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...
On behalf of six students at the Sophie B. Wright Charter School in Orleans Parish, La., the SPLC sought an injunction in state court to halt disciplinary actions resulting from a senior prank. Following a water balloon fight that caused no serious injuries, the students were suspended for five...
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...
In July 2020, federal officials issued an illegal rule that would siphon over $1 billion in emergency aid from public schools to private schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a lawsuit challenging the rule issued by U.S. Secretary of Education...
North Carolina required people with previous felony convictions to pay legal financial obligations before they could vote – a practice that disenfranchised thousands of people, predominately people of color. The law was challenged by North Carolinians with prior felony convictions and advocacy...
After a historic legal settlement over abusive conditions facing incarcerated transgender people in Georgia prisons, Ashley Diamond, a Black transgender woman, re-entered the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) in 2019 only to encounter similar unconstitutional conditions, sparking a lawsuit...
As Georgia voters cast early ballots in the state’s January 2021 U.S. Senate runoff elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a Republican Party lawsuit was filed to, among other issues, close ballot drop boxes after business hours. The SPLC filed an amicus brief with other voting rights groups in...
After Florida teacher Amy Donofrio refused a request by school officials to remove a Black Lives Matter flag hanging outside her high school classroom, she was reassigned to nonteaching duties and banned from her school’s campus. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its co-counsel, Scott • Wagner...
Under Florida’s Baker Act, thousands of children each year are taken from their classrooms and transported – handcuffed and in the back of police cars – to psychiatric facilities without their parents’ input or consent and sometimes over their objections. There, they can be held for up to 72...
Did you experience extreme delays in the processing of your unemployment claim during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL)? If so, the settlement reached in this lawsuit might affect you. This...
