In 1991, the city of Laguna Beach, California, prosecuted a woman because the picket fence she built in front of her house was six inches too high. The city zoning board targeted the woman even though twenty of her neighbors signed a letter stating that they had no objection to her fence and even though there were forty other houses in her neighborhood that also had fences higher than the four-foot limit. (The zoning rule had been put into effect ten years before, dictating that new fences had to be significantly lower than existing fences.)

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When minority and women employees sued Lucky Stores for discrimination, they discovered that notes had been taken during mandatory sensitivity workshops. Managers had been asked to think of negative stereotypes and discuss them, which they did. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the federal court in San Francisco ruled that records of these sessions could be used in court as evidence of bias.

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Plainclothes police officers in Miramar, Florida, arrested a grandmother of ten for selling a Playboy magazine to two 16-year-olds. Elaine Ott, a convenience store clerk, was handcuffed, taken to jail, strip searched, and placed overnight in a cell with other felons. After posting bail for his wife, Mr. Ott opened the convenience store and was robbed at gunpoint.

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