Race Discrimination

A Long Beach woman who was fired in December as Hawaiian Gardens' housing officer has filed a racial discrimination complaint against the city. Cheryl Shavers, who is black, said Latino city officials got rid of her because she was helping too many blacks move into Hawaiian Gardens through a federal rent-subsidy program that she administered. City Administrator Nelson Oliva said Shavers' allegations are "totally ludicrous." Shavers was fired Dec.

When the federal government passed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act to curb the number of illegal immigrants, it also touched off a series of unfair and illegal employment practices by employers, according to workers rights advocates. The law, which made it illegal to hire undocumented workers, has scared many employers into discriminating against certain individuals, these advocates say.

The state Department of Fair Employment and Housing has accused the Centinela Valley Union High School District and its board of trustees of racial discrimination against two high-ranking former black employees at Hawthorne High School.

Despite protests of racial discrimination from the black owner and supporters of a Sunset Strip nightclub, the West Hollywood City Council has refused to issue a dance license to the club, preventing it from operating as a private discotheque. The council's action last week capped a month of controversy over the fate of Glitter, a nightclub in the 9000 block of Sunset Boulevard.

Four Los Angeles police officers on Friday accused top department officials -- including the former head of the internal affairs bureau -- of discrimination for failing to include them in a new unit to investigate use-of-force incidents. The investigators -- two African Americans and two Latinos -- held a news conference at the Woodland Hills offices of attorney Bradley Gage to announce a lawsuit against the department.

State Insurance Commissioner Harry Low warned insurers Friday that they will be held financially accountable for past race discrimination in the sale of life insurance in California and nationwide. Insurers that charged minorities higher premiums than those paid by whites must make financial amends, Low told a group of consumer and minority activists at a hearing at West Angeles Church of God in Christ. "Even though the discrimination has ended, that's not enough," Low said.

Southern California Edison, for months the target of slow-moving federal investigations into alleged racial bias, on Wednesday was hit with a big new headache: a class-action discrimination suit crafted by one of the nation's most celebrated plaintiffs' law firms. The suit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles by nine African American Edison employees, is being handled by the Oakland law firm of Saperstein, Mayeda & Goldstein.

Republican critics of affirmative action hailed Monday's Supreme Court decision as a mandate for even more sweeping action by Congress and vowed to press home their attack on federal programs of racial preference.

Racial disparity in home mortgage lending has scarcely changed since 1990, despite a two-year campaign by bankers and the government to wipe out loan discrimination, a study released Tuesday shows. The Clinton Administration, meanwhile, announced a program designed to pump more than $34 billion worth of mortgages into inner cities and to low-income people through 1994.

A federal appeals court Wednesday narrowly rejected the request of a former Cal State Hayward professor that it rehear a case in which it overturned a $637,000 damage judgment a jury awarded him after deciding that he had been denied tenure based on his race. The San Francisco-based U.S.