Federal prosecutors sued Southern California Edison, saying its equipment ignited the 2019 Saddle Ridge fire, which burned nearly 9,000 acres and damaged or destroyed more than 100 homes in the San Fernando Valley.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday claims that Edison was negligent in designing, constructing and maintaining its high-voltage transmission line that runs through Sylmar. Equipment on the line is now suspected of causing both the 2019 fire as well as the Hurst fire on Jan. 7.

Edison has acknowledged that its equipment may have ignited the Jan. 7 fire, but it has been arguing for years in a separate lawsuit brought by Saddle Ridge fire victims that its equipment did not start the 2019 fire.

Lawyers for the victims say they have evidence showing the transmission line is not properly grounded, leading to two wildfires in six years. Edison’s lawyers call those claims an “exotic ignition theory” that is wrong.

In the new lawsuit, the federal government is seeking to recover costs for the damage the 2019 fire caused to 800 acres of national forest, including for the destruction of wildlife and habitats. The lawsuit also requests reimbursement for the federal government’s costs of fighting the fire.

“The ignition of the Saddleridge Fire by SCE’s power and transmission lines and equipment is prima facie evidence of SCE’s negligence,” states the complaint, which was filed by acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli.

“The United States has made a demand on SCE for payment of the costs and damages incurred by the United States to suppress the Saddleridge Fire and to undertake emergency rehabilitation efforts,” the complaint said. “SCE has not paid any part of the sum.”

David Eisenhauer, an Edison spokesman, said the company was reviewing the federal government’s lawsuit and “will respond through the legal process.”

“Our hearts are with the people and communities that were affected,” he said.

The 2019 wildfire tore through parts of Sylmar, Granada Hills and Porter Ranch, killing at least one person.

The fire ignited under a transmission tower just three minutes after a steel part known as a y-clevis broke on another tower more than two miles away, according to two government investigations into the fire. The equipment failure on that tower caused a fault and surge in power.

In the ongoing lawsuit by victims of the 2019 fire, the plaintiffs argue that the power surge traveled along the transmission lines, causing some of the towers miles away to become so hot that they ignited the dry vegetation underneath one of them. Government investigators also found evidence of burning at the base of a second tower nearby, according to their reports.

The lawyers for the victims say the same problem — that some towers are not properly grounded — caused the Hurst fire on the night of Jan. 7.

“The evidence will show that five separate fires ignited at five separate SCE transmission tower bases in the same exact manner as the fire that started the Saddle Ridge fire,” the lawyers wrote in a court filing this summer.

In that filing, the lawyers included parts of a deposition they took of an L.A. Fire Department captain who said he believed that Edison was “deceptive” for not informing the department that its equipment failed just minutes before the 2019 blaze ignited, and for having an employee offer to buy key surveillance video from that night from a business next to one of its towers.

Edison has denied its employee offered to buy the video. A spokeswoman said the utility did not tell the fire department that its equipment failed because it happened at a tower miles away from where the fire ignited.

Residents who witnessed both fires told The Times they saw fires burning under transmission towers on the evening of the 2019 fire and the night of Jan. 7.

Roberto Delgado and his wife, Ninoschka Perez, can see the towers from their Sylmar home. They told The Times they saw a fire on Jan. 7 under the same tower where investigators say the 2019 fire started.

The family had to quickly flee in the case of each fire.

“We were traumatized,” Delgado said. “If I could move my family away from here I would.”

The Jan. 7 fire burned through 799 acres and required thousands of people to evacuate. Firefighters extinguished the blaze before it destroyed any homes.

Grocery company Ralphs illegally denied jobs to hundreds of people based on their criminal history, California’s Civil Rights Department alleges in a new lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is the first of its kind under California’s Fair Chance Act, which went into effect in 2018 and limits the use of conviction history in hiring decisions in an effort to reduce barriers and combat discrimination that formerly incarcerated people face when looking for work.

Ralphs included questions about applicants’ conviction histories on its job application in violation of the law and failed to individually assess whether each applicant’s conviction history justified denying them a job under standards set by the Fair Chance Act, the complaint alleges.

As a result, Ralphs “refused to hire hundreds of applicants whose conviction histories do not justify denying them positions,” according to the lawsuit. These violations are ongoing, according to the complaint.

The Civil Rights Department is seeking monetary damages for the workers who were denied jobs or lost jobs as a result of Ralphs’ screening practices and a court order to require Ralphs to come into compliance with the law.

“When roughly 70 million Americans have some sort of record, policies like those employed by Ralphs aren’t just discriminatory and against California law, they don’t make sense,” said Kevin Kish, director of the Civil Rights Department, according to a Thursday news release about the lawsuit. “We can’t expect people to magically gain the economic and housing stability needed to reintegrate into their communities and stay out of the criminal legal system without a fair chance at steady employment.”

Salvador Ramirez, a spokesperson for Kroger, the parent company of Ralphs, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Fair Chance Act prohibits employers with five or more employees from asking about a job applicant’s criminal history before making a conditional job offer, and sets in place specific procedures for considering an applicant’s criminal history after a job offer is made. Under the law, employers can decide against hiring an applicant only because of a conviction that has a direct relationship with job responsibilities.

The law also requires that companies provide notice of decisions to deny applicants positions on the basis of their conviction histories, and gives applicants the ability to respond to these preliminary decisions.

Ralph did not do this, according to the Civil Rights Department. More than 75% of job applicants who were told their job offer would be withdrawn were not provided any way to contact Ralphs to contest the decision, as legally required by the Fair Chance Act, the department said.

“Ralphs has continued to unlawfully deny jobs to qualified candidates and that’s why we’re taking them to court,” Kish said in his Thursday statement.

The Civil Rights Department said that since the law went into effect in 2018, it has investigated hundreds of complaints alleging discrimination in employment decisions based on criminal history information and secured roughly 70 settlements on behalf of affected individuals. Settlements include a nearly $100,000 mediated settlement with the Moraga-Orinda Fire Protection District earlier this year as well as a $100,000 settlement last year with a construction company that allegedly unlawfully denied a group of applicants positions between 2018 and 2019.

The department said it also has made efforts to identify and correct online job advertisements that violate the Fair Chance Act, sending notices to businesses to address hundreds of violations.