Alabama resident Angelique Harris attempted to register to vote over the course of several years but was unlawfully denied by her county registrars due to a failure of state law to clarify how out-of-state and federal felony convictions are to be treated for determining voting eligibility. The...
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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 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...
In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in two voting rights cases that threaten to weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which helps ensure voters and communities of color have equal access to the ballot and political participation. The SPLC and others urged the court...
North Carolina required people with previous felony convictions to pay legal financial obligations before they could vote – a practice that disenfranchised thousands of people, predominately people of color. The law was challenged by North Carolinians with prior felony convictions and advocacy...
In 2011, Alabama lawmakers approved a law requiring voters to present a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot in the state. Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging the law as discriminatory, noting it targeted Black and Latinx voters who disproportionately lack such identification...
As Georgia voters cast early ballots in the state’s January 2021 U.S. Senate runoff elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a Republican Party lawsuit was filed to, among other issues, close ballot drop boxes after business hours. The SPLC filed an amicus brief with other voting rights groups in...
The U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases in 2019 challenging partisan gerrymandering in Maryland and North Carolina. In an amicus brief, the SPLC and other advocacy groups urged the court to uphold lower court rulings that struck down the districts as unconstitutional.
“Election...
A proposal by the U.S. Department of Commerce to include a new citizenship question in the 2020 census under the guise of enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) threatened to undermine an accurate census by undercounting the communities the VRA was designed to protect. The SPLC joined...
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...
