Countywide : Federal Judge Mulls Handbook Controversy
The county registrar of voters can continue printing and binding the voters’ handbook for the June 3 primary but with the “economic risk” of having to reprint it or add a page to it, a Los Angeles federal court judge said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Matt Byrne Jr. also said he needed more time to review materials on the voters’ handbook filed by attorneys representing Linda Lea Calligan, a candidate for Orange County sheriff, and attorneys for Sheriff Brad Gates.
On Monday, Calligan filed suit in U.S. District Court, seeking to force the registrar of voters to include in the handbook 40 words that an Orange County Superior Court judge earlier had ordered deleted from her candidate’s statement.
Calligan, 38, a sergeant in the Sheriff’s Department, alleged that her constitutional right to free speech was violated when Gates succeeded in having a portion of her candidate’s statement deleted from the voters’ handbook.
Earlier this month, Orange County Superior Court Judge Judith M. Ryan ruled that the material was “false and misleading” and ordered it removed from the handbook, citing a 3-year-old state law.
The disputed language focused on Gates’ contempt-of-court citation for failure to relieve overcrowding at the County Jail and other issues.
The California Supreme Court upheld Ryan’s decision to delete the material. A state appeals court set a June 18 hearing on the constitutional issues raised by the case, but that hearing would be 15 days after the election.
David Epstein, an attorney representing the county, said that 1 million copies of the handbook have been printed but have not been bound.
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