"Today is an incredibly dark day for Alabama. Despite the fact that our state has suffered incredibly over the past year as a result of HB56, the Alabama legislature and Governor Bentley have chosen to double down by passing and signing into law an even more extreme measure. While other states have abandoned similar measures and even recalled the sponsors of such measures, Alabama has once again made a name for itself as the worst of the worst."
Registration is open for the Mix It Up at Lunch Day 2012, set for Oct. 30.
The event, sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program, encourages students across the nation to challenge and cross social boundaries by sitting with someone new in the cafeteria for just one day.
In an incredibly callous move earlier this week, lawmakers in the U.S. House passed a bill that stands to roll back important provisions of the Violence Against Women Act, which would leave immigrant victims of domestic violence and sexual assault even more vulnerable to abuse.
School officials in Savannah, Tenn., must stop censoring students, the Southern Poverty Law Center said today, or face a federal lawsuit on behalf of a student who was prevented from supporting equality and respect for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education today that describes how discriminatory policies of the Jefferson Parish Public School System in Louisiana have pushed a disproportionate number of black students and students with disabilities into alternative schools, where they often languish for months or even years before returning to school.
Rather than take steps to correct the humanitarian crisis created by Alabama’s anti-immigrant law, the state legislature appears poised to pass another law as ill conceived as its predecessor.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and Advocates for Children’s Services today demanded that North Carolina’s Wake County Public School System stop discriminating against Latino students with Spanish-speaking parents or the groups will file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Beth Allen Law firm of Portland, Ore. sent a complaint today to two professional psychiatric associations, urging them to investigate the unethical use of conversion therapy by a Portland psychiatrist.
Last spring, Florida lawmakers passed Senate Bill 2112, which allows counties to place children charged as juveniles in adult jails.
This is a cautionary tale that raises alarming questions about the treatment of youthful, mostly nonviolent offenders in Mississippi and elsewhere. And it calls into question the wisdom of turning over the care of these youths, some as young as 13, to private companies that exist solely to turn a profit.
