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...
After Florida voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 4 in 2018, which restored the right to vote to over 1.4 million residents who had completed their sentences for felony convictions, the Legislature introduced and passed a law known as SB 7066, which requires people with past felony...
After Florida passed an “anti-sanctuary cities” law mandating cooperation agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requiring local law enforcement agencies to use their “best efforts” to support federal immigration law enforcement and prohibiting local sanctuary policies, the...
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...
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...
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...
The state of Florida in 2022 enacted House Bill 1557, commonly referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3 and restricts such discussions for students through grade 12 based on undefined standards of appropriateness. The...
During 2022, Florida established a “Relocation Program” for the “transport of unauthorized aliens from the state.” The Southern Poverty Law Center and its partners filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Section 185...
When the school board in Orange County, Florida, planned to sell property that was the site of a historic school for Black children in one of the country’s oldest Black communities, a local preservation association represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit against the school...
A sweeping new anti-immigrant law – SB 1718 – took effect in Florida on July 1, 2023. The law harms Florida immigrants and their families and seeks to target and intimidate immigrant families in every facet of their lives. The SPLC and its legal partners filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the...
