As we celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this month, it's appropriate to highlight the mission of the Attorney General's Civil Rights Division to eliminate discrimination throughout Arizona.

People are sometimes surprised when they still hear about cases of discrimination based on race, disability, gender, ethnicity or age. The fact is that 38 years after Dr. King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech, we encounter prejudice most every day.

The Civil Rights Division works to protect our civil rights through the filing of lawsuits, promoting community education and providing dispute resolution services. Over the last year, the Division:

• Filed 17 housing, employment, and public accommodations lawsuits with successful resolution to the victims.
• Provided mediation services in civil rights cases with a 73 percent success rate.
• Obtained $566,588 for discrimination victims and the State through conciliation, mediation agreements and consent orders.
• Investigated approximately 1,512 new and pending discrimination charges and resolved 1,052 of them.
• Sadly, we continue to receive complaints of discrimination. Here are a few representative cases we handled in 2005:
• State v. MMP Grant, Inc. dba Holiday Inn Express: An employee with a Tucson Holiday Inn Express told her supervisor she was pregnant and was fired. After filing a lawsuit against the employer, the Civil Rights Division entered into a consent order with successful settlement terms to prevent such discrimination in the future.
• State v. The Villas at Hacienda del Sol, Inc., et al.: This Tucson apartment complex management refused the request of a disabled tenant to reassign a parking space closer to his apartment. The Division entered into a consent order requiring the defendants to develop a strong reasonable accommodation request policy to benefit future disabled residents, participate in fair housing training, and allow the Division to monitor their compliance with the accommodation request policy for two years.
• State v. Show Low Apartments: This case involved two residents of the Show Low Apartments and their therapeutic animals. The manager and owner threatened eviction until the animals were removed because of its general "no pets" policy. The Arizona Fair Housing Act requires landlords to provide reasonable accommodations for the disabled. The Division won a partial summary judgment motion and was able to successfully mediate this case to provide damages and penalties to the victim and the State. The settlement also required the owners and managers to change their policies to prevent this type of discrimination from occurring again.
• Turner v. Barrett-Eastman: The Division alleged that Barrett-Eastman, a Phoenix property management company, and its client refused to rent a home to a family with children because the house had a pool, which is a violation of the fair housing laws. The Division entered into a settlement agreement with Barrett-Eastman which provided for monetary relief for the complainant and the Arizona Fair Housing Center. The company also adopted a written anti-discrimination policy that does not exclude or steer away qualified families with children from renting homes with pools.

Arizona needs to be a vigorous participant in fulfilling Dr. King's dream to eradicate discrimination, and our Civil Rights Division will continue to play a vital role.

Terry Goddard