An agreement with Mobile County Public Schools in Alabama will reduce out-of-school suspensions for minor misbehavior and provide alternative forms of discipline – steps that will resolve a 2011 federal lawsuit filed by the SPLC on behalf of seven students.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Alabama’s appeal of a court decision that blocked part of its anti-immigrant law is further proof that immigration enforcement is not a duty of the states, but the federal government which must pass comprehensive immigration reform.
The Southern Poverty Law Center joined poultry workers, advocates and others gathered outside U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt’s district office in Gadsden, Ala., today to urge him to block new poultry industry regulations that threaten the health and safety of workers and consumers across the country.
The SPLC today urged Alabama’s top public school official to address the widespread failure of schools and districts to comply with state and federal law when they request Social Security numbers for enrollment – a practice that chills enrollment of immigrant students in public schools.
Poultry workers in Alabama often suffer significant injuries as they endure grueling, dangerous working conditions and frequent threats of deportation or firing, a problem that could grow worse under proposed new USDA regulations, according to a report by the SPLC and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.
When Alabama legislators revised the state’s anti-immigrant law in 2012, they passed a law requiring the state to maintain an online list of immigrants who are detained by law enforcement, who appear in court for any violation of state law, and who unable to prove they are not “unlawfully present aliens.” It provided no means for people to be removed from this “black list” if the listing is an error or if their immigration status changes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a federal lawsuit to stop this state-sanctioned “blacklisting” of immigrants, which could encourage harassment and violence.
Alabama has made a costly and ill-advised decision to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to criminalize Alabamians for providing shelter – or even a ride – to a person unable to prove his immigration status, the Southern Poverty Law Center said today after the state appealed a lower court’s ruling against its anti-immigrant law, also known as HB 56.
The Southern Poverty Law Center today demanded that Alabama’s Autauga County Schools end policies and practices that have excluded immigrant students from extracurricular activities.
After Alabama’s anti-immigrant law took effect, the U.S. Department of Justice obtained public school attendance records and found a decline in Latino student attendance. The Southern Poverty Law Center requested the same data to determine the law’s impact on Latino students’ access to a public education. The SPLC filed a lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Education after being denied the public records.
A federal judge has denied a request by the Birmingham Police Department in Alabama to dismiss a lawsuit the Southern Poverty Law Center filed against the department for its brutal use of pepper spray against the city’s public school students.
