ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

Railroads would have to participate in a state program that plans for oil-spill threats to surface water from pipelines, oil wells, tanker ships and them. It finances a beefed-up safety program with fees on oil companies and requires railroads to have disaster response plans that pass muster with the state. The railroads say none of that stuff is the business of the state.   read more

“Put bluntly, the harms already suffered are severe and pervasive; there is no evidence of an imminent solution; defendants disclaim their constitutional responsibilities, and the harm to students (who are among the State’s most challenged)) is compounding daily,” the judge wrote. He ordered the school district to figure out what it would take to put all the students at Jefferson in meaningful classes, and he put state officials on notice they better figure out a way to pay for it, if necessary.   read more

The consortium that was planning to build the Palen Solar Electric Generating System in the eastern Chuckwalla Valley, west of Blythe, formally withdrew the project shortly after a hailstorm of abuse over reports of birds being fried as they flew over Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a similar facility in the Mojave Desert. But the decision could have been influenced by lost tax credits.   read more

PG&E self-reported the PUC e-mails amid reports that the U.S. Attorneys Office is looking at the past five years worth of communications, 65,000 e-mails, as part of an investigation of improper contacts between the two. They really aren’t supposed to have off-the-record contact, much less a relationship that might tax a couple of texting teens.   read more

Each of the Top Ten water users in the sampling used more than three times as much water as the average California single-family home, which is 361 gallons a day. Fresno City Councilman Oliver Baines was the worst offender in 2013, using 9.5 times the average amount of water.   read more

One out of every five K-12 students nationally who experienced homelessness in the 2012-2013 school year lived in California, according to a study by the California Homeless Youth Project. Those 270,000 students represent a 22.3% increase from just two years before. The 4% rate of homeless public school students in California is twice the national average and growing.   read more

U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller, in Sacramento, dismissed the case after ruling that the attorneys general for the states—Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky and Iowa—had no standing because they represented the interests of egg farmers, rather than the people of the states. Mueller conceded that some of the producers could take a financial hit, but consumers in general might actually see a decrease in their prices.   read more

When Cedars-Sinai Medical Center announced in August that one its laptops had been stolen in June, officials said the records of 500 patients may have been compromised. That wasn’t wrong, since 500 is less than 33,136—the new, improved estimate of victims released last week. The unencrypted files were on a laptop taken home by an employee who troubleshoots clinical laboratory software problems outside regular business hours.   read more

After years of stories about vendors selling falsely-advertised products at farmers markets around the state, legislators passed Assembly Bill 1871 in the last session, tightening up enforcement of rules, increasing fines and setting up a funding mechanism to pay for regular inspections. Vendors are bringing stuff in from as far away as Mexico, selling misadvertised pesticide-laden food and blatantly lying about what they were doing.   read more

“Our research finds that extreme atmospheric high pressure in this region—which is strongly linked to unusually low precipitation in California—is much more likely to occur today than prior to the human emission of greenhouse gases that began during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s,” researcher Noah Diffenbaugh said.   read more

The Student Online Personal Information Protection Act prohibits K-12 online education sites, cloud services and applications from using personal student information for any purpose other than school. As much as a future employer (or prospective mate) might want to mine the voluminous data being gathered early in the rapidly digitizing education sector, Senate Bill 1177 restricts peeking at disciplinary records, learning disabilities or other sensitive information.   read more

DFEH is the largest state civil rights agency in the country. But its authority and resources have been diminished over the years. The Oversight Office found the agency was underfunded, demoralized, had a crummy computer system and was in direct conflict with the federal government. “DFEH nearly destroyed a 19-year relationship with the Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] by directing necessary resources away from housing discrimination investigations,” the report said.   read more

College campuses across California will soon have to adopt “yes means yes” policies to thwart sexual assaults, under a new law signed by Governor Jerry Brown. But some are uncertain the legislation will be effective. Some schools that have embraced an affirmative consent policy claim the approach has produced positive results. “Culture change is generally slow, but we have made some headway” since the plan went into effect at the University of Texas at Austin, said Jane Bost.   read more

San Jose Transportation Director Hans Larsen, who had some skeptical words for the Mercury News after another TRIP report last week calculated that crappy roads cost Californians $44 billion a year. “It’s yet another wake-up call to get up and do something or to keep hitting the snooze button,” Larsen said. Californians enjoy their sleep.   read more

Holden, the 90th president of the State Bar, is a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP and is the third consecutive president from Los Angeles. He was the Bar's vice president and was unanimously elected to his post.   read more

For the first time, a judge ruled that California state law requiring cities to make good on their pension obligations to CalPERS is superseded by U.S. bankruptcy law that says everyone can be dinged. “I've concluded the pension could be adjusted,” Judge Klein said, but did not say he would actually do that. He can leave the city's plan intact or make other adjustments.   read more