The Brief

Just hours after the birth of their second child, Charles Johnson lost his wife Kira at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in west Los Angeles.

Kira Johnson was a healthy 39-year old Black woman. Her C-section took just 17 minutes. But more than 10 hours later, she died after waiting for treatment that came too late for internal bleeding, according to Charles Johnson and a civil rights lawsuit filed in the aftermath.

After his wife's death, Charles Johnson had a painful revelation when he began to learn about the Black maternal mortality crisis and that Black patients are three times more likely to die due to pregnancy-related issues than white patients.

" I couldn't understand why we begged and pleaded for hours for them to do something and nobody did anything," Johnson said.

"When I really got to see the data [I was] like, oh my God, this is what happened," he added. "The greatest risk factor was not Kira's race — it was racism."

That was 2016. But it was just last month that Cedars-Sinai resolved a federal investigation into its treatment of Black patients and other patients of color by coming to an agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights.

But some advocates for Black maternal health — including Charles Johnson — say that agreement doesn't go far enough. Later this week, they plan on demonstrating outside of the hospital to say so.

Federal investigation found 'concerns' with Cedars-Sinai care

In November, the HHS Office for Civil Rights sent a letter to the medical center. It raised "concerns that a lower standard of care is provided to Black patients compared to their white counterparts," particularly during and before obstetric hemorrhage, “which results in the risk of higher rates of adverse maternal health outcomes for Black patients.”

That letter, provided to LAist by Charles Johnson, did not include any final determinations. But it did lay out "evidence that may be indicative of noncompliance" with federal anti-discrimination laws.

In January, the federal civil rights agency and Cedars-Sinai came to an agreement that resolves the investigation, while not constituting "an admission of liability" from Cedars-Sinai.

Among other items, it requires the medical center to work with and report to the Office for Civil Rights on its obligations.

What was in the Cedars-Sinai agreement?

The voluntary agreement laid out multiple obligations for Cedars, including:

• Staff training on hemorrhaging management policy.
• Submission of a protocol for assessing and managing acute pain of birthing patients.
• Update of early maternal warning systems for pregnant women developing critical illness.
• Training on federal nondiscrimination requirements.
• Development of a tool for reporting bias in treatment, with findings made public annually.
• Development of a program to support patients' access to doulas.

A spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai said the medical center had offered to meet with Johnson's organization, 4Kira4Moms.

"The recent agreement with the Office of Civil Rights demonstrates our continued commitment to ensuring safe and equitable outcomes through education, accountability and rigorous quality initiatives aimed at addressing disparities in maternal health," the spokesperson said in an email. "We have embraced the opportunity to partner with the Office to strengthen our longstanding dedication to equity for all those who entrust us with their care."

What are other demands?

But 4Kira4Moms says Cedars needs more external monitoring.

 "One of the challenges that we see with medical systems around the country is that they are attempting to police themselves, and it's a fool's errand," Johnson said.

That's why Johnson's group wants the medical center to agree to a series of additional demands, including issuing a statement acknowledging "systemic failures in maternal healthcare," establishing an independent oversight board to investigate racial inequities, and making its Office of Patient Advocacy independent.

" We need an independent review of, particularly, deaths, to make sure that problems are being identified and solutions are being recommended to the hospital that can't be watered down by internal considerations," said Carmen Balber with the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which has joined the effort to pressure Cedars-Sinai.

Charles Johnson also said he wants more transparency around how Cedars-Sinai will implement its obligations.

"There's a commitment to a doula program, but that has no parameters of who has access to these doulas," he said. "Who are they for? Who is helping orchestrate them? What credentials do they have?"

The medical center's spokesperson pointed to a number of efforts to address alleged bias in healthcare at Cedars over the past decade, including creating an anonymous online tool to report suspected bias during labor and delivery and implementing mandatory unconscious bias training.

Fate of the HHS Office for Civil Rights uncertain

The Department of Health and Human Services that signed an agreement with Cedars-Sinai last month already looks very different under the new administration of President Donald Trump.

Last week, Robert F. Kennedy was confirmed as Health Secretary and there's a new acting director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, Anthony Archeval. Trump's administration has ordered the shut down of programs advancing equity, leading some advocates to wonder if the new office will prioritize enforcing the agreement with Cedars-Sinai.

"In addition to holding Cedars-Sinai accountable with this protest, we are also calling on the Trump administration to continue to fund and support the [Office for Civil Rights]," Johnson said.

In Trump's transition to power, the government website reproductiverights.gov went dark. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to publish its weekly report on morbidity and mortality for the first time in decades. (Weekly reports have been published again in February.)

" The Office [for] Civil Rights is there specifically to make sure that people are protected,  and have a place to go when they feel like laws related to discrimination are being violated," said Regina Davis Moss, president of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda. " We want to see that funded."

Nithya Raman turned the tide in the L.A. mayoral race by winning over large swathes of the city that voted for Karen Bass in 2022, according to an LAist analysis of election data.

Bass was a favorite in many areas that voted for Rick Caruso when she faced him in 2022. She held onto a majority of voters across South L.A., but lost much of her previous support.

The switchup came after Bass — a veteran in progressive politics — took a relatively-conservative approach on issues like policing and high-density housing developments compared to Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority told its employees Friday to stop work, shut down their computers and stay off agency systems while it looked into “a potential security issue affecting our systems,” its chief executive confirmed to LAist.

That shutdown order was still in place Monday evening, according to a LAHSA official not authorized to speak on the record.

Gita O'Neill, the agency’s interim CEO, told LAist on Friday evening that the agency did not “yet have enough information to say definitively whether any sensitive or confidential personal information was accessed.”

She has not answered questions about whether or not services for unhoused people are disrupted.

Gita O’Neill, interim CEO of LAHSA, speaks ahead of the annual homeless count on Jan. 20, 2026.

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Jordan Rynning

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LAist

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LAHSA holds highly sensitive information collected from people experiencing homelessness in the region. The agency oversees the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, which includes unhoused people’s names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and disabilities, as well as self-reported mental health and substance abuse history, income sources and domestic violence history.

In a statement Monday, LAHSA said it had taken its internal computer systems offline “as a precaution” and “engaged outside cybersecurity specialists to investigate the nature and scope of the incident.” The statement, sent on O'Neill's behalf by outside public relations strategist Trevor Daley, continued to call it “a potential cybersecurity incident.”

The agency is “taking steps to maintain essential operations,” the statement added, saying LAHSA “remains open” while the investigation continues. It said the agency is working with its technical and legal teams.

What staff were told

Friday’s email to "Team LAHSA" carried the subject line "URGENT: Log Off and Shut Down for the Week." LAist obtained a copy, and O'Neill confirmed by text message that she had sent it.

“As a precaution while we look into a potential security issue affecting our systems, we're asking all staff to stop work and take their machines offline for the remainder of today and through the weekend,” the email said.

It told employees to “Log off and shut down your LAHSA computer” and not to log back in or connect to LAHSA systems, including email, “until you receive an all-clear from us.”

The email also told staff to report anything “unusual” before shutting down, such as “files renaming on their own, unexpected pop-ups or messages.”

What LAHSA leadership has said

In a texted response to LAist on Friday evening, O'Neill said she asked staff to take their computers offline “out of an abundance of caution” while the agency’s IT team assessed the situation.

“Our IT team is actively reviewing the situation now and working to understand exactly what occurred and whether any information was affected,” she wrote. “Protecting people’s personal and confidential information is a top priority in that review.”

Leaders of three LAHSA-funded service providers told LAist on Monday afternoon that they had not received any communications from LAHSA about the potential cybersecurity issue. All three use the HMIS system that holds unhoused people’s personal details.

Previous attacks against another LA housing agency

Another L.A. housing agency was previously hit by cyberattacks. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles — a separate agency known as HACLA — has said hackers got inside its network in 2022 and may have accessed people’s names, Social Security numbers, financial accounts numbers and medical information.

Two years later, HACLA was breached again, according to an official notice, with hackers potentially accessing names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and phone numbers.

LAist reporter Aaron Schrank contributed reporting to this story.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath announced Monday that she is running to be the county’s first elected chief executive. Horvath is the only candidate so far to enter the race, which is set for 2028.

The new executive post will take the place of the county’s appointed CEO and implement key priorities of the county Board of Supervisors. The executive will oversee the county budget, which is currently roughly $50 billion, and labor relations with more than 100,000 employees.

Horvath was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2022 and was re-elected in June to another four-year term. She represents the county’s 3rd District, which covers the San Fernando Valley and parts of the Westside and Central Los Angeles. She is a former mayor of West Hollywood.

The supervisor made her announcement Monday via social media and her campaign website. She called the race a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

The backstory

Voters created the position in 2024 when they approved Measure G, which was proposed by Supervisors Horvath and Janice Hahn.

Among other changes, the measure allowed the Board of Supervisors to expand from five to nine members by 2030 and established an independent Ethics Commission, which held its first meeting last month.

The pushback

On Monday, Supervisor Kathryn Barger issued a statement saying she believed it was “premature” to campaign for the new county executive position when it remained unclear whether “the office itself is constitutional.”

Barger pointed to questions raised by former federal judge Stephen Larson about whether California’s Constitution allows an elected county executive to veto board decisions, control county contracts and take on powers state law currently gives the Board of Supervisors.

“Moving forward with an office that would fundamentally change how Los Angeles County is governed, without first resolving these questions, is putting the cart before the horse,” Barger said in her statement. “We need clarity.”

The primary election is scheduled for March 7, 2028.