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 ...
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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...
The private company Professional Probation Services (PPS) has a contract with a municipal court judge and the city of Gardendale, Alabama to illegally place defendants who cannot pay their fines and court costs on probation. The Southern Poverty Law Center sued on Oct. 23, 2017 in federal...
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...
Since at least 2016, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials used lies, threats, coercion and physical abuse, among other tactics, to deny migrants access to the asylum process at ports of entry along the southern border.
The SPLC joined a class action lawsuit in 2018 as co-...
Two New Orleans bail bond companies working with two other businesses charged clients hidden and illegal fees – even sending armed bounty hunters to kidnap clients and extort money from their friends and family. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit to stop the practice.
The...
Mississippi has repeatedly violated a nearly 150-year-old, legally binding obligation to operate a “uniform system of free public schools” for all children, an obligation placed on the state as a condition of rejoining the Union after the Civil War.
Mississippi enshrined this requirement...
The money bail system in Randolph County, Alabama, violated the constitutional rights of people charged with misdemeanors or felonies because it created a “two-tiered” system of justice based on wealth. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a federal class action lawsuit to end...
As part of budget cuts across state departments, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant ordered nearly $20 million in funding cut from public schools in February and March of 2017.
The SPLC filed a suit, on behalf of two legislators, contending that the governor lacked authority for the action...
The founder of a major neo-Nazi website orchestrated a harassment campaign that relentlessly terrorized a Jewish woman and her family with anti-Semitic threats and messages. The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with its Montana co-counsel, filed suit in federal court on behalf of the woman,...
