SAN FRANCISCO - A California State Superior Court today handed a substantial victory to the coalition of civil rights groups that are fighting to reform California's failed and inequitable school system in the landmark, statewide education lawsuit, Williams v. State of California, filed last May. The State earlier filed a smokescreen cross-complaint, in which the State attempted to blame individual school districts rather than acknowledge any responsibility for its own system, and today the Court severed that suit from Williams v State of California and put off any proceedings on it until Williams is decided.

"This is a tremendous victory for plaintiffs," said John Affeldt of Public Advocates, Inc., who argued the motion. "Today the Judge removed the State's case against the districts from our case and prevented that case from proceeding. Now we will be focusing exclusively on the State's failure to establish an effective system of oversight which delivers fundamental educational tools to students in the state."

"The Judge's order," said Michael Jacobs, a partner at Morrison & Foerster, pro bono co-counsel in the case, "will allow school children to get the real relief they need as quickly as possible without a needless finger-pointing exercise against school districts that cannot themselves do what the state should have done in the first instance."

"The State tried to pass the buck to school districts," said Catherine Lhamon, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, "but the Judge put the buck right back where it belongs - in the lap of the state."

The Court also denied the State's motion for summary judgment on a group of plaintiffs from Cloverdale, whose classrooms routinely reach unbearably high temperatures.

LOS ANGELES - The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California reported today on Los Angeles mayoral candidates' responses to the ACLU's questions about police reform. The report, which asked mayoral candidates questions concerning Rampart, the consent decree, structural reforms beyond the consent decree, and the problem of officer morale, reveals a general commitment to reform - with key differences on specific measures.

Four of the major candidates, Congressmember Xavier Becerra, State Controller Kathleen Connell, City Attorney James Hahn, and Speaker Emeritus of the California Assembly Antonio Villaraigosa, responded to the survey. Two of the major candidates, Councilmember Joel Wachs, and real estate developer Steve Soboroff, declined to participate.

"All four of the candidates who responded call for reforms that go beyond what the federal consent decree requires," said Ramona Ripston, Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California. "This signals a huge shift from the current mayoral administration's position. Each of these candidates stated that he or she would have called for an independent investigation if he or she had been mayor. I don't think people realize what a momentous sea change this represents. The ACLU called for such an investigation from the beginning, and few listened. But less than two years later, four of the six major candidates share this opinion."

Other highlights of the survey include:

--Three of the four candidates, Becerra, Connell, and Villaraigosa, support creating an Office of Civilian Complaints, charged with the independent investigation of civilian complaints, staffed by trained civilian investigators, and funded at a level to make the swift and thorough investigation of all complaints possible. Connell suggests modeling the office on San Francisco's, with one civilian investigator for every 150 police officers (see http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/occ/ for more on the San Francisco model).

--All four candidates support providing the Inspector General with the authority to offer immunity to whistleblowers whose only offense may have been not reporting misconduct earlier - a reform steadfastly resisted by the current administration.

--Three of the candidates, Becerra, Hahn, and Villaraigosa, support increasing the Police Commission's role in setting disciplinary policy, and the other candidate, Connell, proposes that disciplinary policy should be set under a civilian review board.

--One candidate, Villaraigosa, called for a multi-jurisdictional investigation headed by the California Attorney General with the focus expanded to include other institutions implicated in Rampart, including the courts, the Public Defender, and the District Attorney.

--Three of the four candidates, Becerra, Hahn, and Villaraigosa, support the professionalization of one or more Police Commission posts.

Ripston pointed out that police reform has been a central civil rights struggle for Los Angeles for at least the last eight decades. In 1923, in fact, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the first ACLU affiliate in the nation, was founded by Upton Sinclair, after he was arrested by the LAPD for reading the First Amendment at a rally of striking longshoremen.

Since that time, she noted, problems with the LAPD, have periodically burst into the public - Sleepy Lagoon in 1945, the Bloody Christmas scandal of 1951, the Watts riots of 1965, the Eulia Love killing in 1979, the Dalton Avenue police raid in 1988, the Rodney King beating in 1991, and the current Rampart scandal. But efforts to reform the Department, including the McCone Commission (1965), the Christopher Commission (1991), and the Bobb and Epstein report (1996), failed to take root, because they met with resistance from the Department, poor political follow-through, and structural impediments.

"The Rampart scandal and the federal consent decree that the Department's civil rights abuses triggered present Los Angeles with another critical opportunity to institute much needed-reform measures," said Ripston. "We need a mayor who will seize that opportunity, rather than shrink from it. At numerous points in Los Angeles' lamentable history of police abuse, strong political leadership might have made the difference. This is one of those moments, and we can't afford to squander it."

LOS ANGELES - The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California filed suit in federal court today against officials in charge of the National Park Service (NPS) to compel them to remove a large permanent cross from the Mojave National Preserve. The cross is located in San Bernardino County, California and is clearly visible from a road running through the park. An ACLU member brought the cross to the organization's attention. The ACLU/SC negotiated for many months with NPS officials and believed that the matter was closed after the organization received a letter in October of last year from National Park Service officials announcing their decision to remove it. On December 15, 2000, however, Congress passed HR 4577, which precludes the use of federal funds to remove the cross. The cross remains in place, a clear violation of the First Amendment's non-establishment of religion clause.

"Contrary to what some believe," said Peter Eliasberg, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California and First Amendment specialist, "it is not the role of the federal government to advance Christianity or any other sectarian belief. Americans are perfectly competent to make such decisions for themselves without government interference."

"The federal government," said Eliasberg, "should not offer public land - owned collectively by people of every faith and of no faith - as a site for the advertisement and promotion of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Pope John Paul II, or any other particular religious figure."

"If anyone was allowed to place a permanent, free-standing expression of his or her religious or political viewpoint at this site," said Eliasberg, "we would have no objection, but that is not the case. No other group is allowed to do that. This creates a situation in which the federal government favors Christian expression over any other."

In response to articles about the cross's removal, Congress acted to prevent the removal and on December 15, 2000 passed a rider to HR 4457 adding the following language:

"None of the funds in this or any other Act may be used by the Secretary of the Interior to remove the five-foot-tall white cross located within the boundary of the Mojave National Preserve in southern California first erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars along Cima Road approximately 11 miles south of Interstate 15."

Eliasberg noted that HR 4457 results in a clear violation of the First Amendment and pointed to established law in the area.

"The courts have consistently held," said Eliasberg, "that a permanent religious fixture on federal land is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. An Act of Congress doesn't change that. This cross must come down, and no amount of political maneuvering or grandstanding will prevent that."

Eliasberg believes the case presents a crucial first test to the U.S. Department of Justice under new Attorney General John Ashcroft, who promised during his confirmation hearings that he would uphold the Constitution. Eliasberg drafted and sent a letter to the Department of Justice today to urge the Department to act responsibly, abide by the law, and reach a quick settlement rather than attempt to defend a clearly unconstitutional practice.

"This case will put to the test Attorney General Ashcroft's commitment to upholding the principles of our Constitution," said Eliasberg. "This will be a clear indicator of what we can expect from this Department of Justice in upholding the First Amendment guarantees that keep us free."

Much of the controversy surrounding the cross concerned its status as a site where Christian veterans gather to remember war dead in special services. But not all veterans are in agreement about the cross. Morris Radin, an 82-year old Jewish veteran of World War II, spoke at the press conference to describe his experience of fighting for the principles he believes this country was founded on.

"My father, Abe, was just eighteen when he came to America and became an American citizen," said Radin. "As an Orthodox Jew, he knew firsthand what happens when people are not free to practice their beliefs. He and my mother Sophie both left Russia to escape the pogroms. They never told me whether they had witnessed any of the atrocities born of that nation's inability to guarantee their freedom of religion. They drew a curtain on that period of their lives and faced a new life in a different place."

"They came to America without knowing the language," said Radin, "but knowing the larger language of America's promise. America is big enough for everyone to practice his or her own faith and where no one faith is privileged over any other or over none at all. Abe and Sophie Radin loved this country as passionately and profoundly as any citizen."

"The country they loved is the country I fought for and love as well," said Radin, "a country founded on principle, on freedom of conscience and religion, a country where the government isn't Christian or Jewish or Muslim, but can welcome all of these and more on a free and equal basis. That is the country I defend in supporting this legal action."