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Criminal Justice Reform
Voting Rights
Voting Rights - MS
Active Case

Date Filed

March 27, 2018

More than a century ago, Mississippi adopted a state constitution that was specifically intended to prevent formerly enslaved people and their descendants from gaining political influence, in part by blocking their access to the ballot box. A provision of that 1890 constitution – a lifetime...

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

February 06, 2017

Louisiana officials denied poor people their constitutional right to counsel by failing to establish an effective statewide public defense system. The SPLC and its allies filed suit in state court fix the broken system.

In 2016, a funding crisis forced as many as 33 out of 42 public...

Criminal Justice Reform
Immigrant Justice
Active Case

Date Filed

August 09, 2016

After the federal government failed to release records under the Freedom of Information Act that would shed light on controversial – and potentially unconstitutional – immigration raids in 2016 that took more than 100 women and children from their homes and placed them in a Texas detention...

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...

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...

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.

Criminal Justice Reform
Active Case

Date Filed

May 30, 2013

Prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian endured filthy and dangerous conditions at the for-profit prison, which operated “in a perpetual state of crisis” where prisoners were at “grave risk of death and loss of limbs,” even resorting to setting fires to receive medical attention. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the prisoners that described how prison officials had known of these conditions for years but failed to protect prisoners.

Criminal Justice Reform
Immigrant Justice

Date Filed

February 07, 2013

When Alabama legislators revised the state’s anti-immigrant law in 2012, they passed a law requiring the state to maintain an online list of immigrants who are detained by law enforcement, who appear in court for any violation of state law, and who unable to prove they are not “unlawfully present aliens.” It provided no means for people to be removed from this “black list” if the listing is an error or if their immigration status changes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a federal lawsuit to stop this state-sanctioned “blacklisting” of immigrants, which could encourage harassment and violence.

Criminal Justice Reform
Immigrant Justice

Date Filed

September 19, 2012

Vermilion Parish (La.) Sheriff Michael Couvillon refused to turn over public records related to the detention of individuals suspected of being undocumented. The SPLC requested the records under the Louisiana Public Records Act to determine if the sheriff’s office was holding immigrants in jail for prolonged periods of time due to unconstitutional racial profiling.

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