Texas Civil Rights Project

Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas. TCRP uses legal advocacy to empower Texas communities and create policy change. In its twenty-five year history, TCRP has brought thousands of strategic lawsuits, defending voting rights, fighting institutional discrimination, reforming systems of criminal justice, and protecting First Amendment values.

TCRP has also assembled self-help manuals on issues such as Title IX and disability rights, given more than 400 civil rights talks and speeches across Texas to diverse groups (such as school conferences, police and law enforcement trainings, senior citizens’ organizations, and Continuing Legal Education programs), and published eleven Human Rights Reports on issues such as hate crimes, jail standards, and sexual harassment in Texas secondary schools.

The South Texas Project (STP) was founded in 1972 by the ACLU. In 1978, attorney James C. Harrington created Oficina Legal del Pueblo Unido, Inc. (OLPU) as a grassroots foundation in South Texas. STP came under the auspices of OLPU soon after OLPU was founded. OLPU was a part of the late-1960s farm worker movement headed by César Chávez. Chávez’s efforts to organize the South Texas farm worker community and to ultimately secure union contracts for them led to the birth of both OLPU and the United Farm Workers. OLPU is one of the oldest and foremost proponents of civil rights in the Rio Grande Valley, and has long worked on behalf of farm workers, abused immigrant women, people with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged people along the US/Mexico border.

In September 1990, James Harrington founded Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) as a program of OLPU in Austin, Texas. STP also became a project of TCRP the same year.

Today, TCRP’s main office is located at the Michael Tigar Human Rights Center in Austin, Texas. Other regional offices are in El Paso and the South Texas, which remained in its initial location in San Juan until the grand opening of its new facility in Alamo, TX on June 22, 2011. TCRP also has offices in Houston and Dallas. While TCRP operates out of these regional offices, its services are available to individuals across the state.

A fire on October 30, 2013 severely damaged TCRP-Austin's office building. The fire was determined by the Austin Fire Department to be accidental. TCRP was back to work the day of the fire, as TCRP was immediately offered office space by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.

TCRP works on the following issue areas.

Voting Rights

The need for democracy reform in Texas is critical given the state’s bottom-of-the-barrel voter turnout. In 2016, TCRP’s advocacy is geared towards improving Texas’ voter registration system — which, as President Obama noted, lags behind other states “because the folks who are currently governing the good state of Texas aren’t interested in having more people participate.” Millions of eligible voters remain shut out of the democratic process, a disparate number of whom are young, poor and people of color. No other legal advocacy organization in Texas is focused on these issues.

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