Discrimination

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

A federal appeals court in Washington has upheld a key part of the Voting Rights Act, one that requires states and localities with a history of discrimination against minorities to "pre-clear" changes in their election procedures with the Department of Justice or a federal court. The reasoning behind the 2-1 ruling is persuasive; Chief JusticeJohn G. Roberts Jr.and other members of the Supreme Court should exercise judicial restraint by refusing to reconsider it. In an earlier, 2009 decision, the chief justice recognized that Congress has the power to enforce the 15th Amendment's guarantee of a right to vote.

In three years of teaching English in South Korea, Tony Hellmann says he's seen discrimination both in and out of the classroom. He knows teachers, he says, who are harassed for having Korean girlfriends. He's met only three black instructors in his time. And he's been denied service in Korean bars. "I've been told to leave because I'm a foreigner," the 33-year-old Seattle native said.

I love my dog. Sure, he has issues - what lover doesn't? He wheezes when he sleeps, or when he's awake. There is an unexplainable darkness to his soul that emerges when he's under extreme stress. He also has a taste for the blood in mosquito bites. (The vet thinks he might be a vampire.) Being from L.A., our dog is prone to anxiety attacks and an almost debilitating sense of envy, particularly when coming upon younger, fitter dogs, which almost all dogs are. The last time we weighed him, he was close to 300 pounds.

A Corona del Mar podiatrist is struggling to get his foot in the door at a prestigious medical building complex in Newport Beach, complaining that the landlord is discriminating against his profession. Ivar Roth, 36, describes himself as "very conservative" and said he fits right into the traditional Newport Beach physician community. "I follow the rules," he said. "I don't make trouble."

Reporting from San Francisco The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that Proposition 209, the ballot measure that banned affirmative action by government, did not violate the federal Constitution. In a 6-1 ruling, the majority rejected a defense argued by San Francisco after it was sued over a program that gave women and minorities an advantage in obtaining city contracts. The court said the affirmative action program may continue only if the city shows it was narrowly tailored to address intentional discrimination by the city against businesses owned by women and minorities and that preferences were necessary to rectify the discrimination.

Even though the labor market is improving, thousands of unemployed Californians are caught in a bind: Some employers only want to hire them if they already have a job. Some companies state that plainly in employment ads. Others are more discreet, screening out jobless workers during the initial application process. Discrimination? Perhaps. But so far it's legal. But it won't be if a bill introduced this week by Assemblyman Michael Allen (D-Santa Rosa) is approved by California lawmakers.

A government-appointed commission in Pakistan called Tuesday for the abolition of strict Islamic laws, which rights activists say discriminate against women. The Islamic Hudud Ordinances were passed in 1979 under the dictatorship of Gen. Zia ul-Haq and cover a range of crimes. One of the most controversial provisions states that a woman must have four male witnesses to prove rape or face a charge of adultery herself. Men and women found guilty of adultery face stoning or 100 lashes.

The Trinity Broadcasting Network, which bills itself as the world's largest Christian network, is embroiled in a legal battle involving allegations of massive financial fraud and lavish spending, including the purchase of a $100,000 motor home for family dogs. Brittany Koper, a former high-ranking TBN official and the granddaughter of its co-founder, Paul Crouch Sr., was fired by the network in September after discovering "illegal financial schemes" amounting to tens of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court.

Now that the U.S. is getting rid of affirmative action, i.e., discrimination favoring those who have been getting the short end of the stick for centuries, is it going to get rid of the Small Business Administration (discrimination favoring self-styled entrepreneurs), the tax break for mortgage interest (discrimination favoring homeowners) and the Veterans' Administration (discrimination favoring ex-soldiers)? I just thought I should ask. JAMES DEVINE Los Angeles

UMM AL FAHM, Israel — He's an Israeli-born Islamist whom the government considers so dangerous he's been banned from stepping foot in Jerusalem. Yet his prison stints over the last decade for allegedly funding terrorist groups, inciting violence and spitting on an Israeli security officer — all of which he denies — have only served to make Sheik Raed Saleh, 53, extremely popular and influential among Arab Israelis. After returning this month from London, where he successfully fought deportation by British immigration officials who cited his controversial views, Saleh received a hero's welcome.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - In a landmark ruling, a North Carolina judge on Friday vacated the death penalty of a black man convicted of murder, saying prosecutors across the state had engaged in deliberate and systematic racial discrimination when striking black potential jurors in death penalty cases. The ruling was the first under North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, passed in 2009, which allows judges to reduce death sentences to life in prison without parole when defendants can prove racial bias in jury selection.

NEW DELHI - She was called dirty, ugly, a "little packet of poison," the offspring of donkeys. These days, Kalpana Saroj is called something else: a millionaire. Saroj, a dalit , or "untouchable," epitomizes what was once unthinkable in India: upward mobility for someone whose caste long meant she would die as she was born: uneducated, dirt-poor, doomed to a life of dangerous and filthy work. The manufacturing tycoon - one admirer called her "a real slumdog millionaire" - is among a legion of dalits embracing new opportunities in business, politics, the arts and academia as prejudices ease and economic reforms open new doors in a culture that traditionally emphasized fate and reincarnation.

Iowa's state government employment practices do not discriminate against African Americans, a judge ruled Tuesday, rejecting an "uncommon approach" to this area of the law. In a 56-page decision, District Judge Robert Blink ruled against the plaintiffs in what is believed to be one of the largest class-action suits of its kind, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of applicants and job-holders within the state's executive branch going back...

Dale Berman doesn't just have a rooting interest in the Supreme Court upholding the healthcare reform law. You could say his life depends on it. Berman, 54, of Burbank is a freelance photographer who has hadCrohn's diseasehis entire life. Crohn's is a severe intestinal disorder that can cause intense pain and a variety of complications. Berman has had to undergo three operations and has been hospitalized on numerous occasions. He's also watched as his insurance costs have steadily increased over the years, forcing him to seek refuge in government programs for "high-risk" patients who are unable to receive affordable coverage from private-sector insurers.

WASHINGTON-- Rejecting pressure from gay rights activists, President Obama has decided not issue an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating on the basis on sexual orientation, his spokesman said Thursday. Obama “is committed to securing equal rights” for gays and lesbians, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. But he added that for now the president would pursue a slower path on the issue. Carney said Obama would continue to push for passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would provide broader protection.

Re "Voters will decide on gay marriage," June 3 I remember when California voters in 1964 passed an initiative to legalize racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that to be unconstitutional, just as the courts have banned segregation and laws against mixed-race marriages. Some people railed against these court decisions, but they eventually got back to their own lives. Courts have often led the way in banning discrimination, but hopefully California voters will reject the discriminatory initiative targeting same-sex marriage.

Jamaa Fanaka, who emerged as a dynamic black filmmaker with his gritty independent 1979 film "Penitentiary" and later made headlines with his legal battles alleging widespread discrimination against women and ethnic minorities in the film and television industry, has died. He was 69. Fanaka was found dead in his apartment in South Los Angeles on Sunday, said his daughter Tracey L. Gordon. The cause of death has not been determined, but she said it probably was the result of complications of diabetes.

Behind the bolted steel doors of an old brick warehouse, Big Wes meets a nutrient company scientist to see if he can increase his crop yield. Rows of hydroponic marijuana plants soak up solution flowing through plastic troughs and light blazing from high-pressure sodium lamps. Big Wes has spent more than half his life calibrating his system of growing high-grade marijuana to its utmost efficiency. At 50 years old, he harvests a crop of dozens of plants every week from five rented warehouses scattered along the rutted streets and alleys around the docks of Oakland.