The city of Lima moves forward with plans to pass legislation to protect gays and lesbians from employment discrimination.

City Council went forward in guaranteeing city employees protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation Monday, authorizing legistation that should be ready for review next month.

The Charter Review Commission discussed protecting sexual orientation within the City Charter several times before ultimately deciding on a sweeping anti-discrimination policy that allowed both more flexibility to possible changes in state and federal law and kept the issue from becoming a potential sticking point when the Charter amendments are put to voters in November.

“I think this was a good resolution because it makes it law and it addresses the concern that the Charter Review Commission had that some voters might vote against the Charter changes just off this one issue,” said Councilman Tom Tebben. “I’m pleased with the way it’s playing out and I’ll be interested to see the legistaltion the law director comes back with.”

A Dayton man who was kicked out of the military after it was revealed he was gay, had the opportuniy to speak to President Obama about the need to repeal the nation’s unfair “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, the highly decorated Air Force aviator and Dayton native who protected Washington, D.C., in the days after Sept. 11 and helped U.S. forces take the Baghdad Airport in 2003, spent Monday, June 29, at the White House, trying to convince President Barack Obama to let him keep his job.

Fehrenbach joined about 250 to 300 members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community as part of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall protests in New York that are widely credited with galvanizing the gay rights movement in the United States. Fehrenbach spoke to Obama for about two minutes and asked that he repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy — the very policy that has endangered Fehrenbach’s 28-year Air Force career.

“I didn’t let him go,” said Fehrenbach, who has received nine air medals, including one for heroism, and flown 400 combat hours.

The editorial board of the Lima News applauds the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Savana Redding.

It is encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court so strongly condemned the decision by officials in an Arizona school district to strip-search a 13-year-old girl because they suspected she might have Ibuprofen in her undergarments. The amazing thing is that one justice (Clarence Thomas) dissented, and that the court was not more forceful in condemning the drug-law-induced hysteria that made searching a child for a common pain medication even thinkable.

Savana Redding was 13 in 2003 when, in response to a tip from another girl (in trouble for bringing drugs to school) school officials in Safford, Ariz., conducted a strip search to see if she had any Ibuprofen. They found nothing. Savana’s mother sued, and after losing at trial court, won at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the school district and assistant principal potentially liable for damages.

The Supreme Court agreed, 8-1, that the search was unreasonable, affirming that children do not give up all their rights when they are in a government school. It didn’t find the vice principal personally liable (two justices in the majority disagreed with this) and asked a lower court to decide if the school district should be held liable.

A new article from the other paper explores the discrimination that some mothers face when they try to breastfeed their children.

Societal norms help govern cultural behavior. There are some behaviors—even natural bodily functions—that are deemed rude, gross or offensive; behaviors that people are taught are not socially acceptable, out of respect for others. You know what they are.

For the most part, none are illegal. They’re regulated through subtle discriminations—sneering faces, name-calling, disapproval.

Enter breast-feeding.

[…]

While employment laws are lacking clear-cut protections, local and state laws do protect breast-feeding women in public.

“There is a section of the Ohio Revised Code that basically says a mother is entitled to breast-feed her baby in a place of public accommodation,” said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. “So if you’re otherwise allowed, as a woman, to be in this public place, then you can be breast-feeding in this place. All of that’s covered under Ohio law.”

The ABJ breathes a collective sigh as the U.S. Supreme Court does not eviscerate Section 5 of the historic Voting Rights Act.

Listen to the oral argument in April, and the fair conclusion was: The Supreme Court appeared ready to cast aside a core provision of the Voting Rights Act. On Monday, the court ruled in the case involving a Texas utility district seeking to ”bail out” of Section 5, an aspect of the law requiring covered jurisdictions, mostly in the South, to get permission from the Justice Department or a federal court before they make changes to voting procedures.

An 8-1 majority granted relief to the utility district, but it did so narrowly. It limited the option to small jurisdictions that do not handle their own voter registration. That amounts to a qualified victory for those concerned about the court acting hastily to remove a key tool in protecting civil rights, especially in view of the coming Census and the redrawing of congressional and legislative districts.

Of worry was the tone of the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts. He made much of the ”historic accomplishments” under the Voting Rights Act. He stressed that ”things have changed in the South.” He highlighted the strides in voter turnout and registration, plus the ”unprecedented levels” of elected minority officeholders.

The Plain-Dealer rightly takes the U.S. Supreme Court to task for its decision in an Alaska case that denied a person’s right to a DNA test, even if there was evidence he or she may be innocent.

By slamming the door on an Alaska prison inmate’s request for an advanced DNA test, the U.S. Supreme Court has committed a grave injustice.

When William Osborne was convicted of raping and almost killing a prostitute in Anchorage in 1993, DNA testing done by the prosecution indicated that he was among 15 percent to 16 percent of African-American men who could have committed the crime — a level of imprecision unlikely to stand up in court these days. Worse yet, Osborne’s lawyer advised him against getting a better DNA test.

The justices didn’t reject Osborne’s request on the merits of his case — even the prosecutor conceded that modern tests would be definitive — but because, they said, it’s not their job.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday affirming that schools may not strip search students.

In a decision that could affect a case from Pike County, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that school officials cannot strip-search students unless the safety of students is at stake.

In an 8-1 ruling involving a case from Arizona, the justices concluded that a strip search of a 13-year-old girl suspected of having a legal painkiller violated the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizures.

[…]

“Now, everyone is affirmatively on notice,” said Carrie Davis, an attorney with the Ohio office of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It would be next to impossible for a school official to claim qualified immunity from litigation under the same set of circumstances after today’s ruling.”

Legislators are considering ill-advised legislation that would create a database of felons in the state of Ohio.

There may be a new way to identify those who have committed felony crimes in your neighborhood.

State Rep. Matt Huffman has proposed a new bill that would create a database of everyone who’s committed a felony crime against minors. Among those felonies are child assault, child endangering, murder, rape, and kidnapping.

The Lima Republican has been working with Scott Ferris, director of Allen County Children Services, to propose this legislation. Ferris first approached Huffman about this idea last year.

“We want parents to have more tools to protect their children,” Ferris said. “We want to centralize these public records into one location.”

The power to determine post-conviction DNA testing lies with the legislature, not the courts, declares U.S. Supreme Court.

Prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing after their conviction, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, even though the technology provides an “unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty.”

In the court’s first examination of how to treat the rapidly evolving field of biological testing, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a majority that said it is up to the states and Congress to decide who has a right to testing that might prove innocence long after conviction.

The “challenges DNA technology poses to our criminal justice systems and our traditional notions of finality” are better left to elected officials than federal judges, Roberts wrote for the majority in a 5 to 4 decision.

The JournalNews enumerates the many problems with the Ohio General Assembly’s current inclusion of an amendment in the state budget that would strip schools of their ability to decide if the pledge must be said in the classroom or not.

Did we miss an important announcement? Have school boards around Ohio been ordering the Pledge of Allegiance banned from classrooms? You say that one school district has done that?

Well, one school board — in Oberlin, Ohio — hardly constitutes a revolution. So why has state Sen. Gary Cates, a Republican from Butler County, introduced an amendment to the pending state budget to take away that discretion from local school boards?

Could it be that Cates and other Republican lawmakers are resorting again to hot-button politics — introducing meaningless, feel-good legislation that panders to some constituents while doing little to actually address Ohio’s pressing problems? Looks that way to us.

Ohioans should call their state legislators and encourage them to support both SB 22 and 77. Both would greatly expand the rights of the incarcerated and relieve the overcrowded prison system in Ohio.

A bill that would expand DNA testing and try to improve the way authorities conduct investigations and another that would let prisoners earn shorter sentences each passed Senate committees yesterday.

But only the DNA bill appears to have a bright future.

The criminal-sentencing bill would allow most prisoners to get out early by earning up to five days of credit per month, up from the current one day, if they participate in education and rehabilitation programs. But even though it won the battle yesterday, it seems likely to lose the war in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, had hoped that the committee process would temper the strong opposition to the bill, but that didn’t happen. He wanted to include it in the new two-year budget, saving an estimated $50 million over the biennium to help close a $3.2 billion shortfall.

The Vindy discusses recent moves by the Obama administration that jeopardizes principles of open government.

The Obama administration’s decision not to publicly reveal the names of visitors to the White House ignores various court rulings that visitor logs are public records. It was the same position taken by President Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, who by every objective standard had one of the most secretive administrations in the history of the country.

Bush argued that such secrecy was justified because America was involved in a war on global terrorism triggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the homeland.

However, it is noteworthy that the refusal to make public the White House visitor logs came early in the administration and was prompted by Vice President Dick Cheney’s desire to keep secret the names of oil company executives who helped formulate the Bush administration’s energy policy.

A new report by the ACLU uncovers threats to Muslim-Americans’ ability to donate to the charity of their choice. The ACLU currently has litigation underway in Toledo challenging the government’s shut down of KindHearts, a local non-profit, without any trial or evidence of wrong-doing.

The fight against terrorism has dealt a harsh blow to Muslim charities and interfered with their donors’ religious freedom, a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union concludes.

The report says statutes that it describes as overly broad and enforced in a discriminatory manner, coupled with a lack of due process, have starved Islamic charities of money and impeded Muslims’ ability to fulfill zakat, their religious requirement to make charitable donations.

The report is based on interviews with more than 100 Muslim community leaders as well as experts on antiterrorism laws and regulations. Though it gives no estimate of the decline in donations to Muslim groups, it says a total of nine Islamic charities have closed as a result of government action against them since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Criticism of President Obama’s stand on LGBT rights intesified as the administration defended the federal Defense of Marriage Act in court.

The Obama administration responded Sunday to criticism of a Justice Department brief defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

In an interview with Kerry Eleveld, gay monthly The Advocate’s Washington corresponded, posted on its website, John Berry, the highest ranking openly gay official in the Obama administration, responded to the LGBT community’s growing frustration with the administration.

Gay rights advocates were outraged Friday on news the Obama administration was defending the 1996 law that allows states to ignore legal marriage performed in other states and defines marriage as a heterosexual union for federal agencies. Bloggers called the move a broken promise, and took exception to the brief’s anti-gay tone.

Federal lawmakers are taking a second look at Real ID and may reform or eliminate it soon.

Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver’s licenses, Homeland Security Department and congressional officials said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID, which calls for placing more-secure licenses in the hands of 245 million Americans by 2017. The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous and partly financed by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano’s Senate allies plan to introduce as early as Monday.

Last summer, the ACLU of Ohio expressed concern over the enforcement of Columbus’ curfew program. It appears as though the city is expanding enforcement to possibly send some young people to jail.

Last year, Columbus kids caught violating the city’s curfew got off with what amounted to a warning.

But this summer, police will be handing out summonses that will require violators and their parents to appear before a Franklin County domestic-relations judge. Children convicted of the misdemeanor could face up to a $500 fine and 60 days in jail, although judges have latitude to decide a lesser punishment.

The curfew “is not intended to be punitive in any way,” Mayor Michael B. Coleman said in announcing the enhanced enforcement plan yesterday. “It’s meant to protect them from harm.”

[…]

Children Services workers will try to persuade children to stay once they are taken in, but the agency can’t force them, said Director Eric Fenner.

That was also true at the YMCA last year after the American Civil Liberties Union objected that holding children because of their age is unconstitutional.

The Vindicator weighs the consequences of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that protects drivers from having their vehicles searched illegally.

Youngstown police and the Ohio State Highway Patrol are once again joined in an effort aimed at making the city a better place to live by pursuing a zero tolerance policy for traffic violations.

And along the way, Police Chief Jimmy Hughes hopes to nab more than bad drivers, he’s looking for bad guys of all stripes.

“We hope to stop the cars for the violations and search for evidence of any other wrongdoing,” Hughes said.

Police and the patrol pursued a similar strategy last year and it met with some success.

But it may be a little tougher this year.

There’s been a notable change in what the Supreme Court of the United States views as a legitimate search of a motor vehicle following a routine traffic stop.

The ACLU takes a stand against an unconstitutional provision in Ohio’s proposed budget, which would strip school districts of the power to decide if the Pledge of Allegiance will be said in the classroom. It also forbids individuals from adding or removing words to the pledge.

The ACLU of Ohio is calling on lawmakers to remove a provision added to the state budget bill that would prohibit Ohio’s 613 public school districts from passing policies against reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms.

[…]

In a landmark free speech decision in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that students could not be required to recite the pledge. The legislation would still allow individual students to choose not to recite the pledge.

“I hope they come to their senses or there’s just going to be a lot of expensive and unnecessary legal work coming forward,” Link said.

The city of Akron announces plans to address the police-community relations issues that have plagued the city in recent years.

Akron intends to hire more police and do a lot more talking with residents to help bridge a widening communication gap and rising crime rate.

The announcement came this morning from Mayor Don Plusquellic, whose six-term reign is in jeopardy in this month’s recall election.

Plusquellic, in a joint news conference with Police Chief Craig Gilbride, said the city intends to form a citizens advisory board and a Crime Control Plan Steering committee.

Both groups, whose members have yet to be finalized, are intended to foster, among other things, resident input with police on issues facing neighborhoods.

”These two panels are intended to make sure that police and residents are sharing what they know to make the whole community safer,” Plusquellic said.

The Ohio General Assembly is considering an amendment to the state budget that would prevent school distrcits from making their own decision over whether the Pledge of Allegiance is recited in class and if it should be altered in any way.

A provision added to the state budget by a Republican lawmaker would protect teachers who want to have students recite the Pledge of Allegiance in their classrooms.

Sen. Gary Cates, from the Cincinnati area, offered the amendment after hearing about a decades-old policy of not allowing the pledge to the flag at the Oberlin school district, southwest of Cleveland.

“I would hate to see other school districts get tied up in administrative nightmares on this,” Cates said. “I think this is something they shouldn’t be wasting their time with. This is not a local issue, this is a state issue.”

He added, “I think we should encourage and provide opportunities for children to say the Pledge of Allegiance in their classrooms and school events. No one’s required to say it, but at the same token you can’t infringe on other people’s opportunities to have the Pledge of Allegiance said and recited at a public meeting or in a school.”

The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear a challenge to the country’s discriminatory anti-gay policy in the military.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed with the Obama administration and refused to review Pentagon policy barring gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

The court said it will not hear an appeal from former Army Capt. James Pietrangelo II, who was dismissed under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The federal appeals court in Boston earlier threw out a lawsuit filed by Pietrangelo and 11 other veterans. He was the only member of that group who asked the high court to rule that the Clinton-era policy is unconstitutional.

“I think this decision is an absolute travesty of justice and I think every judge on this court should be ashamed of themselves,” said Pietrangelo, who served six years in the Army, seven years in the Vermont National Guard and fought in Iraq in 1991. “It’s nothing short of rubber stamping legalized discrimination, the same way Nazi Germany legalized discrimination against Jews.

Ohio executed another person yesterday, and set the executions for two more inmates.

Beads of sweat glistened on Daniel Wilson’s brow in the dim light of the execution chamber Wednesday morning. But his face wore the calm, stoic look of resignation as a lethal cocktail of chemicals snaked through tubes toward the shunts in his arms.

The family of Carol Lutz — whom Wilson locked in a car trunk and torched alive 18 years ago — watched unflinchingly beyond a glass partition. Wilson’s brief, composed apology hovered in the five feet that stretched between them, along with the recognition that he was about to die more peacefully, more mercifully than Lutz did.