LOS ANGELES - The effect of California's welfare reform policies will be less punitive and capricious as a result of a settlement approved by the court yesterday in Nickols v. Saenz, a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups on behalf of poor women and children statewide. The lawsuit challenged the state's application of a "family cap" policy, called the Maximum Family Grant rule, to welfare families without giving them proper advance notice.

The lawsuit, filed by the Western Center on Law and Poverty, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the National Center for Youth Law, focused on the rights of parents and teens receiving welfare (now called CalWORKs), to fair warning about California's "Maximum Family Grant" (MFG) rule. This rule denies benefits to any baby born to a family that is already receiving welfare. It applies to adult parents who have a second child, but it also applies to teens who have their first child while living in a family on welfare.

The lawsuit challenged the state's failure to warn families about the implications of the MFG rule for teen parents. The facts of the individual plaintiffs' cases highlight the injustice of penalizing teen parents who had never heard of the MFG rule, by denying aid to their newborn babies. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit included four young parents struggling to finish high school, and to feed, clothe and house themselves and their babies, on as little as $305 per month.

"The stated purpose of the Maximum Family Grant rule was to influence welfare families to delay having more children," said Clare Pastore, staff attorney at the Western Center on Law and Poverty. "But without clear advance notice, the rule wasn't even consistent with its own dubious premise that poor families base childbearing decisions on welfare benefits -- it was simply punitive."

The settlement provides relief to young parents and their children currently suffering from the unfair effects of the MFG rule, by restoring benefits to their children. In the future, teens who have babies after receiving proper notice will still be subject to the MFG rule, but only until they become adult heads of households. The settlement also requires the state to improve its notices to families about the MFG rule, so that heads of families will understand and explain the impact of the rule on teens living at home.

"More than any other group in our society," said Rocio Cordoba, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, "poor women and children live the results of other people's rhetoric and social experimentation based on unfounded stereotypes. They understand through hard, real-life experience how laws can be used unfairly to express society's hostility."

"This case involved serious issues of economic survival and basic human dignity," said martha Matthews, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. As a result of the settlement, thousands of children will receive desperately needed aid, and families will have fair warning about the MFG rule in the future."

LOS ANGELES - Civil rights groups filed a motion today to require that the State of California ascertain whether public school students have textbooks to use in class and at home in each of their core subjects. The motion asks the California Superior Court to appoint a neutral expert to design and carry out a survey of California teachers asking them about the availability of textbooks in their classes. In its response to requests for information in the ACLU's landmark education case, Williams v. California, the State of California stated that it does not know whether public school students in California have books to study and claimed that it has no responsibility for ensuring that they do.

"Students and teachers are back to school," said ACLU of Southern California staff attorney Peter Eliasberg, "but the State of California is playing hooky. It simply does not know what it ought to know and has no plan to find out. There's no control and no responsibility, and as a direct result many California students still don't have the most basic of all learning tools: a book."

In fact, the defendants in the class action lawsuit, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, the California Department of Education, and the State Board of Education, confirmed their ignorance of public school students' access to textbooks and other instructional materials.

When asked recently to identify California public schools in which the availability of textbooks falls short of state standards, defendants's attorneys replied, "Defendants do not have this information. The extent of educational materials in all districts is unknown."

The defendants' attorneys also maintained that the State Board of Education is not "in charge" of determining if "textbook availability falls below district-set standards."

The California Legislature, on the other hand, has clearly recognized that the California Constitution requires the state to ensure that all students have textbooks and other instructional materials.

In 1994, the Legislature declared that, "...education is a fundamental interest which is secured by the state constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law, and...to the extent that every pupil does not have access to textbooks or instructional material in each subject, a pupil's right to educational opportunity is impaired." (uncodified Section 1 to Education Code section 60177).

"When schools fail, students have rights guaranteed by California's Constitution," said Jack Londen, partner at Morrison & Foerster, pro bono co-counsel in the case, "but the State's educational agencies don't respond, and don't even know when public schools fail to provide every student with the books and materials required for learning."

"Students across the state, from Watsonville to Los Angeles," said Catherine Lhamon, staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, "are struggling to learn grammar, foreign languages, math, science, and history without a book to take home and study. In an era of high-stakes testing and fiercely competitive university admissions, the lack of a textbook can alter the course of their lives. Someone has to take some responsibility for this."

Students who don't have textbooks expressed anger and frustration about the difficulties they face in learning.

"It makes me mad not to have books," said Manuel Ortiz of Watsonville, a junior. "I don't remember things quickly, so it's hard for me to learn, even if I have books. I really need a book to take home so I can learn."

"We mostly don't get homework in my math class because we don't have books," said Silas Moultrie, an eighth grader at Luther Burbank Middle School in San Francisco. "Without books, we're not getting the education we should be getting."

"Nobody at the state level knows whether students are receiving texts," said Londen. "They're just signing the checks. That's not the return the people of California expect or deserve for our investment in education. An obvious first step is to get an accurate idea of the extent and severity of the problem. The state should have a system for finding that out, but it doesn't. This motion seeks to address that gap in basic accounting."

The suit is brought by the ACLU affiliates of California, Morrison & Foerster LLP, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Public Advocates, Inc., Center for Law in the Public Interest, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Professors Karl Manheim and Alan Ides, Peter Edelman of the Georgetown University Law Center, and Robert Myers of Newman. Aronson. Vanaman.

LOS ANGELES ? On August 24, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted asylum to Geovani Hernandez-Montiel. After being expelled from school, beaten by a mob and sexually assaulted by police in his Mexican homeland, the 21-year-old gay man sought asylum in the United States. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) rejected Hernandez-Montiel's asylum claim, stating that he was persecuted for his effeminate appearance and characteristics, not his sexual orientation. The ACLU of Southern California and other civil rights groups filed an amicus brief on the Hernandez-Montiel's behalf.

The unanimous decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals orders the U.S. government to grant asylum to Geovanni Hernandez-Montiel. The case is Hernandez- Montiel v. INS, No. 98-70582 (August 24, 2000).

The Ninth Circuit sharply criticized the BIA's view that Hernandez-Montiel was persecuted for his appearance and conduct, not for his sexual identity. The Court stated that a person should not be required to hide or change characteristics that are "inherent is his identity" to avoid political persecution.

"The position of the Board of Immigration Appeals was analagous to saying to a Jewish person who experiences discrimination, 'You weren't persecuted for being Jewish ? you were persecuted for wearing a yarmulke,'" said Martha Matthews, the David Bohnett Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. "It's an absurd distinction that opens the door for bigotry, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rightly rejected it."

"This ruling," said Matthews, "signals that persecution based on the way a person expresses his or her sexual identity or gender cannot be meaningfully or fairly distinguished from persecution based on sexual identity itself. A person's identity and self-expression are deeply and irrevocably connected."

"In Mexico, if a man has an effeminate appearance, voice, or mannerisms, everyone considers him gay beyond a shadow of a doubt," said Lambda Legal Defense Fund Supervising Attorney Jon W. Davidson. "The government cannot ask someone like Hernandez-Montiel to change his appearance, habits, voice and mannerisms so that people do not associate his appearance with his sexual orientation."

Writing for the panel of three judges, Judge A. Wallace Tashima said, "We conclude as a matter of law that gay men with female sexual identities in Mexico constitute a 'particular social group' and that Geovanni is a member of that group. His female sexual identity is immutable because it is inherent in his identity; in any event, he should not be required to change it.

Geovanni suffered past persecution and has a well-founded fear of future persecution if he were forced to return to Mexico."

"This is a groundbreaking decision," said Shannon Minter, staff attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "It is the first time a federal court has affirmed that persecution on the basis of sexual orientation is a basis for receiving asylum under U.S. law. It is also a powerful recognition of the links between sexual orientation and gender identity.

The State Department has identified Mexico as one of the countries where gay men and lesbians are very likely to be victims of violence. Effeminate gay men in particular are singled out for ostracization and anti-gay abuse in Mexico. While the U.S. government has granted asylum on the basis of sexual orientation since 1990, the BIA refused to extend this protection to Hernandez-Montiel on the grounds that he could avoid persecution by changing his effeminate appearance and mannerisms.

The ACLU of Southern California was joined by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights in filing the amicus brief on Hernandez-Montiel's behalf.