U.S. Sues L.A., Charging Anti-Latino Redistricting : Plan Called Violation of Rights

The Justice Department today accused Los Angeles of a long-term pattern of discrimination against Latinos and sought to invalidate the city’s 1982 redistricting plan as a violation of the growing minority’s rights.

Named as defendants in the civil suit filed in federal court in Los Angeles were Mayor Tom Bradley, the 15 members of the City Council and a city clerk. The suit was signed by, among others, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, a former Alameda County, Calif., prosecutor, and Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds.

The suit alleges that the redistricting plan approved in September, 1982, violates the voting rights of Latinos under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the equal protection of Latinos under the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.

The suit brought against Los Angeles marked the third time that the department has filed voting rights suits against the nation’s largest cities, having challenged redistricting plans earlier in New York and Chicago.

The suit alleges that the redistricting plan approved unanimously by the Los Angeles City Council was “. . . effectuated for the purpose, and with the result, of avoiding the higher Hispanic percentages in certain districts that would be the logical result of drawing district boundaries on a non-racial basis.”

It noted that the Latino population of Los Angeles, as reflected by the 1980 census, had risen to 27% from 18% a decade earlier, but that no Latinos sit on the City Council.

In fact, the suit added, only one Latino has been elected to the City Council since at least 1900. That was Edward R. Roybal, now a member of Congress.

“There has been a history of official discrimination by the state of California and the city of Los Angeles against Hispanic residents of the city,” the suit alleged. “Such discrimination has included discrimination touching on the right of the Spanish-speaking and other language minorities to register, vote and participate in the political process.”

In a separate statement, Reynolds said: “This lawsuit reflects our continuing effort to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act on a national basis. The act prohibits state and local governmental units from taking actions that abridge the right to vote because of one’s race or color or membership in a language minority group.”

The suit charged that the 1982 redistricting plan adopted by the City Council after the 1980 census violated Section 2 by dividing an expanding core concentration of Latinos surrounding the downtown area among seven of the 15 council districts.

This left only one district with Latinos in the majority, it said.

“The fracturing of the Hispanic communities was effectuated notwithstanding specific requests at public hearings from representatives of the Hispanic community that the Hispanic communities be respected during the redistricting process. . . .

“The fragmentation of the Hispanic population . . . was effectuated for the purpose, and with the result, of avoiding the higher Hispanic percentages in certain districts,” the suit said.