This week Google kicked its search options up yet another notch with its announcement that “we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar.” Google lays it all out in its post, Finding the laws that govern us. Be sure to check out the Advanced Scholar Search options that allow you to filter just for federal court cases or by state.

While this new search tool is not remotely as powerful or thorough as Westlaw or Lexis, it does provide a practical way to do quick searches of public sources for court cases and legal articles, and in many instances a way to link to a court case from a public web location, to share in an email or link to in an online publication.

Scathing report from the state auditors, which found that the state doesn’t review the counties and the counties don’t do what they are supposed to (and even when they do, it’s not terribly cost-effective).

On October 21, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced several initiatives, including an upcoming proposed rule, to ensure in Donovan’s words that “a qualified individual and family will not be denied housing choice based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”  Among other things, the proposed rule will clarify that the term “family” as used in reference to beneficiaries of the Section 8 voucher and public housing programs, includes otherwise eligible lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals and couples.

In another initiative, HUD will commission the first-ever national study of the impact of discrimination against members of the LGBT community in the rental and sale of housing.  HUD compares this planned study with research it undertook in 1977, 1989 and 2000 to study the impact of housing discrimination based on race and color.  See HUD’s press release on these initiatives for more details and a link to a study by Michigan’s Fair Housing Centers that found that nearly one-third of same sex couples were treated differently from different sex couples when attempting to rent or buy a place to live.

The California Health Care Foundation has posted 2009 data on medical care for the indigent in all 58 California counties.  The information, which also incorporates data from earlier studies, includes a spreadsheet that allows comparison of the eligibility criteria, services and delivery models of various county programs, including the 34 that opt into the California Medical Service Program (CMSP) and the 24 that manage their own programs.

Mapping Out Success, an article from the current issue of California Lawyer, features Legal Services of Northern California as an example how California lawyers are increasingly relying on mapping to better analyze data, to get the job done. “One example is when LSNC in 2007 began using maps to show how a proposed gas-storage area in Sacramento would place a ‘disproportionate environmental burden’ on a densely populated minority neighborhood. … Similarly, LSNC has targeted its foreclosure-outreach program by mapping foreclosure data.”

The examples cited in the article are both products of LSNC’s Race Equity Project. (Kudos to LSNC attorneys Eric Schultheis and Colin Bailey, both mentioned in the article, for their great work.) For more information about mapping, visit the LSNC GIS Mapping Resources page.

Providing one of the most telling economic indicators of the Great Recession to date, the US Census Bureau has released 2008 poverty statistics that confirm there were more people living below the federal poverty level last year than in 2007.  In 2008, 5.3 million Californians (or nearly 15 percent of state residents) were living below the federal poverty level - a nearly 2 percent increase from the previous year.  The national rate rose by one percent.  The California Budget Project has published a report analyzing the Census Bureau’s new figures and their relationship to unemployment and the loss of employment-based health coverage.

It has been a long time coming. The downsized but not out Health Rights Hotline has redesigned and refreshed its website, with all its content dutifully (and now beautifully) updated. Like most other LSNC sites, the Health Rights Hotline now includes regular posts at its own blog with its own RSS feed to provide updates. Check it all out.

(If interested in using the HRH feed (or any of the other LSNC feeds, for that matter) to get updates, we recommend the fab Google Reader or cool-in-its-simplicity Feed My Inbox, if you prefer getting updates by email.)

On August 10, 2009, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote approved a $62.5 million settlement agreement in a landmark action brought by the Anti-Discrimination Center (ADC) against Westchester County, New York. In a legal first, the ADC sued under the federal False Claims Act to enforce the County’s obligation to “affirmatively further fair housing” as a condition of receiving Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds from the federal government. Specifically, ADC alleged that over a period of six years, the County took CDBG funds under false pretenses by certifying to HUD that it affirmatively furthered fair housing, when in fact it failed, among other things, to consider race-based impediments to housing choice and to implement measures to overcome such impediments. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Westchester County must spend $52 million (the amount ADC alleges the County falsely obtained) to build at least 750 units of affordable housing within five years in County neighborhoods with very small African-American and Latino populations. Counsel for ADC are ADC Executive Director Craig Gurian and the law firm of Relman & Dane. For more background on the case, see Judge Cote’s opinion denying the County’s motion to dismiss the action and decision granting partial summary judgment for ADC and the August 11 New York Times article on the settlement.

The Legal Momentum group has put out information on the decreasing TANF benefits and the increase in hardship for families.

Who is doing what where, in the world of food stamps? The Food and Nutrition Services has just published the latest state option report.