Los Angeles California Civil Rights Law Blog

Employees in California and throughout the country are generally protected from discrimination or harassment based on sexual orientation. This is true for Department of Justice workers as well. A group calling itself DOJ Pride sent a letter to the attorney general asking that he investigate discrimination against homosexual and transgender workers. The letter said that FBI trainees are not allowed to become agents if they are not deemed masculine enough.

Furthermore, the letter states that they are evaluated using different criteria. DOJ Pride also said that the Bureau of Prisons made it hard for transgender or gay men to find success. Ultimately, the discrimination caused low morale among workers who perform a crucial role in society, the letter concluded. In response to the letter, the attorney general said that he was bothered by the prospect that these allegations could be true. He then ordered an investigation into the claims made by the group.

A new poll suggests that workers throughout California and the rest of America only speak up about half of the time after hearing colleagues make inappropriate comments to people of the opposite sex. When asked what could be done to improve the situation, about three-quarters of the 1,227 workers surveyed by Georgia-based Randstad US said male workers should be supportive allies and take the lead.

The poll reveals that most workers do not know how to behave in such situations, and only about one in two employers has mentorship or leadership programs in place. The responses also reveal that sexual harassment remains a thorny workplace problem. Almost a quarter of the women surveyed said that they had suffered career setbacks after refusing the sexual advances of a senior male colleague.

More insight is being given into the prescription opioid epidemic in California and around the country as a new study indicates that the drugs may play a role in fatal car accidents. The study, which was published in the JAMA Network Open, found that drivers who were under the influence of opioids were twice as likely to be at fault in fatal two-car accidents compared to the other driver not using the drugs. The most common error found in the accidents studied was drivers veering out of their lanes into other traffic.

The study was done by researchers at the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. Researchers looked at data from 18,321 fatal two-car motor vehicle accidents reported in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. Over 7,500 of the accidents occurred due to drivers not staying in their proper lane. In the accidents analyzed, 918 of the drivers who were at fault were under the influence of prescription drugs versus 549 who were not at fault.

A large U.S. auto maker that sells models in California and in many other parts of the world is being sued in federal court for acts of racism at its transmission plant. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio by nine former workers who allege that they were wrongfully terminated and ignored when bringing up civil rights violations. They said that they were repeatedly harassed by their white co-workers throughout their employment at the plant.

One major allegation in the lawsuit was the display of nooses in the plant over a three-month period. The auto maker suspended one employee spotted throwing a noose at a black worker but did nothing more according to the plaintiffs. The workers also allege many other racist activities, including wearing Nazi regalia, using slurs and putting "whites only" signs outside of bathrooms. Plaintiffs claim they have photographic evidence of many of these actions.