The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
Although our primary focus is human and civil rights litigation, some of CCR’s landmark cases pertain specifically to economic, social, and cultural rights such as Monell v. Department of Social Services in 1978, in which CCR successfully litigated on behalf of female employees at the Department of Social Services to challenge forced maternity leave policies. Additionally, StreetWatch v. National Railroad Passenger Corp in 1995, where CCR won a federal injunction to prevent Amtrak police from evicting or arresting those they suspected of being homeless where no criminal behavior was suspected.
One of our more recent cases that best exemplifies litigation in the fields of economic, social, and culture rights was Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, in which Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum violated the human rights of protesters and advocates from an ethnic minority group in Nigeria, the Ogoni, who were demonstrating against the destruction of their homeland as a result of Shell’s oil operation in the region. This case settled in June 2009.