After the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) failed to adequately respond to public records requests by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC sued the department for the documents outlining the prison system’s policies for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic in its facilities. The lawsuit...
Showing 36 Results
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...
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...
The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) places hundreds of children in solitary confinement on any given day. The SPLC, Florida Legal Services and the Florida Justice Institute filed a federal class action lawsuit to end the use of solitary confinement in the state’s juvenile detention...
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...
The SPLC and its allies filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging Florida’s use of solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
The lawsuit...
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...
The SPLC filed a petition seeking the “immediate and unconditional release ” of a 15-year-old boy who was illegally held in a Louisiana juvenile prison without a court hearing required under state law.
A Madison Parish judge committed the child to the secure custody of the Office of...
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...
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. Today, a provision of that 1890 constitution – a...
