Southern Poverty Law Center

The Southern Poverty Law Center and Advocates for Children’s Services today demanded that North Carolina’s Wake County Public School System stop discriminating against Latino students with Spanish-speaking parents or the groups will file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Beth Allen Law firm of Portland, Ore. sent a complaint today to two professional psychiatric associations, urging them to investigate the unethical use of conversion therapy by a Portland psychiatrist.

Earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center achieved a major milestone in its campaign to stop the rampant bullying and violence faced by LGBT students, and those students perceived to be LGBT, in school. In March, it reached a settlement agreement with Minnesota’s largest school district, which agreed to adopt a wide-ranging plan to protect LGBT students from harassment.

There’s no shortage of tragic stories about the dangers of holding children and teens in adult jails. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently filed a lawsuit in Florida that described horrendous abuse at the Polk County Jail – an adult jail where children as young as 8 years old can be detained.

George Zimmerman appears to have concluded that young Trayvon Martin was "suspicious" based on nothing more than his race and the fact that Trayvon was walking in Zimmerman's neighborhood. Sadly, such assumptions are made about black youth every day. And they play out in a million disastrous ways.