Jackson, MS, July 21, 2023 – Along with two days of testimony before a federal court last week, several Jackson-based community groups and residents submitted a Community Statement to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the city’s water crisis. They also shared the statement with the judge during last week’s hearing in United States v. City of Jackson. Judge […]
Center for Constitutional Rights
Posted inOp-Ed
Center for Constitutional Rights: “Colorblindness” a mask for maintaining white supremacy as right-wing ideologues deny history of race-conscious justice
June 29, 2023 – In response to the Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action on college campuses, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement: This loss, while devastating, is unsurprising. The Roberts Court has arguably been the most hostile to racial justice and Black civil rights since the post-Reconstruction Plessy Court, which […]
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In Landmark Case, St. James Parish Residents Sue Parish Council to Protect Black Neighborhoods With a Moratorium on Hazardous Petrochemical Plants
New Orleans — After years of seeking redress from the parish council, St. James Parish residents have now taken their case to federal court. Since September of 2019, the plaintiffs, Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James, and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, have requested a moratorium on the construction of new petrochemical plants and related infrastructure after the […]
Posted inUS
Descendants Project Sues Parish to Invalidate Old Corrupt Zoning Ordinance Threatening the Health & Safety of Black Historic Community
St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, November 9, 2021 ‒ The Descendants Project, an organization founded to advocate for descendants of people once enslaved in Louisiana’s river parishes, today asked a district court to declare a decades-old rezoning ordinance null and void and order St. John the Baptist Parish to remove it from all of […]
Posted inUS
Civil Rights Groups to White House: Discriminatory ‘National Security’ Policies Must End
Twenty years after the U.S. declared its “War on Terror,” civil rights lawyers and advocates today sent the Biden administration a memorandum covering a range of federal policies and programs, all justified under the guise of protecting “national security,” but which unjustly surveil, profile, and criminalize Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian […]
Posted inWorld
Court Upholds $10 Million Judgment Against Bolivian Leaders for 2003 Massacre
Miami, April 5, 2021 – Today, a federal judge rejected an attempt by Bolivia’s former president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and former defense minister, José Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, to vacate a $10 million damages award against them for the massacre of unarmed Indigenous people in 2003. A jury found the former officials liable under the […]
Posted inCalifornia
Court Finds Systemic Constitutional Violations by CA Department of Corrections
EUREKA, Calif. Jan. 30, 2019 – Late Friday, a federal judge found that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is systemically violating the due process rights of prisoners. The judge ruled that CDCR is violating the Constitution by repeatedly relying on unreliable and even fabricated confidential information to send California prisoners to solitary […]
Posted inUS
New Lawsuit Over Trump Muslim Ban
NEW YORK, NY, December 18, 2018 – Yesterday evening, a group of Yemeni-Americans filed a federal lawsuit over the State Department’s refusal to issue their spouses and children visas that had already been approved prior to the Muslim Ban. The suit alleges that U.S. Embassy officials approved the plaintiffs’ visas, only to reverse that decision […]
Posted inUS
Federal Judge Rules Suit Challenging CBP’s Turnaways of Asylum Seekers at the Border Can Proceed
SAN DIEGO, Aug. 24, 2018 – A federal judge ruled this week that a lawsuit challenging U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) practice of turning away asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border can proceed. The lawsuit was brought by the Los Angeles and Tijuana-based organization Al Otro Lado, Inc., as well as individual asylum seekers […]
Posted inOp-Ed
Aliya Hana Hussain: The courts must intervene in Trump’s Guantánamo
July 11, 2018 – “[It’s] like we’re buried alive.” That’s how CCR client Sharqawi Al Hajj describes his imprisonment at Guantánamo, as a cemetery. Before he was brought to the island prison, Sharqawi was disappeared, rendered, and tortured in secret prisons for over two years. He has been at Guantánamo for fourteen years. During that time he has […]
Posted inOp-Ed
Center for Constitutional Rights: Supreme Court Muslim Ban Ruling a Historic Judicial Mistake
June 26, 2018, New York – In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Trump’s Muslim ban, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement: Today’s decision locates Trump’s Muslim ban within a normal range of presidential discretion to control immigration. But this is not normal. The Muslim Ban is a historic act of […]
Posted inOp-Ed
#JusticeDelegation: Human Rights Defenders Stand in Solidarity with Great March of Return, Oppose U.S. Embassy Move to Jerusalem
May 14, 2018 – Below is a statement of human rights defenders, known as the #JusticeDelegation, after returning from a visit to Palestine and Israel co-organized by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Interfaith Peace-Builders. We, a group of U.S.-based human rights defenders known as the #JusticeDelegation, call on our communities, our allies, our representatives, […]
Posted inUS
Center for Constitutional Rights ED and Board Chair Both Denied Entry into Israel
TEL AVIV/NY, May 1, 2018 – Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and Katherine Franke, chair of CCR’s board and Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Columbia University, were detained Sunday, April 29, for 14 hours and interrogated at Ben Gurion International Airport, then denied entry into […]
Posted inUS
Racial Justice Groups Sue DHS to Release Contents of Fully Redacted “Race Paper”
NEW YORK, NY, March 19, 2018 – Today, racial justice organizations filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release the contents of the agency’s blacked-out memo referred to in government documents as the “Race Paper.” The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Color of Change, the groups suing today, first uncovered […]
Posted inCalifornia
Unconstitutional Solitary Confinement Continues, Prisoners’ Attorneys Say
OAKLAND, CA, Feb. 26, 2018 – The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and co-counsel asked a federal judge to order the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to comply with a landmark, class action settlement that was intended to effectively end indefinite solitary confinement in California prisons. Under the settlement, nearly 1600 prisoners were […]
Posted inEnviro
Dakota Access Lawyers Abused Legal System to Stifle Advocacy, Sanctions Motion Argues
NEW YORK, NY, Feb. 7, 2018 – Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Earth First! Journal urged a federal court to impose sanctions against Donald Trump’s go-to law firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, which represents corporations developing the Dakota Access Pipeline. The sanctions motion claims that Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and Energy Transfer Equity […]
Posted inUS
Michigan Residents Ask Supreme Court to Review Law That Led to Flint Water Crisis
FLINT, MI, March 31, 2017 – Today, a coalition of Michigan residents, organizations, and civil rights attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case challenging Michigan’s controversial Emergency Manager Law. The law allows the State to replace all local elected officials and elected school boards in so-called “financially distressed” municipalities and school districts […]
Posted inOp-Ed
Center for Constitutional Rights: No one misses the days of stop and frisk in New York
NEW YORK, Sept. 27, 2016 – The Center for Constitutional Rights, which argued and won the landmark case in New York City challenging the NYPD’s unconstitutional and racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices, issued the following statement: A federal court found stop and frisk as practiced in New York City both unconstitutional and racially discriminatory in 2013 […]
Posted inUS
American Muslims Who Refused to Become FBI Informants File Appeal Over No-Fly List
NEW YORK, July 29, 2016 – Today, three American Muslim men with no criminal records who were placed or kept on the No Fly List by the FBI in retaliation for their refusal to become informants appealed the dismissal of their lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI agents told the men they could […]