Racial Injustice

Cases

CCR has joined the Center for HIV Law and Policy (CHLP) , a national leader on HIV policy development, along with 21 national and state organizations, in an amicus brief on behalf of Michael Johnson...
In 2010, the U.S. Bureau of the Census hired over a million temporary employees to conduct census surveys and serve in clerical positions. The Bureau ran the names of all applicants through the FBI...
Federal lawsuit challenging constitutionality of state-appointed “Emergency Managers” in predominantly black and brown communities of Michigan
State of New York v. Danny White is a lawsuit challenging New York State’s attempts to evict Mohawk Native Americans from land that had been recognized as theirs in the Treaty of 1784. It also...
On March 16, 2011, the Republican Governor Richard Snyder signed into law Public Act No. 4, the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act, also known as the “emergency...
A class action lawsuit to challenge the NYPD’s policy of conducting stop-and-frisks without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity as required by the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, the...
The population of Hempstead, New York, which covers the heart of Long Island’s Nassau County, is 13 percent Black and Latino, but all of its six Republican council members lived in...
A suit on behalf of the Oneida Nation of New York against the U.S. Department of the Interior, charging that the government violated the Oneidas’ national sovereignty. The suit alleged that the...
CCR has submitted an amicus brief in Glik v. Cunniffe before the First Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of Berkeley Copwatch, Communities United against Police Brutality, Justice Committee,...
The Center for Constitutional Rights has long stood in solidarity with popular and democratic movements in Haiti to address the undemocratic forces at play there and the interests in the United...
The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) held the petitioner, Mr. Ragbir, removable from the United States by applying a narrow evidentiary standard that the Supreme Court later rejected...
The Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context, undertook an official visit to the...
In April 1999, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a case on behalf of 40 plaintiffs charging the Metal Lathers Local 46 Union with discrimination that violated Title VII and the Civil...
Bandele v. City of New York was a federal civil rights lawsuit brought against the City of New York and three NYPD officers in 2007. It charges that the defendants falsely arrested and imprisoned the...
The NAACP represented a class of over 6,000 African Americans in Chicago who applied to become firefighters. They won the case in 2005 when a federal court found that the hiring exam had illegally...
Crumsey v. Justice Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a lawsuit seeking an injunction and monetary and punitive damages from the Ku Klux Klan on behalf of five Chattanooga women injured during a shooting...
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed an amicus brief in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Muntaqim v. Coombe that challenged the state law which disenfranchised those...
Powell v. McCormack is a 1960’s government misconduct case filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Adam Clayton Powell, claiming that the House of Representatives...
Weinbaum v. Cuomo is a case which asserted that separate and unequal funding of higher education existed in New York State. The Concerned Faculty and Staff of the City University of New York (CUNY)...
Thornton v. City of Greenville is a lawsuit against the City of Greenville, Mississippi in 1991 that contested the discriminatory election districts of the 1980’s. The release of new census figures...
Taylor v. Hayes is a civil case that went up to the Supreme Court in which the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) contested Kentucky attorney Dan Taylor’s four-and-a half-year jail sentence for...
State of Washington v. Wanrow is a lawsuit that challenged the murder conviction of Yvonne Swan Wanrow on the grounds of a woman’s right to self-defense against harm to herself or her child. Yvonne...
State of North Carolina v. Joan Little is a 1975 case for which the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) provided assistance to the defense. Joan Little was a prisoner who killed her white jailer...
Palmer v. Thompson is a civil rights case which the Black citizens of Jackson, Mississippi brought against the City for closing the public city pools instead of desegregating them.
Brown v. City of Chattanooga is one of CCR’s municipal at-large cases, which consist of several cases filed on behalf of voters of color to challenge the at-large electoral system for violating the...
Hamer v. Campell is a civil rights case which Fannie Lou Hamer brought against Cecil Campbell, the circuit clerk of Mississippi, for denying her and other Black people the right to register and vote...
DuVernay v. United States is a lawsuit in which the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) challenged the exclusion of Black people from draft boards in predominately Black neighborhoods. In the 1960...
Drew Municipal School District v. Andrews is a lawsuit that the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed on behalf of two Black women against the Drew Municipal School District for refusing to...
Douglas v. Holloman is a case in which the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) defended New York City guidelines on sterilization procedures on behalf of women and groups concerned about...
Dotson v. City of Indianola, Mississippi is a case in which the city was compelled to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The City of Indianola, Mississippi, annexed adjacent areas and thereby reduced...
Dombrowski v. Pfister is a government misconduct case brought in 1965 against the governor of Louisiana, law enforcement officers, and the chairperson of the state's Legislative Joint Committee on Un...
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on May 21, 2004, urging the Court to grant a writ of certiorari and to review the decision of the Tenth Circuit...
The county redistricting cases include several lawsuits filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) challenging redistricting plans of counties across the United States for the discriminatory...
Coker v. Georgia is a lawsuit in which the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, together with a broad range of other women's legal organizations, on...
Anderson v. Hale and World Church of the Creator is a civil rights case in which Reverend Stephen Anderson sued the World Church of the Creator, charging them with advocating a “Racial Holy War” that...
Almontaser v. Hilton Hotel is a suit which charged the Hilton Hotel for intentional employment discrimination against Arab-American Muslims who worked as catering staff at the New York Hilton Hotel...

CCR has been fighting for racial justice since our first day. We organized legal support for and defended marchers who were arrested on the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965; litigated scores of Voting Rights Act cases; led challenges to de facto segregation that held states responsible for affirmative duties to racial equality; and established a national Anti-Ku Klux Klan Network in the late 1970s. In recent decades, our Telephone Justice Campaign challenged the exploitive phone rates New York State prisoners had to pay, and we supported public school teachers of color. Now, from taking on the FDNY’s discriminatory hiring and the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices to providing legal support to the Black Lives Matter movement, CCR continues the unfinished work of the Civil Rights Movement. We use the landmark legislation passed during the 1960s to challenge both intentional discrimination and the discriminatory impacts of government practices and policies, and we work closely with grassroots organizations that are driving the demand for reform. Racial injustice is deeply intertwined with many other injustices the Center is fighting —from abusive immigration practices to Muslim profiling to mass incarceration – and we explicitly make connections among different struggles. Above all, CCR is committed to addressing the structural and systemic nature of racism in our society.