Almost two years after finding that Mississippi’s Jackson Public School District violated federal special education law, the Mississippi Department of Education had failed to hold the district accountable and ensure that its students with disabilities were receiving services required by federal law. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal class action lawsuit in 2012 against the department on behalf of these students.
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Features and Stories
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit today against the Mississippi Department of Education for failing to ensure that students with disabilities in the Jackson Public School District receive the education and services required by federal law.
Features and Stories
A federal judge has approved a settlement agreement between the Southern Poverty Law Center and the public school system in Jackson, Miss., to reform discipline policies across the district and to end the brutal practice of handcuffing students to railings and poles for hours at a time as punishment for minor rule violations.
Features and Stories
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.
Features and Stories
I was in court with Barbara Anderson Young this week when three of the white teens who beat, ran over and killed her brother last June in a Mississippi parking lot pleaded guilty to murder and hate crimes. Those three now face life sentences in prison.
Features and Stories
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.
Features and Stories
The Southern Poverty Law Center has reached an agreement with officials in Forrest County, Miss., that requires the county to improve the inhumane conditions and stop the abuse of children at a detention center where video footage showed children being beaten and hogtied by staffers.
Features and Stories
By urging the prosecutor in Jackson, Miss., to not seek the death penalty for those responsible for the vicious killing of James Anderson, his family members have taken a noble position and made a clear statement that, while they seek justice, they are not out for revenge.
In the early morning hours of June 26, 2011, a black man was attacked in the parking lot of a Jackson, Miss., motel and then fatally run over by a truck. The Southern Poverty Law Center joined Mississippi attorney Winston J. Thompson III, in filing a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the man’s family. The civil lawsuit accused seven white teenagers of deliberately setting out to harass a black person.
Features and Stories
The Southern Poverty Law Center, in cooperation with Mississippi attorney Winston J. Thompson III, filed a wrongful death lawsuit today on behalf of the family of a black man who was viciously beaten in a motel parking lot and then fatally run over.
