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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

  • Maryland’s Highest Court Unanimously Upholds Right to Counsel at Initial Bail Hearings

    1/09/12
    Source: 
    NAACP Legal Defense Fund

    On January 4, 2012, Maryland’s highest court issued a unanimous ruling in Richmond v. District Court of Maryland that guarantees the right of indigent defendants to have a lawyer present at their initial bail hearing.  At this hearing which occurs shortly after an individual is arrested and detained, a District Court Commissioner determines whether there was probable cause for the arrest and, if so, whether the individual should be released pending trial and under what conditions. 

  • Holder Is Right About Carolina Voting Law

    1/05/12
    Source: 
    Wall Street Journal

    LDF, the National Urban League and the NAACP respond to a Wall Street Journal editorial criticizing the Justice Department challenge of South Carolina's new voter ID law.

  • NYT: Robert L. Carter, an Architect of School Desegregation, Dies at 94

    1/04/12
    Source: 
    The New York Times

    Robert L. Carter, a former federal judge in New York who, as a lawyer, was a leading strategist and a persuasive voice in the legal assault on racial segregation in 20th-century America, died on Tuesday morning in Manhattan. He was 94.

    The cause was complications of a stroke, said his son John W. Carter, a justice of the New York Supreme Court in the Bronx.

  • Judge Robert L. Carter, 1917 - 2012

    1/03/12
    Source: 
    LDF

    Judge Robert L. CarterThe NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund mourns the passing of Judge Robert L. Carter, a true giant of the struggle for racial justice and equality. Judge Carter lived an extraordinary life. A graduate of Howard Law School, he was one of the original members of the legal team Thurgood Marshall gathered at the Legal Defense Fund in the early 1940s.

  • LDF Successfully Defends Lower Court Ruling in Historic School Desegregation Case

    12/28/11

    New York, NY -- On December 28, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit affirmed key aspects of the lower court’s decision in Little Rock School District v. Lorene Joshua.