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"The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is simply the best civil rights law firm in American history." -- President Obama

News Updates

  • Rap-Quoting Judge Preps Housing Patrol Trial

    10/05/12
    Source: 
    Courthouse News Service

     MANHATTAN (CN) - A federal judge cited Jay-Z, noted rapper and legal philosopher, in a footnote to her order approving a lawsuit challenging New York City's practice of sending "vertical patrols" of police to search public housing residents.

    "In one of his most popular songs, the rapper Jay-Z - who grew up in NYCHA's Marcy Houses in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn - showcased his knowledge of these Fourth Amendment rights," U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote in a footnote of her recent order.

  • Claims of Stop and Frisk in City Buildings Go Forward

    10/05/12
    Source: 
    New York Law Journal

    Southern District Judge Shira Scheindlin (See Profile) yesterday denied the city's request for summary judgment against nine individuals claiming unlawful stops, frisks and arrests by New York City Police in the city's housing authority buildings.

  • Stuyvesant, there’s a better way

    10/04/12
    Source: 
    NY Daily News

    The civil rights complaint filed last week against the city’s Department of Education by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund creates an opportunity for long overdue changes in how students are admitted to New York’s best public high schools.

  • Loitering Rules in Projects Are Too Vague, Judge Says

    10/04/12
    Source: 
    The New York Times

    A federal judge in Manhattan declared on Thursday that the rules against loitering in public housing complexes were unconstitutionally vague, and gave the police too much discretion about whom to arrest.

    The ruling by Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan allowed a lawsuit challenging police arrests for trespassing in housing projects to move closer to trial.

  • UT’s Race-Conscious Admissions Policy Promotes Individual Dignity for All Students

    10/03/12
    Source: 
    American Constitution Society (ACS)

    Even more so today than when the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s race-conscious admissions policy nine years ago in Grutter v. Bollinger, there is broad consensus that a diverse college experience better prepares students to participate in our nation’s civic life and our rapidly globalizing economy. This consensus is reflected by the wide spectrum of amicus filings suppodrting the University of Texas’s admissions program in Fisher v.