Lancaster, L.A. Sue to Bar New Prison
The city of Lancaster and Los Angeles County have filed lawsuits seeking to bar construction of a state prison in Lancaster, arguing that the state has not conducted an adequate environmental review and that the legislation involved was unconstitutional.
The city suit argues that state officials violated environmental laws by failing to examine the prison’s full social, economic and environmental impact. The county suit claims that the environmental review did not consider that the prison will prevent the county from expanding adjacent health and law enforcement facilities needed in the fast-growing valley.
The suits also attack the 1987 “pain-for-pain” compromise in which legislators agreed to permit a prison in heavily Democratic East Los Angeles if another prison were built in the heavily Republican Antelope Valley.
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