The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Earlier this week at its 102nd Annual Convention in Los Angeles, the NAACP issued a resolution entitled, “A Call to End the War on Drugs, Allocate Funding to Investigate Substance Abuse Treatment, Education, and Opportunities in Communities of Color for A Better Tomorrow.” While the text of the resolution will not be available until its national board approves it in October, a press statement following the vote criticized the drug war as discriminatory, costly, and counterproductive.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has endorsed a limited form of retroactive application of sentencing guidelines designed to take into account the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discriminatory sentencing disparity between powder cocaine and crack cocaine offenses.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that overcrowding in California prisons, which has led to grossly unsanitary conditions and inadequate access to medical and mental health care, violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

Use of excessive force, racial and ethnic profiling, and under-enforcement of violence against women are just a few of several constitutional and federal law violations made by the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), according to a report recently released by the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is calling on Rep. Peter King, R. N.Y., to cancel a hearing scheduled for Thursday on "radicalization of the American Muslim community and homegrown terrorists." The hearing is a "disservice to the seriousness of the topic of 'domestic terrorism,'" the coalition said.