Civil Rights

For all the hand-wringing among Democrats about the tough choices the party's voters are facing in their selection of a presidential nominee, it's nothing compared to the troubles Republicans are creating for themselves this year. On that side of the aisle, three contests, including this week's primary in Michigan, have yielded three very different winners, with no sign of a uniter anywhere on the horizon.

In many churches this weekend, religious leaders will extol the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in anticipation of Monday's federal holiday in his honor. Some will quote from his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. Others will invoke a letter he wrote while in an Alabama jail four months earlier.

Civil rights groups filed a petition in federal court Thursday seeking a restraining order against immigration officials who allegedly blocked workers detained in a raid at a Van Nuys manufacturing plant from consulting with their attorneys.

The Rev. James Orange, who rose from foot soldier to leader in the civil rights movement and whose 1965 jailing set in motion events that ultimately led to the bloody Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama, died Saturday at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta. He was 65. Orange, who later became an organizer with the AFL-CIO and fought apartheid in South Africa, had gallbladder surgery last week, but the cause of his death was unknown, his daughter Jamida Orange said Sunday.

Civil rights groups said Thursday that they had reached a settlement with federal officials guaranteeing that workers nabbed in an immigration raid last month in Van Nuys can be accompanied by an attorney to all meetings and interrogations.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was the guest of honor Friday at a Los Angeles mosque. But it was the spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that held the crowd. "King was a leader who gave his life working for justice," said Muzammil H. Siddiqi, religious director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, in his sermon during Jumah, the weekly prayer service. "He stood for freedom, justice and equality among all. These are principles that we have to talk about as often as possible."

A longtime Los Angeles civil rights attorney is trying a new strategy to push federal immigration authorities to change the way they conduct workplace raids. Peter Schey filed 114 federal claims for damages late Thursday on behalf of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who were temporarily detained during a recent raid at Micro Solutions Enterprises in Van Nuys. On Feb.

A Quaker who lost her appointment as a Cal State Fullerton lecturer after she objected to a state loyalty oath submitted a revised statement of her beliefs Thursday in a bid to win the job back. People For the American Way, a Washington-based civil rights group now representing lecturer Wendy Gonaver, called on the university to reinstate her and adopt a policy protecting the religious freedom of all California State University system employees.

The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental "right to marry" that extends equally to same-sex couples.

For several hours, as he waited to get booked for petty theft at the Los Angeles County Jail in October, Peter Johnson told deputies he needed to go to the restroom. Although other inmates were free to use the facilities, Johnson -- a paraplegic -- was told there were none in the area equipped to accommodate the physically disabled. Guards, he said, seemed indifferent to his plight, telling him he simply had to wait.