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Our Nation’s Water Systems Are Failing and Black Communities Are Bearing the Brunt

Our Nation’s Water Systems Are Failing, and Black Communities Are Bearing the Brunt By Coty Montag Former Senior Counsel and Thurgood Marshall Institute Researcher For weeks in March 2021, residents of Jackson, Mississippi, were forced to obtain water from distribution sites to flush their toilets, bathe, and drink. In mid-February 2021 a winter storm brought […]

Our Lives, Votes, Jobs and Schools Are At Stake, Says LDF

Washington, DC – Today, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF) joins the America’s Journey for Justice March as it embarks on its final leg into Washington, DC after beginning six weeks ago in Selma, Alabama. Sponsored by the NAACP, the theme of the  1000-mile march is “Our Lives, Our Votes, Our Jobs and […]

Our Kids Aren’t Treated Equally at School

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. The document and the event were separated by 100 years, but each spoke with equal clarity and urgency to the principles of liberty, equality and opportunity to which we aspire as a nation. There is perhaps no […]

Our Impact

introduction The Legal Defense Fund’s mission has always been transformative: to achieve racial justice, equality, and an inclusive society. The new political landscape and retrenchment in key areas of civil rights pose unprecedented threats to the hard-won gains of the last half-century. From new assaults on voting rights to a renewed push to undermine equal […]

Our Girls, Our Future: Investing in Opportunity & Reducing Reliance on the Criminal Justice System in Baltimore

Oral Arguments Wrap in U.S. Supreme Court Case Challenging South Carolina’s Congressional Map for Racial Discrimination

WASHINGTON — This morning, oral arguments concluded in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the U.S. Supreme Court case that will determine the fate of South Carolina’s congressional map. Shortly after the map was enacted, plaintiffs challenged it as a racial gerrymander designed with a discriminatory purpose under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth […]

Oral Arguments Wrap in Case Urging Maryland Appellate Court to Defend Public Education for Baltimore City Schoolchildren

Media: Legal Defense Fund – ldf@a-g.com ACLU of Maryland – media@aclu-md.org This morning, oral arguments concluded in Bradford v. Maryland State Board of Education, a case in the Appellate Court of Maryland on behalf of Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPSS) families, challenging the State of Maryland’s funding and resources provided to BCPSS. The plaintiffs, represented […]

Oral Arguments Conclude in U.S. Supreme Court Case Challenging Alabama Congressional Map

Washington, D.C. — October 4, 2022 — Plaintiffs and attorneys in Merrill v. Milligan, a case challenging Alabama’s new congressional map for diluting the ability of Black voters to elect candidates of their choice, held a press conference at the conclusion of oral arguments where they highlighted what’s at stake in this critical voting rights […]

Opposition to the Confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett

There are myriad compounding factors that make the advancement of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court a direct threat to the legitimacy of our democracy. Because of the highly politicized circumstances surrounding her nomination, the truncated process the Senate majority intends to pursue over vociferous dissent from the Senate minority and the […]

Open Communities Alliance, et al. v. Carson et al.

On October, 23rd, 2017 five organizations – the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the Relman, Dane & Colfax PLLC law firm, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Public Citizen Litigation Group–sued the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) challenging its […]