The County of Los Angeles filed suit Monday against the State of California seeking to invalidate a new law that County officials contend discriminates against independent voters, strips local control from local voters concerning the process of re-drawing the county’s supervisorial districts and makes that process more political, not less so.
However, Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), who authored the bill on which the law is based, was critical of the lawsuit, on the grounds that it is trying to make unconstitutional a law that considers a regions’s diversity and provides transparency.
The complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, seeks an order declaring that the law created by State Senate Bill 958 last year is unconstitutional and seeks a permanent injunction barring its implementation.
The County contends that the law is patently unworkable and unconstitutional. It is being unfairly and unnecessarily forced on the residents of Los Angeles County and over the objections of their duly elected representatives, according to the County.
Specifically, County officials say, the new law violates two sections of the State Constitution: one that prohibits the Legislature from imposing special laws on particular counties (Article IV, Section 16); and another that requires county offices to be nonpartisan (Article II, Section 6). SB 958 also contradicts the voter-approved County Charter, which assigns the job of re-districting to the Board of Supervisors, according to County officials.
“The new law creates a commission whose membership is based on political-party registration, which discriminates against independent voters— those who register to vote with no party preference,” states a Feb. 28 County press release. “These voters make up 25 percent of the registered voters in the county— more than 1 million in total. The new 14-member Citizen Redistricting Committee is to be responsible for creating county supervisor district boundaries after each US Census every 10 years. Based on current registration numbers, 70 percent of the commission members would be Democrats, 25 percent Republicans and 5 percent would be from other, smaller political parties.Voters who registered without a party preference— the fastest-growing segment of newly registered voters— will not be given equal consideration.”
According to the suit, the new law imposes on the citizens of Los Angeles County an experimental system to select a citizen redistricting commission based on luck and chance, not proper public deliberation. County voters cannot change the law if they are dissatisfied, according to County officials, who added that, by contrast, the last apportionment, which was based on the 2010 Census, included extensive input from county voters and was never challenged in court.
“Supporters of SB 958 pushed the measure through the state Legislature in Sacramento without holding any meetings in Los Angeles County and over the objection of county supervisors,” the County press release states. “Also opposed to the measure were the California State Association of Counties, the Urban Counties of California, the County of Riverside, Common Cause and the Los Angeles Times editorial board.”
Backers of the measure say it was modeled after Prop. 11, narrowly approved by California voters in 2008, which established a statewide citizens redistricting commission for state offices. But the Los Angeles County lawsuit illustrates stark differences between Prop. 11 and SB 958 in asking the courts to invalidate the new law as discriminatory, unconstitutional and fundamentally unfair, County officials said.
Sen. Lara issued a statement on the suit Monday night.
“It took a voting-rights lawsuit to create the first Latino-majority district on the board more than 20 years ago,” he said. “It’s surprising that today this board would go to court to oppose a law that recognizes Los Angeles’s diversity and promotes transparency in a county whose population is larger than that of 40 states. If the Citizens Redistricting Commission is good enough for the state Legislature and Congress, it should be good enough for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.”
Sources: LA County, Lara’s office
