme antigovernment views. One of the plots, if carried out, would have resulted in the deaths of some 30,000 people.
In a victory for migrant workers, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled today in an SPLC case that a Haitian immigrant injured in company-provided housing is entitled to compensation for his injuries and lost wages.
Frantz Pierre, a migrant farmworker from Haiti, was denied compensation by the South Carolina Worker’s Compensation Commission after falling and breaking his right ankle outside company housing. He had just arrived at the 400-acre tomato farm owned by Seaside Farms on St. Helena Island when he slipped on a wet sidewalk outside the workers’ barrack-like dormitory. After the Southern Poverty Law Center took legal action on Pierre’s behalf, the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed Pierre's right to compensation and sent the case back to the lower court.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed suit against the town of Homer, La., and two of its former police officers on behalf of the family of an elderly black man who was shot to death by one of the officers while standing harmlessly on his front porch.
In one of the largest settlements of its kind, an Arkansas forestry company has agreed to pay $2.75 million to settle the legal claims of foreign guestworkers who say they were cheated out of the wages they earned planting trees for the company.