Children at a New Orleans elementary school are subjected to unlawful seizures and arrests – including handcuffing and shackling – for minor violations of school rules, according to a SPLC lawsuit filed on behalf of a 6-year-old boy who was brutally handcuffed and shackled to a chair by a school security officer.
An SPLC attorney whose work has helped bring profound changes to Mississippi's juvenile justice system has been recognized for her remarkable public interest achievements.
Mississippi's mental health system is failing children from low-income households. The state fails to invest in community-based services and instead pumps the bulk of its resources into ineffective, expensive institutions. Parents are often forced to choose between hospitalizing their children or foregoing mental health services altogether.
The SPLC Mississippi Youth Justice Project and other civil rights and mental health advocates sued the state of Mississippi today in an effort to improve the state's mental health system for children, which fails to invest in community-based services and instead pumps the bulk of its resources into ineffective, expensive institutions.
After a drastic decline in civil rights enforcement by the U.S. Justice Department over much of the past decade, President Obama's declaration during the State of the Union Address that his administration is "once again prosecuting civil rights violations" is a promising sign.
An Alabama student's school never evaluated him for special education services, even though his teachers and principals knew that he suffered from severe behavioral problems and that he lagged behind in his studies.
The Southern Poverty Law Center today sued a Mississippi school district for violating the constitutional rights and derailing the promising academic and athletic career of a high school student over a tossed penny on a school bus.
Hinds County School District officials violated the constitutional rights of a 10th–grader who was expelled for throwing a penny that landed on his school bus driver. The expulsion and subsequent assignment to an alternative school threatens to derail the academic and athletic career of the 16-year-old boy, a good student who dreamed of a collegiate basketball scholarship.
Schools struggling with student dropouts and discipline problems have an opportunity to tackle those issues with innovative programs funded by federal grant money, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Dignity in Schools Campaign said today.