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Tracey Cooper-Harris served for 12 years in the U.S. Army and received multiple commendations. But because she’s in a marriage with a person of the same sex, the government refuses to grant her the same disability benefits as heterosexual veterans.

A new study released today urges the closure of the Alabama Department of Youth Services’ Chalkville facility and the DYS-contracted Working on Womanhood program. The study determined that girls held at these juvenile facilities, many of whom are the victims of abuse, would fare much better in their own communities, where they would receive better rehabilitative services.

A federal district court today temporarily blocked major parts of South Carolina’s anti-immigrant law as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies challenging the law as unconstitutional.

A federal judge set a historic legal precedent by granting class action status to a human trafficking lawsuit involving more than 350 Filipino teachers – a decision likely to benefit countless other human trafficking victims in the future.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and other civil rights groups asked a federal judge today to block South Carolina’s anti-immigrant law from taking effect on Jan. 1 because it is unconstitutional, interferes with federal laws and would cause great harm in the state.

The Southern Poverty Law Center urged the Department of Homeland Security today to end raids by federal immigration agents that have terrorized north Alabama families and that undermine federal efforts to protect the civil rights of the state’s Latino community in the wake of the state’s harsh new anti-immigrant law. 

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.

A federal judge today temporarily blocked a provision of Alabama’s notorious anti-immigrant law that threatened to push families out of their homes if they couldn’t prove their lawful status.

The Southern Poverty Law Center called on the Birmingham, Ala. community to demand that city officials stop allowing police officers to use Mace against students in Birmingham’s public schools.

The federal district court in Montgomery temporarily blocked a section of Alabama anti-immigrant law HB 56 that threatens to push families who cannot prove lawful status out of their homes. A civil rights coalition filed a lawsuit challenging this application of Section 30, which demands ‘papers’ for everyone applying for mobile home tags they need to remain in their homes.