In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit highlighting widespread violations of detained noncitizens’ rightful access to counsel in multiple civil immigration prisons in the Southeast. The...
We have a rich history of litigating important civil rights cases. Our cases have smashed remnants of Jim Crow segregation; fought against voter suppression; destroyed some of the nation’s most notorious white supremacist groups; and upheld the rights of minorities, children, women, people with disabilities, and others who faced discrimination and exploitation. Many of our cases have changed institutional practices, stopped government or corporate abuses, and set precedents that helped thousands.
Currently, our litigation is focused on several major areas: voting rights, children’s rights, economic justice, immigrant justice, LGBTQ rights, and mass incarceration.
We have also filed amicus “friend-of-the-court” briefs to support litigation from other organizations that are doing similar work.
In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit highlighting widespread violations of detained noncitizens’ rightful access to counsel in multiple civil immigration prisons in the Southeast. The...
More than a century ago, Mississippi adopted a state constitution that was specifically intended to prevent formerly enslaved people and their descendants from gaining political influence, in part by blocking their access to the ballot box. A provision of that 1890 constitution – a lifetime...
In Cullman County, Alabama, hundreds of people are routinely jailed before trial due to their inability to pay a bail bond for their release. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its partners intervened in a federal class action lawsuit to end the practice.
The lawsuit describes how the...
In 2011, Alabama lawmakers approved a law requiring voters to present a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot in the state. Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging the law as discriminatory, noting it targeted Black and Latinx voters who disproportionately lack such identification...
After the Trump administration made changes to the federal Medicaid program that threatened to strip health insurance away from millions of low-income people, the SPLC filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Kentucky residents in danger of losing their coverage.
The Trump policy allowed...
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency entered the homes of immigrant families without warrants, consent or probable cause – in violation of the Fourth Amendment – solely to detain and deport families, mostly women and children. The raids took place in Georgia in January 2016...
The city of Corinth, Mississippi, and Municipal Court Judge John C. Ross operated a modern-day debtors’ prison, unlawfully jailing poor people for their inability to pay bail and fines. The SPLC and another civil rights group filed a ...
A North Carolina state law guts the ability of farmworkers to organize and make collective bargaining agreements with employers.
North Carolina farmworkers and a coalition of civil rights groups – including the SPLC – sued to block implementation of the law on November 15, 2017 in federal...
In Gardendale, Alabama, municipal court defendants unable to pay court costs and fees in full were placed on probation with the company Private Probation Services (PPS), which charged defendants a $40 monthly fee for supervising their probation. These payments were unconstitutionally enforced...
People awaiting trial before a criminal court in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were coerced into paying hundreds of dollars to a company before they were released from jail – even after they had paid their bail. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of...