U.S. Sues to Get New Supervisor Districts Drawn

The Justice Department, in a sweeping rebuke of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, filed a lawsuit Thursday that charges political discrimination against Latinos and seeks to force the supervisors to redraw their district boundaries.

The redistricting lawsuit, one of the most extensive ever brought against a local government agency under the U.S. Voting Rights Act, contends that Latinos “have been the victims of official discrimination,” effectively preventing them from being elected to the governing five-member board.

No Latino--or any other minority group member--has ever been elected to the board.

Conservative Majority

The Justice Department lawsuit placed the Reagan Administration at odds with the powerful board dominated for years by a majority of conservative Republicans. One of those conservatives, however, indicated a willingness Thursday to comply with the federal demands.

“I think the general feeling now is that we’ve got to do something or the courts will do it for us,” said board Chairman Deane Dana. “Now that the lines have been drawn and we’ve been sued, I don’t think there’s much alternative except to redraw our lines.”

Like Dana, the remaining four supervisors who voted to adopt the redistricting plan in 1981 are still on the board. In its lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the Justice Department called for the supervisors to void the current redistricting boundaries and come up with a new plan before the next countywide elections in 1990.

The civil suit charges that the board violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act when it redrew its five districts, scattering the county’s Latinos and denying them representation. That law bars any governing body from reducing the electoral participation of any minority group.

The Los Angeles County suit could become one of the nation’s most significant voting rights cases, targeting a board that controls a $9-billion budget and provides services for 8.5 million residents--a population that is greater than 42 states.

In addition to the five supervisors--Pete Schabarum, Kenneth Hahn, Ed Edelman, Mike Antonovich and Dana--the suit also names county Registrar-Recorder Charles Weissburd, who oversees elections.

“The defendants have failed to take the action necessary to allow Hispanic citizens a fair opportunity for equal political participation,” said the Justice Department in its lawsuit. It said the board had “fragmented” the Latino population over three supervisorial districts, thus diluting their voting strength.

‘Injurious Effect’

The result, the suit contends, is “a disparate and injurious effect” on the ability of Latinos to participate in the political process and elect a Latino to the board.

The long-awaited legal action came nearly four months after Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds, head of the department’s civil rights division, first informed county officials that the federal government would go to court, if necessary, to force the county to redraw the district lines.

During the summer months, attorneys from the Justice Department and county had been meeting in hopes of reaching a settlement, or consent decree, but the board refused to scrap its redistricting plan until it had time to review county population figures that are being gathered by demographic experts.

“There was no pattern of discrimination against anyone,” Antonovich said. “Every supervisor is opposed to racial discrimination.”

Both Dana and Antonovich said county officials had hoped that the Justice Department would agree to wait until after the 1990 Census before redrawing the lines. But with the lawsuit, the board must decide whether to contest the Justice Department lawsuit or try to reach an agreement.

Two weeks ago, the county was sued by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in a similar discrimination complaint. The plaintiffs urged the board to expand its number to increase chances of adding a minority member.

Attorneys for MALDEF and the ACLU had been critical of the Justice Department for not filing its own legal challenge. Antonia Hernandez, president and general counsel for MALDEF, said Thursday that she had been concerned over possible Reagan Administration reluctance to take legal action against the Republican-dominated board.

‘It’s About Time’

“We’re very pleased to have the Justice Department in now. It’s about time,” she said after the Justice Department lawsuit had been filed. “I think after all the inquiry it’s the only step that they could take, otherwise it would have been perceived as politics intervening.”

Mark Rosenbaum, general counsel of the Southern California ACLU, said: “The Justice Department has given the county every opportunity to respect the rights of Hispanics and have constantly met resistance. . . . (The suit is) proof positive that that county has been governed in a blatantly discriminatory fashion.”

Hernandez and Rosenbaum said their lawsuit and the Justice Department action would be assigned to the same federal judge and consolidated.

Justice Department officials, in the past, had denied that politics had influenced the timing of the lawsuit.

And a senior Justice Department official said Thursday that civil rights division attorneys were caught by surprise “when MALDEF rushed in and filed suit. They picked up all the work we had done and then threw a hand grenade,” the official said in an interview before the Justice Department’s suit was filed.

The senior official, who spoke on condition he not be identified, added: “We wished they had held fire.” He contended that negotiations between the county and Justice Department representatives were approaching a resolution that “would have served the interests of the Hispanic community.”

The department would have preferred such a settlement on grounds that “you can accomplish a lot more quickly without litigation than with,” the official said. “With a lawsuit, everybody retreats to their side of the field.”

Finding a resolution is tricky because Justice Department attorneys want a solution that takes into account the likely results of the 1990 Census, the official said, to avoid “having to reinvent the wheel” once that population count is tabulated.

At the same time, Justice Department sources as recently as last week voiced hope that the filing of a suit would lead to a speedy consent judgment, in which county officials would agree to take steps to end the alleged discrimination. But there was no sign of that Thursday.

City Redrew Lines

The lawsuit against the county is similar to one filed by the Justice Department against the City of Los Angeles in 1985. In order to settle that lawsuit, the City Council redrew its district lines, which enabled Gloria Molina to win election to the 15-member council as only the third Latino in history.

Richard Alatorre, also a Latino, was elected a year earlier but not in a district specially created in response to Latino discrimination. There had been no Latinos on the council for more than two decades when the suit was filed.