Mississippi
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
learn about our work in Mississippi
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
Reproductive Freedom
Status: Closed (Judgment)
The case concerns the constitutionality of a Mississippi law prohibiting abortions after the fifteenth week of pregnancy. The state used the case as a vehicle to ask the Supreme Court to take away the federal constitutional right to abortion it first recognized 50 years before in Roe v. Wade. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States accepted the state’s invitation and overturned Roe eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion.
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Smart Justice
Dockery v. Hall
The ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Law Offices of Elizabeth Alexander, and the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, filed a petition for class certification and expert reports for a federal lawsuit on behalf of prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF). The lawsuit, which was filed in May 2013, describes the for-profit prison as hyper-violent, grotesquely filthy and dangerous. EMCF is operated “in a perpetual state of crisis” where prisoners are at “grave risk of death and loss of limbs.” The facility, located in Meridian, Mississippi, is supposed to provide intensive treatment to the state’s prisoners with serious psychiatric disabilities, many of whom are locked down in long-term solitary confinement.
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All Cases
December 7, 2021
December 7, 2021
Jones v. Mississippi
Juvenile Justice
Status: Closed (Judgment)
Whether the Eighth Amendment requires a judge or jury to make a finding that a juvenile is “permanently incorrigible” before imposing a sentence of life without parole.
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November 3, 2021
November 3, 2021
ABRAHAM HOUSE OF GOD V. CITY OF HORN LAKE
Religious Liberty
Status: Closed (Settled)
Horn Lake officials unlawfully denied zoning approval for a proposed mosque due to anti-Muslim bias, according to a federal lawsuit filed in November 2021 by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Mississippi, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. Just before holding a vote on the mosque’s site plan, one Horn Lake Alderman ominously warned, “if you let them build it, they will come” and encouraged his fellow board members to “stop it before it gets here.”
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October 24, 2019
October 24, 2019
Brown v. Madison County
Criminal Law Reform
Status: Closed (Settled)
The ACLU of Mississippi, the ACLU, and the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP filed a federal lawsuit against the Madison County Sheriff’s Department to challenge its decades-old policing practices that employ unconstitutional, racially-motivated tactics that target the Black community.
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May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016
Alford v. Moulder
LGBTQ Rights
Status: Closed
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Mississippi today filed a lawsuit to challenge HB 1523, the anti-LGBT law that passed this spring. The lawsuit, which targets the Registrar of Vital Records, was filed on behalf of ACLU of Mississippi members and Nykolas Alford and Stephen Thomas, a gay couple who are engaged to be married and face discrimination as a result of this law.
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December 8, 2011
December 8, 2011
Sturgis v. Copiah County School District
LGBTQ Rights
When graduating senior Ceara Sturgis chose to wear a tuxedo for her senior yearbook photo, rather than the drape typically reserved for girls, her school, Wesson Attendance Center, responded by excluding her entirely from the senior portrait section of the yearbook. The ACLU seeks damages for Ceara and hopes to prevent gender discrimination in the future.
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