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Children's Rights

Alabama is the only state in the Southeast that lacks statutory due process protections for students facing long-term suspension or expulsion. Without a state law, each of the 138 school districts in Alabama is left to develop its own protections and procedures. This has resulted in haphazard,...

Landmark Case

Date Filed

July 17, 1973

The Relf sisters challenged the constitutionality of government regulations that allowed federal funds to be used to sterilize minors and mentally-challenged women who were not competent to consent to the procedure.

Immigrant Justice

Date Filed

June 07, 2007

A federal judge has held Candy Brand and its individual owners accountable for routinely cheating migrant farmworkers out of wages. The court also held that the company’s failure to pay overtime wages and reimburse workers’ expenses was a breach of Candy Brand’s contract with each worker it exploited. As a result, the company and owners will be required to satisfy any judgment, which could be over $2 million dollars.

Children's Rights
Active Case

Date Filed

October 26, 2010

Students with disabilities were denied access to New Orleans public schools and often pushed into schools that failed to provide them with a free and appropriate education as required by federal mandate.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and a coalition of advocacy groups first filed an...

LGBTQ Rights
Landmark Case

Date Filed

November 27, 2012

Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) fraudulently claimed to provide services that “convert” people from gay to straight. These services, known as conversion therapy, have been discredited or highly criticized by all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional counseling organizations. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the New Jersey conversion therapy organization for fraudulent practices. The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey in 2012, charged that JONAH, its founder and a counselor violated New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act by claiming that their counseling services could cure clients of being gay.

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

June 17, 2014

The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) systemically puts the health and lives of prisoners at risk by ignoring their medical and mental health needs and discriminating against prisoners with disabilities – violations of federal law by a prison system that has one of the highest mortality rates in the country. The SPLC and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP) filed suit to end the deplorable conditions in Alabama prisons.

Children's Rights
Active Case

Date Filed

May 23, 2017

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...

Immigrant Justice
Active Case

Date Filed

July 17, 2017

Since at least 2016, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials have blocked access to the ports of entry along the Southern border for people seeking asylum. The SPLC joined a class action lawsuit in 2018 as co-counsel to stop this unlawful conduct that imperils the lives of asylum...

Economic Justice
Active Case

Date Filed

August 07, 2017

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...

Economic Justice

Date Filed

October 23, 2017

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...

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