The U.S. Department of Justice has advised the Southern Poverty Law Center that it will investigate discrimination against students with disabilities in the Georgia public school system. The decision by the department’s Civil Rights Division follows an SPLC complaint filed with the Department of Justice in November.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a federal lawsuit against Polk County, Florida Sheriff Grady Judd for regularly subjecting children held at the county’s adult jail to abuse, neglect and violence - including the placement of children in a cage for punishment.
Every day, SPLC attorneys see how school districts are cutting short the futures of countless students through harsh, “zero-tolerance” policies. Now, a new U.S. Department of Education (DOE) study reveals what we have known for some time.
A mother whose daughters were hit with pepper spray by a police officer at their school in Birmingham, Ala., joined the SPLC and a coalition of advocacy groups today to present the city council and Mayor William Bell with a petition signed by more than 25,000 people urging them to stop allowing police officers to discipline students with chemical weapons.
In 2011, the Florida legislature passed a law that set juvenile justice back 40 years. The law, known as SB 2112, allows sheriffs to house young people in adult jails without the protections developed over the years for children in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice.
African-American students in Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish Public Schools were disproportionately arrested for minor rule violations across the school district. These students often experienced physical abuse while being detained, including one student whose arm was broken as sheriff’s officers detained him. They were also subjected to racially offensive language and other inappropriate comments while being detained. The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation after the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a complaint describing these conditions.
Criminalization of ordinary school misbehavior is not uncommon at the Jefferson Parish Public School System, located in the New Orleans suburbs. In fact, it’s the norm – and African-American students are disproportionately targeted for arrest. The SPLC filed a federal civil rights complaint on behalf of four African-American students who faced mistreatment at the hands of police officers stationed in Jefferson Parish schools.
The SPLC has asked a federal court to force Jackson Public Schools to turn over key documents describing the practice of handcuffing students in an alternative school to a pole for hours at a time as punishment for minor infractions.
In Jacksonville, Fla., 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez is facing charges of homicide and aggravated child abuse in the adult criminal justice system. If convicted, Cristian will receive the mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The SPLC will partner with the Native American Disability Law Center in Farmington, N.M., and the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County in West Palm Beach, Fla., as part of a campaign to keep children in school and out of the juvenile justice system.
