Rights Laws

Sen. Barbara Boxer on Thursday urged the Justice Department to enforce voting rights laws following a Los Angeles Times story detailing efforts to purge voter rolls in Ohio. The story described efforts by tea party members to remove at least 2,100 names from voter rolls in the swing state. A group called the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, an offshoot of True the Vote, worked to remove students from rolls for not specifying their dorm room numbers, as one example. It also tried to remove a woman who had lived at the same residence for seven years because her home was listed as a commercial, rather than residential, building.

In the latest chapter of a long-running controversy over anti-Israel protests at UC Berkeley, the U.S. Department of Education has launched an investigation into whether Jewish students at the university are the victims of a "pervasive hostile environment" in violation of federal civil rights laws. Given the importance of free speech, especially in a university setting, the department needs to tread carefully. The department responded to a request from lawyers for two recent Berkeley graduates who earlier had sued the university complaining about a "dangerous anti-Semitic climate" at Berkeley.

Your editorial "A Serving of Justice at Denny's" (May 27) was right on the mark concerning the need to vigorously enforce civil rights laws. No pun intended, but the lawyers in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department hit a "grand slam." As important as the Denny's case may be from a legal perspective, there is a larger, unenforceable issue to be considered: the obligation we all have to be responsible citizens. Obligations imply a moral, not merely a legal, command.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court is not on the ballot in November, but its future direction on issues such as abortion, gay rights, gun rights, voting laws and the role of money in politics depends on who is elected president for the next four years. The justices, who open their annual term Monday, are closely split along ideological lines. The current court has four liberals appointed by Democrats, four conservatives appointed by Republicans, and a centrist Republican in 76-year-old Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

President Bush reached a compromise with key senators from both parties today on legislation extending the nation's civil rights laws to protect the disabled from discrimination. The accord was announced by the White House shortly before the Senate Labor Committee revised and approved the measure on a 16-0 vote, sending it to the full chamber.

The Supreme Court, significantly expanding the scope of civil rights legislation, ruled today that federal civil rights laws aimed primarily at helping blacks may also protect Jews and Arabs against discrimination. The court, in two unanimous decisions, in effect said that race may involve more than skin pigment. In one case, the court cleared the way for a suit by an Arab who said he was denied tenure on a Pennsylvania college faculty because of racial discrimination.

EXPENSIVE CROSS: Before 1992, most cross-burning cases had to be tried in federal court, using obscure property rights laws. But Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove, above) got a bill passed that makes cross-burning a state crime, with a three-year penalty. . . . "If you burn a cross on a black family's door, it's clear you're trying to terrorize them," he says. Umberg is familiar with the issue.

The nation's top civil rights attorney vowed today to step up enforcement of laws against housing bias, hate crimes, racially targeted predatory lending and other discriminatory acts in what he called a new era of "transformation and restoration." Thomas Perez, U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights, also said during a keynote address to an Asian Pacific American civil rights conference in Los Angeles that he would "depoliticize decision-making" and work to restore trust between career attorneys and political appointees in the Justice Department.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles charged a Somis flower rancher, six foremen and an alleged smuggler with enslaving more than 100 Mexican laborers, forcing them to work for sub-minimum wages and selling them food and sundries at inflated prices from a company store. The defendants, including Edwin M. Ives, 54, owner of the ranch in Ventura County, face up to 52 years in prison and $2 million in fines if convicted, according to federal prosecutors.

Re "From 1968 to eternity," Opinion, June 17 I am not sure where Todd Gitlin was in 1968, but I was observing the situation up close. I saw the decades-old fight for basic civil rights degenerate into a demand for special privileges. I saw Students for a Democratic Society trample on democratic principles. I saw academic freedoms and standards diminished by political correctness. Gitlin gives the movement credit for making it possible for Nicolas Sarkozy, descended from Jews, to be elected president of France.

Sen. Barbara Boxer on Thursday urged the Justice Department to enforce voting rights laws following a Los Angeles Times story detailing efforts to purge voter rolls in Ohio. The story described efforts by tea party members to remove at least 2,100 names from voter rolls in the swing state. A group called the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, an offshoot of True the Vote, worked to remove students from rolls for not specifying their dorm room numbers, as one example. It also tried to remove a woman who had lived at the same residence for seven years because her home was listed as a commercial, rather than residential, building.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to resolve an international human rights dispute over whether corporations and political groups can be held liable in American courts for their role in the torture, killing and enslavement of victims abroad. Since the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II, international law has held that human rights abuses can be prosecuted around the globe. And two U.S. laws — the Alien Tort Statute of 1789 and the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1992 — give American courts the jurisdiction to decide human rights cases.

The Supreme Court this week had good news for a Texas death row inmate: He can sue a district attorney who won't give him access to DNA evidence that might clear him. The 6-3 decision, which opens a new avenue of appeal for condemned prisoners, is welcome. But it falls short of what the court should do to make DNA evidence available to every prisoner who requests it. Henry Skinner was convicted of murdering his girlfriend and her two sons in 1993. He says he was in an alcoholic haze during the killings and that his girlfriend's uncle was probably the killer.

On Tuesday, Rand Paul was the outsider of the moment. On Friday, he was out in the cold. Few Republicans jumped to the aid of their party's Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate as he took heat Friday for questioning tenets of civil rights legislation and, later, defending the oil company at the center of the epic spill in the Gulf of Mexico by saying "accidents happen." The silence could hardly come as a shock for a candidate who won his primary Tuesday by promising to tear down the establishment.

With a historic endorsement from the Mormon church, the Salt Lake City Council unanimously passed a pair of ordinances making it illegal to discriminate against gays in housing and employment. It was the first time the church has publicly supported gay rights legislation. Michael Otterson, spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the church "remains unequivocally committed" in its opposition to gay marriage.

The nation's top civil rights attorney vowed today to step up enforcement of laws against housing bias, hate crimes, racially targeted predatory lending and other discriminatory acts in what he called a new era of "transformation and restoration." Thomas Perez, U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights, also said during a keynote address to an Asian Pacific American civil rights conference in Los Angeles that he would "depoliticize decision-making" and work to restore trust between career attorneys and political appointees in the Justice Department.

The Supreme Court voted unanimously today to leave intact a historic civil rights ruling used to combat discrimination, but at the same time limited its scope to make it harder for women and minorities to sue for racial harassment. The high court, in the most important civil rights case of its term, decided against overturning the landmark 1976 ruling that upheld a post-Civil War law outlawing racial discrimination in all private contracts. But in the same ruling the justices split along conservative and liberal lines, voting 5 to 4 in holding that the law does not cover racial harassment lawsuits.

Ken Masugi's letter (July 12) ignores the practical problems involved in enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, sex, etc. The court orders--to which Masugi, President Reagan and William Bradford Reynolds objected--were issued in cases in which the evidence showed, and the trial courts found, that the employer had systematically and intentionally violated the Civil Rights Act and, unless...

Question: I recently was on a flight that was scheduled to depart from New York's JFK at 6:45 p.m. but didn't take off until 11:45 p.m. We were held hostage on the airplane for several hours, during which no beverage or food service was offered. (Water was available at the back of the plane if you got up and went back there and asked for it.) We were not allowed to buy food nor were we allowed to exit the aircraft.

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.