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Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

October 13, 2023

Content warning: The following case summary contains graphic descriptions of a mother almost dying during childbirth.

Ashley Caswell filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in Alabama after her constitutional rights were violated when a notorious county jail restricted her...

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

July 31, 2023

After Alabama’s attorney general threatened to criminalize people helping pregnant Alabamians access legal abortion care in other states, The Lawyering Project, joined by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the attorney general from making good on his threat...

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

May 15, 2020

After the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) failed to adequately respond to public records requests by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC sued the department for the documents outlining the prison system’s policies for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic in its facilities. The lawsuit...

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

January 23, 2020

Willie Nash was sentenced to a 12-year prison sentence for bringing a cell phone into a county jail. After the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed Nash’s sentence, the SPLC filed a motion on behalf of Nash, urging the court to rehear his case and arguing that the sentence is a violation of the...

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

September 19, 2019

Children tried and convicted as adults for sex offenses in Alabama are subject to the state’s Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act, which imposes a lifetime obligation to register as a sex offender. The SPLC filed a lawsuit on behalf of plaintiffs who as children were tried...

Criminal Justice Reform

Date Filed

September 05, 2019

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) places hundreds of children in solitary confinement on any given day. The SPLC, Florida Legal Services and the Florida Justice Institute filed a federal class action lawsuit to end the use of solitary confinement in the state’s juvenile detention...

Criminal Justice Reform
Immigrant Justice
Active Case

Date Filed

August 19, 2019

Tens of thousands of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were denied adequate health care and disability accommodations while being held in 158 immigrant prisons across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a federal class action...

Criminal Justice Reform

Date Filed

May 08, 2019

The SPLC and its allies filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging Florida’s use of solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

The lawsuit...

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

February 20, 2019

The city of New Orleans operates a sophisticated video surveillance system throughout town. While city employees frequently provide police and prosecutors with video footage to aid criminal cases, the city will not even provide a simple map of the camera locations to aid attorneys representing...

Criminal Justice Reform

Date Filed

April 19, 2018

The SPLC filed a petition seeking the “immediate and unconditional release ” of a 15-year-old boy who was illegally held in a Louisiana juvenile prison without a court hearing required under state law.

A Madison Parish judge committed the child to the secure custody of the Office of...

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