Civil Rights

You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana state line if you're African American, but you might not be able to drive out of it -- at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables. That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime.

Tens of thousands of gays, lesbians and supporters marched through the nation's capital Sunday in a festive, forceful call for equality, culminating in a boisterous rally at the Capitol. The National Equality March took place one day after President Obama made sweeping pledges to the gay community, including a vow to end the military policy of "don't ask, don't tell" -- which bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces. Obama gave no timetable for repealing the policy.

The Patriot Act -- a favorite tool in the George W. Bush administration's fight against terrorism -- may be renamed later this year as the Justice Act. But the law itself, including its controversial provisions that gave FBI agents more leeway to search computers and bank records, is likely to survive, albeit with some changes to limit who can be searched. "Security and liberty are both essential in our free society," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.

The Supreme Court served notice Friday it may make a far-reaching change in civil rights law this year and knock down a pair of long-standing rules that give special protections to minorities in the workplace and in the voting booth. The justices, after meeting privately, announced they had voted to hear two cases that concern the lingering role of race in American life. The cases could put the court on a collision course with the incoming Obama administration.

Employees who cooperate with an internal investigation and report inappropriate behavior in the workplace are protected from retaliation under civil rights laws, the Supreme Court said Monday, strengthening the laws against sexual harassment on the job.

If there was still skepticism six months ago that an African American could be elected president of the United States, imagine how unlikely the prospect felt to Nat King Cole a half-century ago when he recorded the song "We Are Americans Too." Cole's recording session came just one month after some white supremacists assaulted him on stage during a concert in April 1956 in Montgomery, Ala. He never performed another concert in the South.

The Chicago gun case revives one of the fiercest debates in constitutional law: Did the Bill of Rights, including its famous provisions protecting the freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion and the right against "unreasonable searches and seizures," protect the basic rights of all Americans, or did it only protect them against an overly powerful national government? In the 19th century, the Bill of Rights was limited to federal laws. The words of the 1st Amendment begin with the phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . or abridging the freedom of speech."

A baseball fan who says he was ejected from Yankee Stadium after he left his seat to use the bathroom while "God Bless America" was playing sued the New York Yankees and the city Wednesday. Bradford Campeau-Laurion says in his federal lawsuit that his rights were violated at an Aug. 26 game between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox when he tried to pass a police officer, who was being paid by the Yankees to work at the Bronx stadium.

The federal government's crackdown on suspected terrorism financing since the Sept. 11 attacks has violated the rights of American Muslim charities and deterred Muslims from charitable giving, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report Tuesday. An expansion of laws and policies since 2001 has given the U.S.

The Orange County district attorney's office has nearly quadrupled its DNA database over the last nine months, to about 15,000 individual profiles, and officials say they hope to start using it to identify criminal suspects by early next year. The agency's effort to build a database exempt from the rules that govern state and national DNA repositories has made Orange County unique among local governments in California. Much of the rapid growth has come from cases in which prosecutors drop charges against low-level offenders who agree to submit DNA samples.