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.
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...
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...
In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit highlighting widespread violations of detained noncitizens’ rightful access to counsel in multiple civil immigration prisons in the Southeast. The...
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...
The city of New Orleans operates a sophisticated video surveillance system throughout town. While city employees frequently provide police and prosecutors with video footage to aid criminal cases, the city will not even provide a simple map of the camera locations to aid attorneys representing...
Children tried and convicted as adults for sex offenses in Alabama are subject to the state’s Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act, which imposes a lifetime obligation to register as a sex offender. The SPLC filed a lawsuit on behalf of plaintiffs who as children were tried...
Tens of thousands of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were denied adequate health care and disability accommodations while being held in 158 immigrant prisons across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a federal class action...
Willie Nash was sentenced to a 12-year prison sentence for bringing a cell phone into a county jail. After the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed Nash’s sentence, the SPLC filed a motion on behalf of Nash, urging the court to rehear his case and arguing that the sentence is a violation of the...