U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said in his written opinion that the proposed settlement, which creates a system of compensation for black farmers and their descendants who joined the class-action suit claiming discrimination by the government, is fair and workable.

“Historical discrimination cannot be undone,” Friedman wrote.

There are two compensation streams available to the farmers, depending on the individual paper trail in each case. The first stream, known as “Track A” would provide an uncontested payout of $50,000 to qualified claimants. The second stream, known as “Track B,” could provide up to $250,000, but requires more documentation of wrongdoing. Farmer must choose one track or the other, and it is estimated that nearly 70,000 farmers across the nation will be eligible for compensation. More details regarding the plan can be found in an earlier report by The Iowa Independent.

The black farmers’ case is an outgrowth of Pigford v. Glickman, a federal class-action lawsuit originally settled in 1999. The farmers alleged that the USDA had violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by maintaining a pattern and practice of discrimination against African American farmers.  Such pattern and practice delayed, denied, or otherwise frustrated the efforts of African American farmers to obtain loan assistance and to engage in the vocation of farming, they said.

The Obama administration agreed in February to provide a second round of damages to people who were denied earlier payment because they had missed  filing deadlines. The person who pushed to allow more black farmers to join the case and for more money to be set aside for settlements was Iowa’s own U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley. In a February press release, Grassley noted that “many people were shut out of the process.”

But not all elected officials have been similarly supportive. U.S. Rep. Steve King said in November 2010 that the American people should be outraged by the development, since it sends the message that “if you’re a minority, you deserve a check from the government.”

The Obama administration is “focused on race,” King said in an interview with WHO-AM’s Jan Mickelson. Essentially, the entire lawsuit was pitched to black farmers as their “40 acres and a mule,” he added, referencing the Civil War era practice of providing land to former slaves who became free as Union armies occupied areas of the Confederacy.

“The Department of Agriculture has admitted that discrimination occurred,” Grassley said during a Senate floor speech on the matter. “We are obligated to do our best in getting those who deserve it, some relief. This is a chance for people who believe they were wronged to show their case before a neutral party and have it judged on the merits. It’s time to give justice to these claimants who were previously left out, and move forward into a new era of civil rights at the Department of Agriculture.”

More recently U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, while on a tour of flooded areas near the Missouri River in Iowa, characterized the government settlement with black farmers as fraud. Bachmann and King, while noting the damage done by the flooded Missouri, said the money set aside for the discrimination settlements could have been put to better use if it had been given to the flood victims.

It isn’t the first time that King and Bachmann have beat on this particular drum. Bachmann sent out a press release last November alleging that the numbers of farmers involved in the settlement didn’t add up, because there were many more claims than black farmers — a claim nearly identical to what has been made by King. In addition, King has referred to the settlement as “slavery reparations.”

Final approval for the settlement came after a fairness hearing in early September. Although some farmers argued they should be allowed to pursue higher damages, Congress left little flexibility into the plan, which prevented Friedman from pursuing such alternatives.

In a statement distributed by the White House, President Obama said, “The U.S. District Court’s approval of the settlement between the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and plaintiffs in the Pigford II class action lawsuit is another important step forward in addressing an unfortunate chapter in USDA’s civil rights history. This agreement will provide overdue relief and justice to African American farmers, and bring us closer to the ideals of freedom and equality that this country was founded on. I especially want to recognize the efforts of Secretary Vilsack and Attorney General Holder, without whom this settlement would not have been reached.”

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he is “thrilled” by the court’s decision, and looks forward to the process being completed.

Since my first day at USDA, I made it a priority to treat all Americans with respect and dignity and to ensure equal access to our programs. Court approval of the Pigford settlement is another important step to ensure some level of justice for black farmers and ranchers who faced discrimination when trying to obtain services from USDA. President Obama, Attorney General Holder and I are thrilled by the court’s approval so we can continue turning the page on this sad chapter in USDA history. In the months and years ahead, we will not stop working to move the Department into a new era as a model employer and premier service provider for all Americans regardless of race, ethnicity or gender.

Government officials estimate that it will take a year, if not more, for all the affected farmers to work their way through the compensation process.

The Fair Housing Council of Oregon recently published its audit of Portland for the city’s Housing Bureau which revealed 64 percent of black and Latino renters in the stalwart liberal city were discriminated against when inquiring of available units. Following the release, an outcry that cut across party lines cascaded down the state’s media pipelines — and the animus wasn’t all aimed at the disturbing results.

Caught in the crossroads were city officials who were bound by administrative procedure to assess the results and leave all options on the table. To fair housing experts, that meant considering what action to take against the offenders, which can range from mediation and education on fair housing laws to fines and civil suits. Leland Jones, a spokesperson for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the government agency commissioned by Congress to enforce fair house laws and the 1968 Fair Housing Act, told The American Independent, “[City Commissioner Nick Fish] is doing what he is supposed to be doing. He’s surveyed the landscape.”

Fish told the Oregonian he was “outraged by the results,” but parried questions whether he would go after the violating landlords and leasing agents named in the study. Fisk said: “That’s not the right question. The intent is to do a balanced approach. I have concluded that the best approach is to look at changes to the system and not just individual remedies.”

That response did not sit well with legislators and fair housing advocates. Shanna Smith, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance told the Oregonian, “I find it unconscionable for a city to supply the money for the audit and then not enforce the law.”

A strongly-worded letter with the signatures of the 12-member Republican Senate Caucus, currently in the minority, was made public last Thursday. The letter read (PDF), “We, the Senate Republican Caucus, are asking that you prioritize enforcement of these statutes, citing, and where appropriate, prosecuting individuals who violate the civil rights of another.”

In response, Fish wrote a letter to leading Senate Republican Jackie Winters and the Republican delegation last Friday, which read in part, “Last week, I announced that Portland would pursue a dual track to combat discrimination in housing: enforcement of the law coupled with beefed-up education and outreach to renters and landlords. In the weeks ahead, I will announce an action plan, developed with key community and government partners, to combat bias in rental housing.”

On Wednesday, Fish’s office sent letters to the offices of 26 apartment buildings that were listed in the report as sites of discrimination; the addresses were also released (PDF) to the public. The Portland Housing Bureau, which Fish oversees, intends on turning over the results of the audit to the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, the state’s labor department that aims to “protect employment rights, advance employment opportunities, and protect access to housing and public accommodations free from discrimination.”

To Jones of HUD, the initial media coverage poorly explained why Portland was suddenly faced with reports of discrimination. “the coverage should’ve noted that why Protland knows it has troubling numbers is because of the process, the analysis of impediments to fair housing, which conducted the tests which reported the troubling numbers,” Jones said.

The Oregonian reported the audit was commissioned by the city to satisfy the terms the federal government places on the city for accepting grants toward community development and fair housing, but Jones chided onlookers who asked why the analysis “isn’t doing anything.”

“Commissioner Fish is preparing recommendations, using all tools available, meaning enforcement and education,” Jones says.

HUD is watching how the city is responding to the audit’s findings. If the agency believes local authorities shirked enforcement, HUD can request the details of the report be passed over to its investigators. However, Jones did not criticize the city’s handling since news of the audit became public.

Fair Housing Council of Oregon (FHCO), the organization that conducted the audits, receives money from HUD to function as a watch group in the state. HUD runs two programs, the Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAP) and Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FIHP) that contract organizations like FHCO to investigate claims of discrimination and provide education to tenants and landlords on fair housing rights.

The framework of an audit — wherein an investigator who is Caucasian or representative of the “majority” population is sent to landlords and leasing agents to compare treatment they gave to investigators who are visibly of a “protected class” — is a reliable mechanism for HUD and other housing agencies out to uncover discrimination. Sometimes the results of an audit warrant greater scrutiny, and a second wave of investigations follow. That thoroughness is to protect HUD or the U.S. Justice Department, which can represent the agency in civil suits in federal courts, from judges who are willing to throw out a case if the methodology used by the government is not sound.

The control group is not always white. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit in 2006 against developer Donald Sterling, owner of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Clippers, and Korean landlords in Los Angeles were for excluding non-Koreans from the rental process. Investigators posed as Koreans and compared their treatment to investigators acting as prospective renters of a different background.

Most penalties in fair housing are civil, which typically means a fine. However, if the discriminatory act also involves the use of force or a threat to use force to willfully injure or intimidate, imprisonment can result in addition to fines.

Jones says the agency has a stark reminder when education and outreach is possible: “We remind people housing discrimination is against the law.”

The enforcement of fair housing, therefore, is crucial to HUD’s mission of paring back instances of preferential treatment based on sex, race and background, he added. “Societies follow laws only if jurisdictions enforce them.”

UPDATE, 12:45 p.m.: Via an email to TAI, HUD Spokesperson Leland Jones updates his view of Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish’s decision to make public the violating rental properties that were listed in the Fair Housing Council of Oregon audit: “As was the case in the City’s decision to contract with the [FHCO] to conduct a ‘test’ in advance of the City’s revision of its Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing and the association action plan, the City’s release yesterday of the list – as well as the sending of letters to landlords and owners – reflects the City’s commitment to fulfilling its obligations under the Act.”

The Fair Housing Council of Oregon (FHCO) was paid $19,000 by the city to conduct the investigation as part of a once-every-five years requirement to monitor Portland’s progress with housing discrimination; non-compliance risks losing the city $9 million to $11 million in federal funding.

The Oregonian, first to report on the results of the audit, received conflicting statements from the city commissioner on whether legal action will be taken against the offenders, which include leasing agents and landlords. From the paper:

City Commissioner Nick Fish, who oversees the Portland Housing Bureau, said he was “outraged by the results.” But he emphasized that stopping discrimination must include education and cooperation with landlords, not just enforcement.

Asked last week whether the city will go after the landlords found in violation, he said: “That’s not the right question. The intent is to do a balanced approach. I have concluded that the best approach is to look at changes to the system and not just individual remedies.”

Monday night, responding to inquiries for clarification, he said in a memo: “We have always intended to pursue enforcement actions against select landlords tested in the audit process.” He provided no details or timeline, though the city’s time to build cases is running low.

Though housing discrimination is illegal federally, prosecutors have difficulty proving offenders willfully misled or withheld from applicants accurate information regarding rent, pricing and availability.

Through its Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal body that oversees fair housing laws and initiatives, sends out investigators posing as white and minority housing seekers to test for discriminatory practices from landlords and leasing companies.

According to a 2010 HUD report, the most common complaint filed with the department had to do with disability, which accounted for 44 percent of all complaints placed through the Fair Housing Act. That same report indicated that in 2009, the department collected $10 million in fines for fair housing violations.

On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden, during his address to the University of New Hampshire, is expected to announce that, for the first time, rape, sexual assault and sexual battery will be considered not just to be crimes, but to be acts of discrimination, similar to how sexual harassment is classified under federal law.

(Listen to Biden’s speech live here, at 11:45 a.m. EST.)

According to the Post, the initiative has been spurred by high numbers of sex offenses reported at colleges and public high schools in recent years. The Obama administration has cited 3,300 forcible sex offenses on college campuses in 2009. In 2007-2008, there were reportedly 800 rapes and attempted rapes and 3,800 incidents of sexual battery at public high schools.

Consequently, the administration is urging schools, particularly those that receive federal funding, to do more to prevent sexual violence on campuses and to act quickly when complaints arise.

Last week President Obama issued a “proclamation” in honor of National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, wherein he declared:

Nearly one in six American women will experience an attempted or completed rape at some point in her life, and for some groups, rates of sexual violence are even higher.  Almost one in three American Indian and Alaska Native women will be sexually assaulted.  Young women ages 16 to 24 are at greatest risk, and an alarming number of young women are sexually assaulted while in college.  Too many men and boys are also affected.  With each new victim and each person still suffering from an attack, we are called with renewed purpose to respond to and rid our Nation of all forms of sexual violence.

Sexual assault is considered to be the most underreported violent crime in America, and criminal justice responses vary widely across our country.  Some communities have developed highly trained, coordinated teams who understand the nature of sexual assault and can respond with compassionate understanding.  In other places, victims hesitate to report these crimes because they fear the criminal justice system will respond with skepticism or fail to bring the perpetrator to justice.  We must ensure our police, prosecutors, and courts treat victims with the seriousness and respect they need and deserve.  We must do more to provide services that help victims recover from the trauma of sexual assault.  And ultimately, we must prevent sexual assault before it happens.

Under Vice President Joe Biden’s leadership, my Administration is committed to engaging a broad spectrum of Federal agencies and community partners to prevent sexual assault, support victims, and hold offenders accountable.  The Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women is leading the Sexual Assault Demonstration Initiative to improve the way sexual assault survivors are served.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding innovative prevention campaigns that engage bystanders in reducing sexual assault, and the Department of Education is working to combat sexual violence at schools and universities.  We will continue to support new approaches that show promise in changing cultural attitudes toward sexual violence and preventing these crimes.

Read the rest of the proclamation here.

Missoula’s government operates under a charter, essentially a municipal constitution. Last year, Missoula amended its charter to include the ordinance because state law addresses only discrimination based on “sex, marital status, race, creed, religion, age, familial status, physical or mental disability, color, or national origin.” Missoula added to that “sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.” A similar statute is also on the books in Bozeman.

The new bill, HB 516, has now been approved by the House and was sent over to the Senate immediately thereafter. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kris Hansen (R-Havre), has claimed that the inconsistency between the city ordinances and state discrimination regulations could be problematic if a city business or individual found in violation by Missoula or Bozeman were to take the case to the state level in appellate court.

And yet instances abound of less controversial issues addressed in Missoula’s city charter that have no equivalent in Montana State Code and would presumably face the same problems in a state appeals court. To provide one very mundane example, Missoula residents are prohibited from putting up barbed wire fences on their property except under certain conditions; there is no such prohibition in the Montana Code, and yet no one on the state level has objected to this regulation or any of the dozens of other Missoula-specific regulations on the books.

Now that the bill has made it through the House, it stands a very good chance of getting through the state Senate, in which Republicans outnumber Democrats 28 to 22. If that happens, all eyes will be on Montana’s Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Schweitzer has been somewhat quiet on gay rights in the past, preferring to defer to the will of the people in interviews, although he did call opponents to gay marriage “homophobic” in a 2009 interview. It seems Schweitzer’s decision to pass or veto the bill will come down to whether he wants to alienate conservative voters by going to bat for gay rights when he could just as easily skirt around the issue by way of a veto in order to prevent a later mess in state courts.

Montana is not alone among states where Republican legislators are working to push against such anti-discrimination laws. In Tennessee, a bill explicitly nullifying any local anti-discrimination charters and limiting discrimination laws to “race, creed, color, religion, sex, age or national origin” failed in committee earlier this month. State Representative Glen Casada (R-Franklin) introduced the bill in response to a recent Nashville Metro Development and Housing Agency decision to expand anti-discrimination statutes to include gender and sexuality-based discrimination.

In Kansas, a bill currently in the House Judiciary Committee is meant to achieve the same goal using far less transparent language. HB 2260 (PDF) is framed as a religious freedom bill, but buried within is language that would give employers and landlords carte blanche to discriminate against anyone, as long as they do so for religious reasons.

The bill first limits its definition of the term “compelling government interest,” saying that it “shall not include prohibition of a practice or policy of discrimination against individuals in employment relations, in access to free and public accommodations or in housing” unless it’s of a type already prohibited by Kansas law, which does not address gender identification or sexuality. The bill later goes on to say that no government decision can “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless it’s of compelling government interest.

Lost yet? Opponents of the bill say that’s the point — to slip gender and sexuality-based discrimination into the protection of the law by using language so confusing that no one would notice. In plain language, the bill says that discriminating against LGBT employees and tenants is an act of religious freedom protected under the law.

All three bills have something in common beyond the discrimination they seek to protect. They all have ties to Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based evangelical Christian organization that advocates prayer in schools and is outspokenly opposed to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. In an interview with the Billings Gazette, Rep. Hansen, the sponsor of the Montana bill, said that the Montana Family Foundation brought an already-drafted version of the bill to her so that she could introduce it to the Montana House. As it proclaims on its website, the Montana Family Foundation is affiliated with Focus on the Family.

Meanwhile, Citizen Link issued a press release about Rep. Casada’s Tennessee bill nearly a month before he introduced it to the House. Citizen Link is a subsidiary of Focus on the Family and publishes the latter organization’s in-house magazine, Citizen.

And in Kansas, one of the principal advocates of the House’s convoluted discrimination bill has been the Alliance Defense Fund. The Alliance Defense Fund was co-founded by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. Focus on the Family was also responsible for a series of Colorado ads in 2008 which claimed that an anti-discrimination bill then being debated would allow sexual predators to cross-dress and enter restrooms meant for the opposite sex in order to sexually assault children. The bill became law despite the ad campaign.

Focus on the Family underwent an IRS investigation between 2005 and 2007, during which it was investigated for inappropriately endorsing and funding campaigns for public office. The organization stood to lose its non-profit status as a result of the investigation, though it was eventually cleared of the charges.

If the bill passes the Senate, all abortion providers in the state could be sued if they knowingly perform abortions requested because of the unborn baby’s presumed gender or race. Abortion providers would now be compelled to sign an affidavit swearing they have no knowledge that the child is being aborted because of its sex or race.

The bill, authored by Rep. Steve Montenegro (R-Litchfield Park), was pegged by sponsors as a move to help end discrimination against unborn children, essentially implying that such discrimination is happening in the state, though opponents and supporters argued over the validity of that idea during Monday’s House debate. Regardless, it passed overwhelmingly, 41 to 18.

The legislation implicates the abortion provider and the woman: “A person cannot perform an abortion knowing that the abortion is sought based on sex or race of the child or the race of one of the parents,” reads the bill.

Other rules:

A person shall not knowingly or intentionally:

• Use force or the threat of force to intentionally injure or intimidate any person for the purpose of coercing a sex-selection or race-selected abortion.
• Solicit or accept monies to finance a sex selection or race selection abortion.

The bill also grants the right to the father or grandparents of the unborn child to sue the mother if it is proven she had an abortion because of gender- or race-based reasons. Potential violators of this law also include: physicians, physicians’ assistants, nurses, counselors or other medical or mental health professionals who do not report violations of this law; they could be fined up to $10,000.

But oddly, there’s no language that specifically implicates a father, who could potentially be involved in the decision, or the pregnant woman’s parents.

The title of the legislation is the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, which, according to the Cronkite News Service, stems from a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009 by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) that never made it out of committee. According to the news service, last year Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law a Montenegro-sponsored bill increasing the amount of information hospitals and clinics must report about women who get abortions, along with a bill mandating a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions. Illinois and Pennsylvania have laws prohibiting sex-selection abortions, and Georgia, Mississippi, New Jersey, Idaho and Oklahoma have tried to enact similar legislation.

Another proposed anti-choice bill that’s scaring abortion-rights supporters across the state did not pass during Monday’s session but was instead delayed by the House Committee of the Whole. This abortion bill, House Bill 2416, repeals and revises several of Arizona’s current abortion laws, including a new ban on medication abortions and a mandate that abortion providers must conduct an ultrasound to give the woman an opportunity to see an image of her unborn fetus and listen to a heartbeat if one is present.

The conservative nonprofit Center for Arizona Policy has strongly endorsed the bill, stating: “Arizona has an important interest in protecting the health and safety of women and ensuring that women receive full and accurate information when considering abortion.” The group claims to have helped 84 bills turn into law.

On its website: “Our work has strengthened marriage, promoted the sanctity of life by limiting abortion and stopping attempts to bring physician-assisted suicide to our state, protected our community from gambling and pornography, allowed Bible clubs to be formed in middle schools, and expanded educational choice.”

UPDATE, 5:37 p.m.:

Michelle Steinberg, a policy manager for Planned Parenthood Arizona, told The American Independent that it is against Planned Parenthood procedure to ask a woman her reason for having an abortion, and, as far as she’s aware, women usually don’t divulge that information.

“We’re there to provide a legal medical procedure,” Steinberg said. “[The Arizona lawmakers] are creating this impression that women are deciding to end their pregnancies on the basis of race and gender, and it’s just not true. … This is one more way to deny access to reproductive health care.”

She said she is confident the legislation will pass into law and that it could potentially dissuade physicians from offering abortion services if they fear legal consequences or having their medical licenses revoked.

Steinberg noted that in the six years she’s worked for Planned Parenthood, Arizona lawmakers have enforced more and more regulations, particularly after former Gov. Janet Napolitano’s term. She said the decisions have become increasingly ideological and less and less based on logic and scientific reasoning.

“They’ll regulate [abortion] out of existence. They can’t outright ban it, so they’ll chip away at it until it’s impossible to get one.”

But Deal Journal’s Peter Lattman last week quoted a different statement from a Citi spokeswoman: “While we don’t comment on our customers, we typically decline accounts associated with content that the general public may potentially find inappropriate or offensive.”

Apparently, fearing the wrath of the religious right trumps all other business considerations: the last documented company to be told it wasn’t allowed to open a Citibank account was an online retailer, sillyunderwear.com, which embroiders the words “Too Big To Fail” in red lettering on white briefs. Who knew a major multinational corporation would fear the wrath of the hordes of customers who would not stand for their money being stored in the same bank as a joke underwear retailer!

Yesterday, Citibank claimed that for Internet businesses — and Internet businesses only — they “specifically reserve the right not to open, or to suspend, an account if we find illegal or discriminatory content.” Unfortunately, Citibank’s employees put those directions into practice by reviewing the websites and blogs of all its customers and then declining to work with any business that might bother its more socially conservative clientele.

Without notifying Goldberg or anyone at Fabulis, Citi shut down their bank accounts for objectionable content on Fabulis’ blog, though it refused to specify which content. After hours of phone calls, several articles and a threat to take their banking elsewhere, Citi finally called Goldberg to say that the three Citi employees who had decided Goldberg’s social networking site was objectionable were “wrong to have said what they said.” Note that the bank did not say they were wrong to have suspended his account without notification, or to have flagged his blog as objectionable because it talks about the gay-themed (but not pornographic) company that he is starting, but just that the three employees statements to him were wrong.

In fact, what they told Goldberg was likely right out of an employee handbook, if the phrasing is anything to go by: “Content was not in compliance with Citibank’s standard policies.”

Does Citibank make a regular habit of reading up on the content generated by all its business customers — and are its personal banking clients exempt? Do they accept business accounts from companies that produce or distribute pornography (which includes business giants such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon, as well as nearly every convenience store in the country)? Do they terminate the business accounts of freelance writers if they object to the content written by the customer — be it sexual or political? Is their compliance department monitoring the blog of each and every customer to make sure that storing your money with them is socially acceptable? It seems unlikely that Citi is going around reading all of its customer’s blogs or checking to make sure that every client meets with its employees’ standards of unobjectionable. Far more likely, Goldberg’s business was targeted because of its audience — gay men — and what some employees decide is objectionable.

But then maybe Citibank’s unspoken policy of judging the thoughts and sexual orientation of its customers is why Playboy Enterprises does its banking with Bank of America.

An ambitious plan to update the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act that supporters hope to see signed into law in 2010 comes amid charges that this legislation was responsible for nothing less than the subprime crisis and the resulting collapse of the residential real estate market.

The plan, sponsored by Rep. Eddie Johnson (D-Tex.), would close some loopholes in the original act that let non-bank financial firms operate with relative impunity. It would levy negative ratings on a much wider array of institutions that practiced predatory or discriminatory lending, and it would require that non-bank entities like mortgage providers and insurance companies comply with all CRA tenets.

[Economy1] Why this piece of legislation is still such a lightning rod more than 30 years after its introduction is something both its supporters and detractors struggle to explain from their respective camps. “The idea that this was just some sort of carrot-stick regulation that didn’t work is a perception that goes very much in hand with a right-wing agenda,” said Jose Garcia, associate director for research and policy at advocacy group Demos. Demos is one of several progressive groups seeking to have the bill, the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009, made into law.

On the other hand, Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute, asserts that political pressure drives CRA support. “It fundamentally gets to some very emotional issues. [Supporters] see this as an issue of racism and social justice,” he said. The Cato Institute held a forum in November that was broadly critical of the CRA, asserting that the financial models at its core are faulty.

Federal Reserve chairman Benjamin Bernanke called the CRA a “catalyst” in 2007, although he touched on the trouble already brewing in the subprime mortgage sector as an imperative to revisit the Act in the wake of significant changes in the banking industry since its implementation.

At its heart, the CRA was created to try and legislate out some of the institutional discrimination in the financial services industry. It was conceived in a very different era from today’s world of global banking behemoths. In the wake of the civil rights movement, most banks were still small, often single-branch operations. Many would operate selectively in low-income and minority neighborhoods, accepting the deposits of local residents but only writing home or business loans in more affluent communities.

Regulatory changes in banking plus an agenda embraced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to boost homeownership cracked the mortgage market wide open beginning in the 1990s, and the CRA was initially credited with higher rates of homeownership among low-income and minority Americans. According to Kathleen Day, spokesperson for the Center for Responsible Lending, “The purpose of the CRA is to go into underserved areas and look for credit-worthy borrowers you overlooked because of red-lining,” she said, referring to the bank practice of categorically refusing to lend in certain neighborhoods.

The result of reckless lending practices is by now apparent to everyone, although concerns were swept under the rug in the go-go years of the mid 2000s. CRA supporters say brokers and non-bank mortgage outfits wrote nearly 95 percent of the bad loans, while the Act took the fall when these loans turned out to be unsustainable.

“Nine out of 10 of the people who got bad loans already had homes,” said the Center’s Day. “Six out of the 10 were refinances and three were selling one home and buying another.”

Often, Day adds, the unscrupulous vendors that preyed on subprime mortgage candidates cloaked their malfeasance in the language of the CRA’s mission, a sleight of hand that muddied the waters and assigned undue blame on the regulation when mortgages — and the huge numbers of securities backed by them — began to sour.

Even Lawrence White, a New York University who wants to see the CRA scrapped, says it’s not to blame for the financial meltdown. “The CRA has very little to do with the subprime lending debacle,” he said.

Aside from mortgage lending, the other goal of the CRA is to provide basic banking services to low-income and minority citizens. In these locations, “Pawnshops and the like literally became the banking services,” said John Taylor, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the organization spearheading the modernization of the CRA.

“In some communities there are no financial institutions,” asserted Demos’s Jose Garcia. Geographic impediments and language barriers create a two-tier system that leaves low-income Americans, minorities and immigrants without access to the banking and lending services the middle class takes for granted.

If the legislation were better-enforced — something the NCRC’s Taylor believes the modernization bill would facilitate — banks wouldn’t be able to do things like close branches in these communities without repercussions. But preventing closures would just be the beginning.

In a 12-page statement, the NCRC spelled out major features of modernization. Key among them are inclusion of non-bank financial firms under the umbrella of CRA oversight, and a greater emphasis on the neighborhoods in which institutions write loans, not just the locations where their branches or offices are located. This is partially due to the rise of online and branchless financial institutions, but Taylor says the switch will also prevent companies like subprime mortgage-peddlers from operating under the radar.

Advocates also want to see enforcement of the CRA transferred to the not-yet-created Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The CFPA, as its supporters envision it, would consolidate regulatory oversight and enforcement of banking and lending activities in a single agency, rather than the patchwork of regulators some say let ruinous business practices slip through the cracks.

The modernization effort isn’t without roadblocks, though. The current House bill has yet to progress to the Senate, although Taylor says the NCRC’s goal is to have the modernization signed into law sometime this year. The CFPA doesn’t even exist yet, and might never come to fruition. Last week, Senate Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), the lawmaker who has championed the idea, indicated he may be willing to abandon the idea of a consumer protection agency.

In the end, it’s not clear what is ahead for the CRA. Some, like the Cato Institute’s Mark Calabria, think the need has run its course. “There was a logical raison d’être for the creation of the CRA at the time but that justification is no longer there,” he said. He admits that an outright repeal of the Act is unlikely, though. NYU’s Lawrence White also wants to get rid of the CRA, although he wants to replace it with a cap-and-trade system of credits similar to the protocol used to eliminate acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide in the 1980s.

Progressive and social-justice groups say that the CRA, while not perfect, needs to be improved, not thrown out. “We’re talking about trillions of dollars of private resources that could be available to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods,” said the NCRC’s Taylor. “We believe in banks. If we don’t have them active in these neighborhoods, it’s very unlikely they’re going to prosper. We want banks to see these neighborhoods as an important part of the economic future of this country and of their business plans.”

In the end, it might come down to that. If the notoriously profit-hungry banking industry sees economic potential in lower-income areas, this would go a long way towards keeping the predatory players out of the arena.

Congress has held two hearings already on the cases of Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, which introduced a new “credibility” requirement in pleading standards that civil rights advocates and some Democratic lawmakers complain leaves the fate of discrimination victims to the prejudices of a particular judge assigned to the case. Now, instead of simply having to state clearly what the claims are, plaintiffs have to convince the judge that those claims are credible at the outset, before even having had an opportunity to collect evidence to support them.

While that pleases some conservatives who view most civil rights lawsuits with skepticism, civil rights experts say it rewards employers and others who discriminate but have learned to cover their tracks.

As the Times puts it today: “The practical impact in, say, an employment discrimination case is to disadvantage the wronged employee, who is unlikely to have access at the outset to the records needed to prove wrongful conduct.”

The Times cites John Payton, president of the NAACP legal defense fund, who recently testified that some of the landmark cases of the civil rights era might never have survived the Supreme Court’s new standard. In his written testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Payton cites specific examples of potentially meritorious cases that didn’t survive the new standard because the plaintiffs couldn’t convince a skeptical judge that employment, voting or housing discrimination is “credible.”

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a former U.S. Attorney, put it at that Senate hearing, “In my experience, misconduct is inherently implausible” because we generally expect people to act decently, fairly and lawfully.

Nadler’s legislation acknowledges the fact that sometimes, they don’t live up to that standard.