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Criminal Justice Reform

Date Filed

January 17, 2016

A minor at the Sumter Correctional Institution in Florida was brutally beaten and raped as part of a prison initiation ritual that was ignored by a guard. The SPLC and its co-counsel filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the youth to end the culture of brutality at the prison, which houses...

Economic Justice

Date Filed

October 19, 2015

The SPLC filed a judicial ethics complaint against Perry County (Alabama) Circuit Judge Marvin Wiggins after he required people unable to pay court fines to either donate blood or go to jail.

The complaint described how Wiggins threatened defendants in his court with jail on Sept. 17,...

Economic Justice
Active Case

Date Filed

September 08, 2015

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...

Immigrant Justice
Active Case

Date Filed

September 01, 2015

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....

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

May 20, 2015

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...

LGBTQ Rights

Date Filed

April 13, 2015

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. 

Economic Justice
Active Case

Date Filed

March 12, 2015

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.

Immigrant Justice

Date Filed

March 06, 2015

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. 

LGBTQ Rights

Date Filed

February 19, 2015

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.

LGBTQ Rights

Date Filed

January 28, 2015

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...

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