Justice

September 23, 2013 - Whites who live in parts of the South once dominated by the slave economy are much more likely than other Southerners to express resentment toward blacks, to oppose affirmative action, and to vote Republican, according to a new study by political scientists at the University of Rochester.

September 20, 2013 - As U.S. incarceration rates fall, private prison companies are taking steps to guarantee profits with contracts requiring states to either meet prison occupancy quotas or pay for empty beds. Louisiana and Virginia are among the states locked into the highest occupancy guarantee requirements.

September 19, 2013 - The Texas chapter of the NAACP and the state's Mexican American Legislative Caucus are the latest groups to challenge the state's voter photo ID law as racially discriminatory. The Texas fight is likely to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, where other states like Mississippi and North Carolina that recently passed similar laws will be watching closely.

September 18, 2013 - Attorneys with UNC's Center for Civil Rights kept seeing the same injustices -- environmental, educational, economic -- crop up in minority communities where they work across the state. They decided to take a systematic look at the problem and have produced a report and interactive map that illuminate the social and economic disparities created and perpetuated by segregation.

September 16, 2013 - A new report documents an overall rise in homicides in states that have passed versions of the controversial self-defense law. The increase in "justifiable" homicides has been especially dramatic in some Southern states, and African Americans have borne the brunt of the increase in deadly violence.

September 11, 2013 - Plaintiffs suing over North Carolina's controversial new elections law have notified the Civitas Institute -- a conservative think tank founded and largely funded by Republican mega-donor Art Pope, now state budget director -- to preserve documents and other records related to the legislation.

September 11, 2013 - After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, Florida Gov. Rick Scott began planning to reinstate a voter purge program that had been challenged under the law. But his scheme to use a federal database of immigrant welfare benefits is drawing legal fire from advocacy groups that say it will discourage recently naturalized citizens from exercising their voting rights.