Human rights watchdog groups ask UN to address racial profiling by French police
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International France, as well as three other French rights groups, on Thursday announced that they had lodged a formal complaint with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), in which they sought the committee’s intervention to address racial profiling by law enforcement authorities in France. HRW [...]
Uganda made international headlines this week as its Constitutional Court upheld the bulk of a draconian law that would impose the death sentence for “aggravated homosexuality.” But for LGBTQ+ activists within the country, the death penalty isn’t the only specter that looms in the judgment’s aftermath. Over the past 15 years, Ugandan authorities have endeavored [...]
Explainer: US Mass Incarceration and Its Disparate Racial Impacts
The US prides itself on being a nation built on freedom, justice, and individual rights. And yet the evolution of its system of mass incarceration — a system that cannot be defined without reference to shocking racial disparities — seems to directly contradict these founding principles. The US prison population dwarfs those of nearly every other [...]
The New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a lawsuit from Tax Equity Now New York (TENNY), which alleges disparities in the New York City property tax system are disproportionately burdening low-income and majority-people-of-color neighborhoods, can go forward in the New York state courts. Judge Jenny Riviera, writing for the court, ruled that the [...]
Book ban attempts in US libraries and schools hit record high in 2023: national library group
The American Library Association (ALA) announced on Thursday that censorship demands and book ban attempts in public libraries and schools hit a record high in 2023. The ALA documented 1,247 demands to ban 4,240 different books. This is a 65 percent increase from 2022, when 2,571 books faced censorship demands. In 17 states, book ban [...]
Class Action Asserts Patient Rights Violated: Genzyme Faces Legal Scrutiny Over Fabry Drug Handling
The US has faced numerous issues involving prescription drugs, especially with rising costs and accessibility of life-saving and required medications. One class action lawsuit (Wilkins et. al. v. Genzyme Corporation (n/k/Sanofi) against Genzyme (now owned by and known as Sanofi, the eighth largest pharmaceutical company in the world) alleges the company intentionally misled patients with [...]
Judge rules in favor of Texas school after student claimed race-based hair discrimination
A Texas judge ruled in favor of Barbers Hill Independent School District on Thursday, finding that the school district did not violate a new state law prohibiting race-based hair discrimination when it punished a black student for refusing to change his hairstyle. The case involved Darryl George, a junior in high school, who was initially [...]
South Africa accuses Israel of apartheid against Palestinians in ongoing case before ICJ
South Africa accused Israel of implementing apartheid against Palestinians during a hearing before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Tuesday, alleging that Israel subjects Palestinians to “discriminatory land zoning and planning policies, punitive and administrative house demolitions and violent army incursions into their villages towns, cities and refugee camps.” Making submissions before the ICJ, [...]
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear an appeal from Derek Lee, a man convicted of second-degree murder who is challenging the state’s law requiring mandatory life prison sentences for those found guilty of the offense who did not intend to kill. The court granted Lee’s petition for an appeal on the [...]
The India Supreme Court unanimously declared unconstitutional the electoral bonds scheme on Wednesday, which previously allowed for anonymous funding to political parties. The electoral bonds scheme was first instituted by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Union government in 2018. It allowed both individuals and corporations to anonymously fund political parties by purchasing electoral bonds from the [...]
