Seeking to guarantee the voting rights of Alabama residents who have paid their debt to society after felony convictions, the SPLC and the Campaign Legal Center are launching a grassroots campaign to re-enfranchise thousands of Alabama voters.
In Cullman County, Alabama, hundreds of people are routinely jailed before trial due to their inability to pay a bail bond for their release. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its partners intervened in a federal class action lawsuit to end the practice.
The lawsuit describes how the...
In 2011, Alabama lawmakers approved a law requiring voters to present a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot in the state. Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging the law as discriminatory, noting it targeted Black and Latinx voters who disproportionately lack such identification...
The state has not yet come up with an acceptable remedy to address the “horrendously inadequate” and unconstitutional mental health care and staffing needs of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), the SPLC will argue today in closing arguments at a federal trial to correct the problems.
Courts in 14 Alabama counties awarded $2.2 million to law enforcement agencies through civil asset forfeiture actions filed in 2015 – and in a quarter of the 1,100 cases, law enforcement sought to keep property seized from people who were never even charged with a crime, according to a report released today by the SPLC and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice.
The Alabama Juvenile Justice Task Force, with technical assistance from the Pew Charitable Trust, surveyed Alabama law and considered data-driven and evidence-based reforms to the juvenile justice system. Its final report contains a number of recommendations that, if enacted, would represent progress for Alabama and its most vulnerable children. For instance, the Task Force recommends ending fines and fees in the juvenile justice system, restricting out-of-home placement, and preventing unnecessary or inappropriate arrests of children from K-12 public schools.
When it came time to cast her ballot in the presidential election last fall, Dechauna Jiles voted at the First Assembly of God in Dothan, Alabama.
A federal court hearing will begin today on the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) plan to address its failure to provide adequate staffing for the mental health care needs of prisoners.
The U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE’s) proposed discretionary spending priorities abandon the agency’s longstanding commitment to a high-quality education for all students, and undermine public schools across the country, the SPLC said in comments submitted yesterday to the DOE.
Wayne Bonam jumped up, blinded by a flash-bang grenade, as police swarmed through the door and pointed guns at his head. His girlfriend, next to him, shouted at the cops: “Hey, wait – he has a bad heart!”
