Friday, May 6, 2016 | news
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (“LDF”) celebrates the 30th Anniversary of Batson v. Kentucky, a U.S. Supreme Court case that prohibits the exclusion of jurors based solely on their race as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Importantly, the case created a new legal standard and opportunity to […]
Tuesday, September 2, 2014 | news
Michael Brown was beating the odds. He made it through the minefield that can be the public education system in America; he graduated from Normandy High; he had no criminal record; and he was poised to enter technical school to learn a trade. So why was he buried last week after dying at the hands […]
Friday, April 12, 2013 | case-update
The New York Times featured work by LDF and other civil rights and youth advocates who are pushing back against proposals to increase police presence in schools. The article mentions a federal civil rights complaint filed by LDF and the National Center for Youth Law on behalf of our clients Texas Appleseed and the Brazos County branch of the […]
Tuesday, September 5, 2017 | news
Transportation is another hurdle, especially in Texas, where the nearest ID office for people in rural areas can be up to 170 miles away. As Harvey tears up infrastructure and floods major highways, it will be even harder for residents to make their way along necessary routes. “Many of the counties [in Texas] don’t have places you can […]
Tuesday, June 25, 2013 | news
LDF’s Damon Hewitt and Elise Boddie discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas on All in with Chris Hayes and SCOTUSblog. In Fisher, the majority reconfirmed the educational benefits of diversity, ruling that universities can use race as a factor in admissions. Hewitt further discusses the issues on Democracy Now! All in with Chris Hayes […]
Thursday, February 22, 2018 | news
Sessions has acted on that belief by trying to scuttle police reform in Baltimore. The city, its mayor, and police commissioner had implored the Department of Justice in October 2014 to assist them with their troubled police department, and the Obama administration responded with a damning federal investigation and a mutually agreed consent decree. All that was left […]
Tuesday, December 5, 2017 | news
Judging from the coverage surrounding this week’s blockbuster case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, it might seem that the legal clash between religious liberty and discrimination in public spaces is a modern controversy that the Supreme Court is just catching up to. But more than 50 years ago, John W. Mungin, a black Baptist […]
Wednesday, January 17, 2018 | news
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, which Congress passed one week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. King dedicated the last years of his life to the Chicago Freedom Movement, fighting housing discrimination and government policies that created segregation and trapped black Chicagoans in high-poverty neighborhoods. This […]
Monday, September 24, 2012 | case-update
Today, in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), along with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed a brief opposing Shelby County, Alabama’s appeal to the Supreme Court. The case involves a challenge to the Section 5 “preclearance” provision of […]
Tuesday, October 4, 2016 | news
On October 5, Christina Swarns, LDF’s Director of Litigation, will present oral argument before the Supreme Court in Buck v. Davis, a case that raises extraordinary issues of racial bias in capital punishment sentencing. In 1997, a Texas jury sentenced Duane Buck to death rather than life in prison after a psychologist, introduced by Mr. Buck’s […]
