Prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility in
We have a rich history of litigating important civil rights cases. Our cases have smashed remnants of Jim Crow segregation; fought against voter suppression; destroyed some of the nation’s most notorious white supremacist groups; and upheld the rights of minorities, children, women, people with disabilities, and others who faced discrimination and exploitation. Many of our cases have changed institutional practices, stopped government or corporate abuses, and set precedents that helped thousands.
Currently, our litigation is focused on several major areas: voting rights, children’s rights, economic justice, immigrant justice, LGBTQ rights, and mass incarceration.
We have also filed amicus “friend-of-the-court” briefs to support litigation from other organizations that are doing similar work.
Prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility in
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.
Students with disabilities were denied access to New Orleans public schools and often pushed into schools that failed to provide them with a free and appropriate education as required by federal mandate.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and a coalition of advocacy groups first filed an...
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.
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....
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...
The SPLC filed a federal civil rights complaint after discovering that Latinos with limited English proficiency were being treated more harshly for traffic offenses than others appearing before a Jefferson Parish court in the suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana.
The complaint to the U.S....
A city court judge in Bogalusa, Louisiana, operated a modern-day debtors’ prison by illegally jailing indigent people unable to pay fines or court costs – including a man fined for stealing $5 worth of food to feed his family. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the unconstitutional...
Mississippi funded its charter schools through an unconstitutional scheme that diverted public tax dollars from traditional public schools. The SPLC filed a lawsuit in state court to end the funding system.
The lawsuit called for the court to strike down the funding provisions of the...
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...