Justice

March 21, 2014 - Amid Republican-led efforts in states nationwide to shrink the early voting period before Election Day, voting rights advocates scored a big victory this week in a state where the GOP enjoys a strong majority.

March 13, 2014 - This week Glenn Ford, a black man wrongfully convicted of murder by an all-white jury in Louisiana, was freed after spending 30 years on death row at the state's notorious Angola penitentiary. What did he endure in a place where a federal judge has ruled conditions amount to "cruel and unusual punishment"?

March 7, 2014 - Given its tendency to contaminate water, coal ash is an obvious environmental issue. But its disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and people of color also make it a justice issue.

March 7, 2014 - The restaurant industry is the largest source of sexual harassment claims, while Florida's Coalition of Immokalee Workers says harassment of women farmworkers is pervasive.

March 6, 2014 - With a new poll finding North Carolina voters overwhelmingly want state officials to force Duke Energy to clean up its coal ash pits, a protest outside the governor's mansion that involved the Moral Monday movement leader turned up the heat on the McCrory administration, which is under federal investigation following the Feb. 2 spill into the Dan River.

March 5, 2014 - In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states and local governments with a history of discrimination no longer needed to submit new voting laws for federal approval. Now, voting rights advocates are trying to put them back under oversight using the courts and Congress.

March 3, 2014 - Some people might think the UAW's recent narrow loss at the VW plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. derailed the union's organizing effort at the Nissan plant in Canton, Miss. But workers there point out that their situation -- with a majority-black workforce drawing on a civil rights legacy -- is different.