state legislatures

August 23, 2019 - With the critical once-a-decade population count just months away, only three states in the South have allocated any state funding to encourage participation.

August 15, 2019 - Though the National Rifle Association faces numerous investigations into alleged wrongdoing, one of its lobbyists bragged just weeks before the El Paso massacre that 2019 was a "highly successful" year for it in Texas — and that's not the only state where the gun rights group has continued to flex its political muscle.

June 18, 2019 - The man who gunned down his three Muslim neighbors in Chapel Hill in 2015 has pleaded guilty to their murders, but he couldn't be charged under North Carolina's hate crime law because it doesn't cover felonies. That's just one of many weaknesses in those state laws, which advocates are trying to strengthen.

June 14, 2019 - Rev. Dr. William Barber, head of the Poor People's Campaign, was recently sentenced to a year of probation for trespassing after refusing orders to leave a protest at the North Carolina legislature. Barber plans to appeal — and to continue pressing for Southern legislatures to be open to their citizens. 

May 3, 2019 - After voters approved a constitutional amendment restoring the franchise to people with felony convictions, Florida lawmakers are trying to make it harder for citizens to put amendments on the ballot. Legislators in Arkansas, the only other Southern state that allows citizen-initiated amendments, did likewise after voters passed a minimum-wage hike.

April 12, 2019 - Even as support for LGBTQ equality grows nationally, lawmakers in three Southern states are advancing legislation that would continue to discriminate.

March 14, 2019 - For the amendment banning sex discrimination by the federal and state governments to be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, one more state needs to ratify it. Most of the states that haven't ratified the ERA are in the South, but ratification bills were introduced in seven Southern states this year.