It is with great sadness that we mourn the passing of former SLC Litigation Director Neil Chonin this past April. Neil joined SLC in spring of 2006 and retired from SLC in 2016. He was a board certified civil trial advocate, having been a trial lawyer spanning a legal career of more than 50 years. Neil was also a prominent, board-certified labor and employment lawyer. He obtained his law and undergraduate degrees from the University of Florida. Neil enjoyed his return to Gainesville to cap off an illustrious legal career with a decade of service to SLC. He was often seen attending UF sporting events and wearing orange and blue to show his school spirit.

OCALA, FL – Southern Legal Counsel and the ACLU of Florida filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the city of Ocala on behalf of Roger Luebke, Kimberly Burnham, William Anthony Taylor, Victor Hoyt Cox, Dustin Damico, and Patrick McArdle, who have been arrested for asking people for help.

“Ocala’s ordinances prohibiting people from asking for help are unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth amendments,” said lead counsel Chelsea Dunn of Southern Legal Counsel. “Every individual in this case has been subject to arrest based on the content of their speech. They have been jailed and assessed fines for acts as harmless as asking a stranger for a cigarette.”

Southern Legal Counsel expanded its UF Healthy Kids Medical Legal Partnership (MLP) in 2020 to UF Health’s Pediatric Endocrinology and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology divisions.

Since launching the MLP in 2018 as a pilot in the UF Severe Asthma Clinic, SLC staff attorneys have met with 47 patients and their families and have identified 114 health-harming legal needs. Its early success was chronicled in UF Health’s The Post in 2019.

As the Trump Administration came to an end in January, so did efforts to roll back transgender protections under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Equal Access Rule.

Southern Legal Counsel was among the organizations that issued statements protesting a rule HUD first proposed in the spring of 2019 that appeared to weaken the Equal Access Rule and its enforcement mechanisms, which require equal access to housing and homeless services for transgender and gender-non-conforming (TGNC) individuals. At the time, sex-segregated shelters could not refuse to admit TGNC persons and were required to house them according to their gender identity.

Abigail Adkins was just six months into her two-year Equal Justice Works fellowship at Southern Legal Counsel when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools where she was working to improve safety by advocating for the provision of comprehensive school- and community-based mental health services for at-risk students.

“COVID-19 school closures delayed or disrupted special education services and accommodations for a lot of the students I work with, in addition to the broader impacts on student mental health and well-being,” said Adkins, whose fellowship is sponsored by McDermott Will & Emery and Darden Restaurants Inc. “As students return to in-person classes, it is more important than ever for educators and families to support kids’ social and emotional needs.”

(Feb. 8, 2021, OCALA, Fla.) – Three Ocala residents who are experiencing homelessness and thus had been repeatedly arrested under the city’s open lodging ordinance today won their case challenging the ordinance’s constitutionality when U.S. District Court Judge James S. Moody ruled that the ordinance “unlawfully punishes an individual based on their homeless status.”

In partnership with Equality Florida, the state’s largest statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization, Southern Legal Counsel has engaged with all 67 Florida school districts to educate their leadership, personnel, students and parents on how to affirm, support, and protect LGBTQ students and their rights.

(October 15, 2020, Jacksonville, FL) – In a major First Amendment victory, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida has declared Florida Statutes 316.2045 and 337.406—which prohibit the solicitation of charitable contributions on Florida roadways except by charitable organizations or when a local government permit has been issued— unconstitutional.

Southern Legal Counsel (SLC) led a coalition of Florida-based organizations submitting a formal comment to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today on a proposed Equal Access rule change that seeks to rollback protections requiring that LGBTQ individuals have equal access to housing and homeless services.

After achieving a victory in Marion County Court for Anthony Cummings, a homeless man who had been illegally assessed $824 in court costs and had his driver’s license suspended in three cases of “open lodging” under an Ocala ordinance, Southern Legal Counsel and the ACLU of Florida also brought about systemic change affecting more than 10,000 people in 29 counties.

Obtaining a legal name change is an essential and monumental step in many transgender individuals’ lives, and the process requires access to the courts. When pro se litigants in Miami-Dade County filed petitions for name change through Florida’s E-Filing portal, their petitions were wrongfully “abandoned” by the Clerk of Court, who refused to docket them. SLC and Legal Service of Greater Miami (LSGMI) intervened and fought to ensure that all pro se litigants would have access to the courts without facing unnecessary administrative obstacles.

BOSTON (July 8, 2020) – The United States Conference of Mayors, along with organizations in South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana devoted to their states’ ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, Wednesday filed an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit filed by Equal Means Equal and other plaintiffs, demanding the federal government publish the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Washington, D.C. (June 29, 2020) – The United States Conference of Mayors, along with organizations in South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana devoted to their states’ ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, today filed an amicus brief in support of Virginia, Illinois and Nevada in their lawsuit demanding the federal government add the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (May 14, 2020) ‒ With complete disregard to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 guidance, this morning at 10 a.m. Gainesville Police Department and Florida Department of Corrections officers ordered those living in a homeless encampment near Grace Marketplace to vacate the area.

Southern Legal Counsel submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) April 13 opposing a recently proposed HUD rule allowing faith-based organizations to participate in any HUD program or activity with “permissible accommodations” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The City of Fort Lauderdale will consider amendments to its camping ordinance tonight at 6pm. The proposed amendments will expand the geographic scope of the City’s current camping ordinance to much of the City during an unprecedented public health emergency.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Southern Legal Counsel, the ACLU of Florida, and pro bono attorney Eric Lindstrom today filed a federal lawsuit against the Florida Department of Management Services, the University of Florida, and the Public Defender of the Second Judicial Circuit of Florida on behalf of named plaintiffs Jami Claire and Kathryn Lane, who as state employees were denied medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria because of the state’s categorical exclusion of coverage for “gender reassignment or modification services or supplies.”

As 2019 comes to a close, we at Southern Legal Counsel remain hard at work writing briefs, preparing for upcoming litigation and doing what we do day in and day out to defend your constitutional rights – our constitutional rights – against assault and erosion.

This year we have made progress in several important cases, including the continued defense of the right to share food in public places as a form of protected First Amendment expression, as supported by the federal Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a landmark opinion.

In February of this year, Southern Legal Counsel and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty sued St. Johns County Sheriff David B. Shoar and Florida Highway Patrol Director Gene Spaulding on behalf of Peter Vigue, a St. Augustine resident who has been repeatedly arrested for standing on the public right of way and asking for help in the form of money or other charitable assistance.

Ocala resident Anthony Cummings, who is homeless, was arrested three times in 2012 and 2016 for violating Ocala’s open lodging ordinance, the legality of which Southern Legal Counsel and the ACLU of Florida are now challenging in a federal class action lawsuit in which Cummings is one of three named plaintiffs.