Sheriff’s officers in Kern County, California, must stop using chokeholds while in the field and will be able to stop their colleagues if they see them use the move, the California Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday in announcing a major settlement between the county and state.
Read moreThe Center for Biological Diversity asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to extend Endangered Species Act protections to the Temblor legless lizard, a rare sand-swimming reptile living in the Temblor Range in Kern County, California, that is at risk from oil and gas drilling.
Read moreApothio, an agricultural research institution authorized to research hemp, sued Kern County, California in federal court for $1 billion, claiming it illegally destroyed 500 acres of its plants, in “one the largest wholesale destructions of personal property by government entities in the history of the United States.”
Read moreCiting “the insurmountable hurdle that federal law does not recognize any protectible liberty or property interest” in the sale of marijuana, a federal judge dismissed claims against Kern County by medical marijuana dispensaries.
Read moreVicente Benavides Figueroa claims in a federal complaint that false evidence, conspiracy and other misbehavior by Kern County and Delano city officials caused him to spend 25 years on California’s death row for a murder he did not commit.
Read moreThe Kern County, California, Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to rescind approval for a project that would have allowed a Bakersfield refinery to process up to 63 million barrels of volatile Bakken crude oil a year.
Read moreKern County at the southern end of California’s great Central Valley will implement new voting districts and pay plaintiff $3 million in legal fees after disenfranchising Latino voters for nearly a decade.
Read moreIn a rare challenge of a California voting district, a federal judge sided with residents that Kern County “dilutes” Latino voters’ influence through discriminatory district lines drawn in 2011.
Read moreThree disabled Kern County, California, teens claim in a federal class action that juvenile-detention staffers abused them with pepper spray, prolonged solitary confinement, excessive force, painful prone restraint holds and denial of education.
Read more
In an echo of the high-profile gay wedding cake case before the U.S. Supreme Court, California this week sued a Bakersfield bakery to stop it from discriminating against same-sex couples.
Read moreDisgruntled voters have not done enough to prove that a redistricting plan in California’s Kern County discriminates against Latinos, a federal judge ruled.
Read moreWhat do sports stars, cockroaches, Courthouse News Service reporters and the measles have in common? Jury duty!
Read moreA federal judge Monday sentenced a Bakersfield man to 15 years in federal prison for hate crimes: firing a sawed-off shotgun and yelling racist slurs at a Latino man.
Read more
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a study this week calling for more transparency in the oil industry, and nominating California as the leader in the fight for clean air.
Read moreKern County and its sheriff’s officers have settled a 3-year old lawsuit accusing them of illegally arresting a man and seizing his cellphone after he recorded them beating another man to death.
Read moreA California law on wastewater injection that has drawn the ire of the oil industry now faces objections from environmentalists. The Center for Biological Diversity is accusing the state of actually shirking its duty.
Read more
The oil industry sued California on Inauguration Day, calling its regulation of wastewater injection unconstitutional overreach that will shut down thousands of oil wells that do not threaten water supplies in 45 aquifers, as the state contends.
Read moreThe Center for Biological Diversity challenged Kern County’s approval of a enormous, long-planned community in the southern San Joaquin Valley, claiming it will cause a slew of environmental problems that the county’s studies failed to address.
Read more