Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

We stand on the front lines fighting to defend our nation’s founding principle – equality for all. Our goal is to ensure that Black people and other people of color have the voice, access, and power to make the promises of our democracy real.

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is one of America's most impactful civil rights organizations today. With the support of a vast network of lawyers in the private bar who provide pro bono support, our staff use litigation, public policy, advocacy, public education, and other forms of service by lawyers to:
- Fight voter suppression and ensure equal access to the ballot box
- Promote a fairer criminal justice system and advance policing reform
- Address economic inequality
- Promote fair housing and community development
- Ensure access to equal educational opportunity
- Create safeguards against digital discrimination, privacy infringement, and algorithmic bias for users of color
For more than 60 years the Lawyers' Committee has utilized legal strategies inside and outside the courtroom to strengthen democracy and create a just America.

Our staff are leaders in their fields who bring decades of experience and expertise in voting rights, housing, education, digital rights and privacy, and worker's rights. Our staff consists of a dynamic group of lawyers, organizers, and support staff, who work together; hold a strong belief in the organization's mission; and bring a commitment to racial equity, diversity, and inclusion to their work.

Our partners include legal, advocacy, grassroots, and community organizations at national, state, and local levels. Crucially, we continue to leverage the support of a vast network of lawyers in the private bar to fuel our work.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is dedicated to supporting and advancing diversity within its workforce and board. Because our commitment to diversity and inclusion is inextricably linked to our pursuit of equal justice for all, we strive to work with a broad and diverse coalition of partner organizations.

There are few organizations that have conducted more civil rights litigation than the Lawyers' Committee. In the last five years, key victories and initiatives that demonstrate our national impact include the following:

- Summer 2023 victory to stop states and counties from using unnecessary and burdensome requirements to disenfranchise Black voters in particular. Due to the intervention of the Lawyers’ Committee and co-counsel, the court has issued a preliminary injunction that stopped Georgia counties from enforcing a requirement in Georgia’s SB202 that stipulates that absentee ballots not be counted if a voter makes an error in filling in their birthdate.

- Providing key information to higher education stakeholders to ensure equal opportunity and access for all students following the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action decision overturning race-conscious admissions. The Lawyers’ Committee was the only civil rights organization to actively participate in the defense of the two cases the Supreme Court decided, and we presented oral arguments before the Supreme Court on behalf of a diverse group of students and alumni from UNC.

- Summer 2023 victory in which the Proud Boys were ordered to pay over $1 million for a racially-motivated attack on a historically Black church.

- Fall 2022 victory on behalf of the Beaumont Branch of the NAACP and a Texas voter who experienced egregious voter intimidation at a historically Black polling location.

- Fall 2021 victory in which the Federal Communications Commission levied a $5 million fine against two individuals who made robocalls targeting Black Americans in an attempt to scare and misinform voters for the 2020 election.

- The nonpartisan Election Protection program’s 866-OUR-VOTE hotline, which is convened and co-led by the Lawyers’ Committee, fielded a record number of calls during the 2020 election season.

- Spring 2019 victory on behalf of the City of San Jose and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration against the Secretary of the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau to enjoin the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census questionnaire.

- 2018 suit filed challenging the unconstitutional jailing of poor defendants in White County, Arkansas. This suit contributed to our Criminal Justice Project’s growing body of work to make tangible progress toward ending indigent incarceration and the criminalization of poverty.

- Winter 2017 victory in our challenge to a debtors’ prison scheme run by the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court (OPCDC) that fails to consider an indigent individual’s ability to pay court debts before jailing them. The ruling connects the OPCDC debtors’ prison scheme with its own pressing need to generate money and holds that any jailing of poor individuals without prior notice and an opportunity to be heard on their ability to pay violates the Fourteenth Amendment.