The League of Iowa
Human & Civil Rights Agencies

Duncan will pressure schools to enforce civil rights laws

By Nick Anderson, Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, March 8, 2010

Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to announce Monday that his agency is ramping up enforcement of civil rights laws in schools and colleges, a move that seeks to draw a ...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah lawmakers will not consider a law that would ban discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the workplace and in housing, and will instead spend the next year studying the issue, key lawmakers said Friday. In exchange, opponents of gay-rights legislation will drop any effort to prevent local governments from passing their own nondiscrimination laws this legislative session.

The head of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission warns there’ll be delays in investigating complaints of discrimination because budget cuts have sharply reduced his staff of full-time workers. Ralph Rosenberg’s agency investigates claims of discrimination on the basis of race, age, sexual orientation and other factors. He told a budget panel at the statehouse that more and more of the commission’s work is being done by volunteers. “We now have more people who are not staff...

In a landmark settlement announced this week, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and its member organizations reached an agreement with A.G. Spanos Companies to increase housing accessibility for people with disabilities. It is the largest fair housing settlement relating to people with disabilities to date, according to NFHA. The agreement requires Spanos, the fifth largest residential real estate developer in the United States, to retrofit apartments in 11 states with accommodations ...

When Amanda Simpson starts her new job this week, she will make history as the first openly transgender presidential appointee to the federal government. Simpson, 49, will serve as a senior technical adviser for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, where she will monitor the exports of U.S. weapons technology. In a related development this week, the Obama administration has adjusted the language on the federal jobs web site to explicitly ban employment discrimination bas...

The Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Services instituted a ban on clothing that obscures the face, including face veils and burqas, weeks after a Muslim alumnus who is also the son of a professor was charged with plotting terrorism strikes. Michael Ratty, a spokesman for the Boston school, said the policy was developed in the fall during a review of safety procedures and was unrelated to the arrest of the 2008 graduate, Tarek Mehanna.

For decades, boarding houses for disabled people have operated without supervision of state health inspectors. That will change in January when state officials begin developing a database of boarding houses throughout Iowa. It's one of several initiatives to grow out of the scandal involving the alleged exploitation of mentally retarded processing-plant workers in Atalissa.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) may be outraging liberals with his opposition to the Medicare buy-in provision and public option in the Senate health-care reform bill, but his sponsorship of a key federal workplace measure showcases him as a progressive in a different arena.  The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8 to 1 on Wednesday to approve a bill that grants full domestic benefits to the partners of gay federal employees. Lieberman chairs the panel and...

For more than half a century, the United Nations and numerous international organizations have affirmed the principle of religious freedom.1 For just as many decades, journalists and human rights groups have reported on persecution of minority faiths, outbreaks of sectarian violence and other pressures on religious individuals and communities in many countries. But until now, there has been no quantitative study that reviews an extensive number of sources to measure how governments and privat...

ALBUQUERQUE - A federal jury has awarded more than $200,000 to an Albuquerque man who claimed police violated his civil rights when they locked him in a police car for hours because he refused to answer their questions. The verdict returned on Friday also will award attorney fees to lawyers who represented Danny Manzanares. The trial was the fourth for the case in U.S. District Court resulting from the allegations against the Albuquerque officer who handcuffed Manzanares during a March 2002 i...