A federal judge has declined another city request to end the 10 lawsuits filed by people arrested in a 2002 Kmart street racing raid.

It's the second time U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas has ruled that the lawsuits can go forward.

In a decision this week, Atlas wrote that the more than 100 plaintiffs could sue about whether the Houston Police Department had a "custom of mass detention without individualized reasonable suspicion."

A mediation is scheduled in the coming weeks. Without settlements, a joint trial is set for April 14. Other plaintiffs already settled with the city.

In 2005, the judge ruled that the police plan that led to the mass arrests was unconstitutional. In a scathing opinion, she called HPD tactics to detain and arrest people who were not observed violating the law "an unjustified, almost totalitarian, regime of suspicionless stops."

Civil rights lawsuits were filed after almost 300 people were arrested in August 2002 during a surprise raid on the Kmart parking lot in the 8400 block of Westheimer. The HPD operation was an attempt to combat street racing.

All of the cases name former HPD Chief Clarence C.O. Bradford, who is running as a Democrat for Harris County district attorney, and allege he knew about the plan. The lawsuits also accused police of brandishing firearms and being verbally abusive during the incident.

Most of those arrested were charged with trespassing or curfew violations, but none was accused of street racing. The charges were dropped after public outcry. Three years later, Atlas said the city's efforts to shut down street racing that summer were unconstitutional.

In court filings, the city tried to avoid trial by arguing that issue was not the mass detentions, but the department's plan to pursue racing spectators through the use of trespassing laws.

Senior Assistant City Attorney Robert Cambrice could not be reached for comment.

The plaintiffs claimed that HPD maintained a pattern of mass detentions dating back to 1989. But in the most recent ruling, Atlas said those cases were not sufficiently similar to the incident in 2002.

She is allowing the plaintiffs to continue their cases on the disputed facts of the custom during the summer of 2002.

The judge also wrote that there is a genuine dispute about then-Chief Bradford's knowledge about that summer's plan.

Bradford lost his appeal of Atlas' decision to keep him as a defendant in the lawsuits.

Civil rights lawyer Randall Kallinen, who is on the legal team representing detainees, said he expects this lawsuit to affect Bradford's campaign and potential tenure as the county's prosecutor.

"If Chief Bradford is going to be the DA and if he's going to be liable for all of these civil rights violations, it doesn't bode well for the citizens of Harris County," Kallinen said.