Human Rights

January 12, 2017 - Andrew Puzder, CEO of the company that owns Hardee's and Carl's Jr., has opposed even modest minimum wage increases while his employees have struggled with labor law violations and rampant sexual harassment.

January 12, 2017 - Poised to strike down the Affordable Care Act without a viable replacement, Congress appears to be "walking in the darkness of destructive selfishness" that Dr. King warned against.

January 6, 2017 - This week North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) announced he would take action to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, just months after his Louisiana counterpart did the same. But now congressional Republicans are vowing to repeal the law altogether.

January 6, 2017 - Passed last March, North Carolina's discriminatory HB2 "bathroom bill" has inflicted major economic damage on the state, costing it more than half a billion dollars as businesses, athletics organizations, film companies and conferences have canceled expansions and events in protest. Here's the latest tally of that lost revenue.

January 5, 2017 - As U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama prepares for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week, civil rights groups are working to block his nomination, citing his poor record on civil rights and role in targeting African-American voting rights activists.

December 23, 2016 - In a year when it was hard to keep up with the onslaught of political news, Facing South helped to make sense of important developments and to share insights about the region. Catch up on our best reporting of 2016 with a roundup of our top stories of the year.  

December 22, 2016 - The recent move by North Carolina's GOP-controlled legislature to strip powers from Democratic Gov.-elect Roy Cooper is an example of basic democratic norms being undermined in a radical way, authoritarianism expert Yascha Mounk of Harvard University told an NPR talk show this week.

December 16, 2016 - Immigrant advocates in Southern states say they'll continue to fight deportations and hostile rhetoric under the new administration — just as they have done for years at the state and local level.

December 9, 2016 - The mistrial declared this week in the case of the North Charleston police officer who shot unarmed Coast Guard veteran Walter Scott in the back following a traffic stop is part of a long history of dehumanizing treatment of Black veterans in the South that's documented in a new report.

December 1, 2016 - This week the Southern Poverty Law Center issued two reports documenting how Trump's election has led to a spike in hate incidents, with over 200 taking place in the South alone.