This suit forced Alabama to reapportion its state legislature and discard the voting system that diluted the voting strength of African Americans. The result was the adoption of single-member districts and the 1974 election of 15 black legislators.
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The U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases in 2019 challenging partisan gerrymandering in Maryland and North Carolina. In an amicus brief, the SPLC and other advocacy groups urged the court to uphold lower court rulings that struck down the districts as unconstitutional.
“Election...
A proposal by the U.S. Department of Commerce to include a new citizenship question in the 2020 census under the guise of enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) threatened to undermine an accurate census by undercounting the communities the VRA was designed to protect. The SPLC joined...
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...
Alabama resident Angelique Harris attempted to register to vote over the course of several years but was unlawfully denied by her county registrars due to a failure of state law to clarify how out-of-state and federal felony convictions are to be treated for determining voting eligibility. The...
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...
The city of Jacksonville, Florida, in March 2022 adopted racially gerrymandered district voting maps that dilute the voting power of Black residents in city council and school board elections.
On behalf of four civil rights organizations and 10 individuals, the Southern Poverty Law Center...
Alabama’s absentee ballot program is inaccessible to blind voters and voters with print disabilities. It requires those voters to secure another person’s assistance to complete their absentee ballot – forfeiting their right to vote privately and independently.
The SPLC and its co-counsel...
As a lawsuit challenging Alabama’s congressional district map went before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Southern Poverty Law Center and its partners submitted an amicus brief urging the court to affirm a lower court decision that found the map deprived Black Alabamians of their right to elect...
After a state commission moved a judgeship from a diverse Jefferson County community to majority-white Madison County, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the move.
The lawsuit was filed by...
