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Statement by LDF President and Director-Counsel John Payton on the Vital Importance of Higher Education Diversity in Response to the Supreme Court’s Decision Today to Review the University of Texas at Austin’s Race-Conscious Admissions Policy.
2/21/12Source:NAACP Legal Defense FundToday, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the first federal appellate challenge to the use of race in university admissions since the Court's landmark 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger. Last year, a three-judge panel of the U.S.
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Appeal of Law Ending Prison-Based Gerrymandering Sent to Appellate Division
2/14/12The New York Court of Appeals today declined to hear plaintiffs’ direct appeal in Little v. LATFOR, a lawsuit challenging New York’s law ending prison-based gerrymandering. The plaintiffs — who include upstate elected officials who would no longer unjustly benefit from claiming incarcerated people as residents of their districts — had sought to skip the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division and go directly to the Court of Appeals.
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Washington Post: States line up to challenge stringent Section 5 voting rights provision
2/10/12Source:The Washington PostConservative activists and Republican attorneys general have launched a series of lawsuits meant to challenge the most muscular provision of the Voting Rights Act 0f 1965 before a Supreme Court that has signaled it is suspicious of its constitutionality.
Working their way to the high court are lawsuits from Arizona to North Carolina, challenging Section 5 of the historic civil rights act. The provision requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to get federal approval of any changes in their voting laws. -
The Loving Story: A New HBO Documentary tells the love story that helped destroy Jim Crow
2/10/12Source:LDFBy Tarice L.S. Gray
It was the late 1950s when two native Virginians, Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, whose ancestors included Native Americans as well as African Americans, made the decision to become husband and wife. They had lived their entire lives in the state, which rigidly enforced segregation, yet discovered that their devotion to each other was in fact color blind. They were determined to live freely as man and wife – a commitment that ultimately changed history.
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Huffington Post: John Kline's No Child Left Behind Bills Strike At Values Of Brown v. Board, Coalition Writes
2/02/12Source:The Huffington PostA broad coalition of 38 civil rights, education reform and business groups sent House education chairman John Kline a scathing letter Wednesday, describing his No Child Left Behind legislation as potentially racist.
"It undermines the core American value of equal opportunity in education embodied in Brown v. Board of Education," the groups wrote.