After the Florida Department of Health filed an emergency rule that barred school districts in the state from requiring students to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Law Offices of Joshua Spector, P.A. filed a legal complaint.
The petition...
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...
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 Southern Poverty Law Center and Fair Elections Center filed a lawsuit to challenge a Florida law that, among other things, required groups engaged in voter registration activities to provide misleading information to voters that the organization “might not” submit the voter’s registration...
The Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR) discriminates against foster children and youth with mental impairments by unnecessarily segregating them in restrictive, psychiatric residential treatment facilities and by denying them an opportunity to grow up in loving homes and community-based...
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...
After Georgia voters turned out in record numbers for the 2020 presidential election and U.S. Senate elections in early 2021, state legislators passed a sweeping – and unconstitutional – voting law that threatened to massively disenfranchise voters, particularly voters of color. The SPLC and its...
During the 2020 property assessment cycle, the Orleans Parish assessor arbitrarily cut the value of large commercial properties – some by as much as 57% – citing the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason. As a result, he flouted his legal duty to assess properties at their fair market value. Despite...
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...
In October 2020, the Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a new challenge to the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which had forced over 60,000 asylum seekers into precarious, life-threatening situations in Mexico and deprived them of access to legal assistance and...
