The city of Alexander City, Alabama, operated a modern-day debtors’ prison for at least a decade by arresting and jailing low-income people unable to pay their fines and court costs for traffic tickets and misdemeanors.
In a town where almost 30 percent of the population lives below the...
Mexican guest workers hired by a contractor with more than $9 million in state contracts to maintain the shoulders and medians of rural Mississippi roadways were cheated out of their wages. A federal lawsuit on behalf of six workers alleged that the contractor broke federal racketeering laws....
South Carolina denied in-state college tuition rates to U.S. citizens living in the state but unable to prove the lawful immigration status of their parents – an unconstitutional policy that more than tripled the cost of tuition. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit to end the practice.
State employees at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as “Angola,” routinely and systemically failed to properly assess, diagnose and treat the medical problems of people who are incarcerated at the largest prison in the state, which for years has had the world’s highest rate of...
Tristan Broussard, a young transgender man, was fired from his manager trainee position at Tower Loan, a Mississippi-based finance company with 180 locations nationwide, for not agreeing to dress and be treated as a woman. The Southern Poverty Law Center and allies filed a federal discrimination lawsuit alleging Tower Loans violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights by firing plaintiff Tristan Broussard. Title VII prohibits against employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
Judicial Correction Services (JCS), a private probation company, collected money from impoverished Alabamians by threatening them with jail when they fell behind on paying fines from traffic violations or other citations in the city of Clanton. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit accusing JCS of violating federal racketeering laws.
After an exclusive island resort near Charleston, South Carolina, cheated Jamaican guest workers out of their wages over three years, the SPLC sued the resort, which had earned accolades from travel publications and boasted a golf course that hosted the 2012 PGA Championship.
After a transgender woman in the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections was denied medically necessary treatment and sexually assaulted by other inmates at a men’s prison, the SPLC filed a federal lawsuit demanding prison officials provide safe placement for the prisoner and medically necessary care, including hormone therapy. The suit also sought an end to prison policies that deny transgender inmates such medical treatment.
After Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore urged the state’s governor and judges to defy federal law and enforce Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a series of judicial ethics complaint against Moore that could result in the chief justice being removed...
Gulf Coast seafood company R&A Oysters failed to properly pay guest workers it recruited to the United States on temporary H-2B work visas.
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit in 2014 on behalf of a group of migrant workers the company hired to shuck and process...
