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  • Civil Rights Groups Call for Retroactive Application of Guidelines for Cocaine Sentencing

    5/25/11
    Source: 
    civilrights.org

    A group of seven prominent national civil rights organizations that includes The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to support the retroactive application of a new set of sentencing guidelines that accompany the implementation of the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discriminatory sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses.

  • Civil Rights groups want in on prison gerrymandering suit

    5/18/11
    Source: 
    Capitol Confidential

    The State of New York filed a very perfunctory rebuttal to the Senate GOP’s legal challenge to “prison gerrymandering,” and now a group of outside organizations — including the NAACP, Common Cause and VOCAL-NY — wants to intervene on the state’s behalf.

    From a court filing yesterday:

  • Civil Rights Organizations File Motion to Defend Law Ending Prison-Based Gerrymandering

    5/17/11
    Related Case or Issue: 
    Little v. LATFOR

    Voters and Community Groups Intervening in Suit to Ensure that All New Yorkers Are Equally Represented in State and Local Legislatures

    Albany, NY – Today, top civil rights organizations filed a motion in New York Supreme Court asking to intervene to help defend New York’s new law allocating people in prison to their home communities for redistricting and reapportionment. 

  • LDF Reflects: 57 Years After Brown

    5/17/11
    Source: 
    LDF

    Today marks the fifty-seventh anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v.

  • DOJ On Redistricting: Count New York Inmates In Hometowns, Not Where They're Locked Up

    5/16/11
    Source: 
    NY Daily News

    Thousands of New York prisoners are being set free - from being counted in upstate Republicans' state Senate districts.

    Under the federal Voting Rights Act, the Department of Justice has just approved counting inmates in their hometowns - not where they're locked up - for the purposes of political redistricting.

    The decision is a blow to lawmakers who have been counting on the captive audience to bolster their population counts - even while those behind bars can't cast a vote.