On Aug. 9, 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, suspended Monique Worrell, a Democrat, from her elected position as state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties because of his opposition to her...
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.
On Aug. 9, 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, suspended Monique Worrell, a Democrat, from her elected position as state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties because of his opposition to her...
The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed an emergency lawsuit to ensure that nearly 1,000 absentee voters in Cobb County, Georgia, have enough time to cast their votes in the 2022 midterm elections.
The lawsuit, filed less than 48 hours before Election Day, seeks to send...
The Cobb County Board of Education in Georgia and state legislators used racial demographic information to “pack” communities of color — particularly Black and Latinx voters — into three of seven school board voting districts to diminish their political power and preserve a white majority on the...
Decades of research and experience have led to a consensus among mental health practitioners throughout the nation that intensive home- and community-based mental health services are much more effective and less expensive than institutionalizing children and youth who have ongoing mental health...
After Mississippi enacted a law that violates the right of residents with disabilities to receive voting assistance from the person of their choice, the Southern Poverty Law Center and its partners challenged the law in federal court.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Disability Rights...
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...
Detained immigrants were forced to work for as little as $1 a day cleaning, cooking and performing maintenance duties at a privately operated immigrant detention center in Stewart County, Georgia, as part of a scheme to maximize its profits, according to a class action lawsuit the Southern...
Katie Rinderle, a fifth-grade gifted specialist in the Cobb County School District in Georgia, was fired from her teaching job in 2023 for reading to her class My Shadow is Purple, an age-appropriate picture book about self-acceptance and navigating gender stereotypes.
In...
The privately owned Sandersville Railroad Company is threatening to use eminent domain against property owners in a predominantly Black community in Sparta, Georgia, who have refused to sell portions of their land for a rail spur (a separate track that is connected to the main rail line)....
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...