Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, February 27, 2025…

In Del Norte County, starting Thursday, teenagers in trouble will be held accountable by a true jury of their peers. Teen court is a diversion program run by teenagers for teenagers.
California insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara says he’ll make a decision soon on State Farm’s request for an emergency rate increase.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit over immigration raids in early January in Kern County.

Del Norte County Launches Teen Court Diversion Program

Teenagers in trouble in Del Norte County will soon be offered an off-ramp to a better life, courtesy of other teens in their community.

Teen court is a diversion program run by teenagers for teenagers. Youth are trained to run the courtroom with a focus on restorative justice and harm reduction. The goal is to help teens who have committed minor crimes get back on track.

Here’s how it works: Say a teenager commits a first-time, non-violent offense – not a felony, something like fighting, smoking or graffiti. They can be voluntarily referred to the program by schools, police or other entities. Then they work with a court of their peers. After the intake process, there’s a sort of judge, called a youth facilitator, a sort of jury, made up of teenagers and advocates rather than attorneys. There’s also a legal representative, an adult judge or attorney, to guide the process.

Del Norte’s teen court will hear its first cases on February 27. The goal is to hold hearings every two weeks.

California Insurance Commissioner Meets Privately With State Farm

California’s largest insurer should know within a couple of weeks whether it can raise premiums on its nearly 3 million policies in the state after making its case in a face-to-face meeting with Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on Wednesday.

In comments after the closed-door meeting, Lara said he would carefully consider the request, which he previously rejected. He said he hoped to reach a decision within two weeks.

State Farm General — the state arm of the national State Farm Group — had asked to increase homeowner premiums an average 22% on an interim basis outside the usual approval process under California insurance law. It wants to bypass the rate hearing that would normally be required, saying it has been waiting for the Insurance Department to approve rate increases it requested last year, and that payouts from the Los Angeles County fires have worsened its financial position.

In the request, made at the beginning of February, the company said it wants to start charging customers the “emergency” rate increases in May. Lara rejected the request against his staff’s recommendation Feb. 14, saying he needed more information and called for the company’s top executives to appear before him.

ACLU Sues Over Alleged Abuses In Immigration Raids In Kern County

Border Patrol agents slashed tires, yanked people out of trucks, threw people to the ground, and called farmworkers derogatory terms during unannounced raids in Kern County in early January, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The civil liberties organization on Wednesday filed the lawsuit in federal court, saying the operation unlawfully targeted “people of color who appeared to be farm workers or day laborers, regardless of their actual immigration status or individual circumstances.” The raids, it said, violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, including through arrests without probable cause and stops without reasonable suspicion.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Border Patrol, wrote that “Border Patrol enforcement actions are highly targeted” and that “When we discover any alleged or potential misconduct, we immediately refer it for investigation and cooperate fully with any criminal or administrative investigations.”

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Teen Court Program Launches In Del Norte County