A Latino District Is Not Possible, County Argues

With a historic voting rights trial due to end next week, attorneys for Los Angeles County argued Friday that the “suburbanization” of Latinos has made it impossible for the Board of Supervisors to carve out a district in which a majority of the voters are Latino.

“Unlike Southern voting rights cases, in which blacks are virtually segregated in one area of town, Hispanics are spread in every nook and cranny of the county,” John McDermott said in his closing argument in the three-month-long case that is now winding down in federal court.

Also Friday, a lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department urged District Judge David V. Kenyon to delay the June supervisors’ election until after a new redistricting plan can be drafted. Attorney Steven Rosenbaum said that if the county loses in the trial, the supervisors should be given 30 days to submit to the judge a new plan designed to help a Latino win a seat on the county board.

Although candidates for supervisor in the June 5 election have begun campaigning, Rosenbaum told the judge: “The campaign is still young. There is still time to stop the process in ways that would be fair to the candidates.”

The judge did not say when he will rule on this or any of the other issues in the court case.

Friday’s daylong session focused on whether the plaintiffs have proven that it is possible to create a supervisorial district in which a majority of the voters are Latino. Key to the county’s defense is that such a district could not be created during the 1981 redistricting effort or today.

In a lawsuit filed in September, 1988, the Justice Department and two civil rights groups accused county supervisors of splitting Latino neighborhoods among three districts, thereby weakening their political influence in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

McDermott argued that the existing boundary line splitting heavily Latino neighborhoods in East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley does not dilute the Latino vote because a majority of the Latino residents there are not citizens or old enough to vote.

He said the plaintiffs’ case depends on the use of non-citizens to establish a district in which a majority of voters are Latino. Under that concept, he argued, “the moment that somebody comes across the border, legally or illegally, that person is entitled to affect the distribution of political power in this community.”

“We regard political power as fundamental to U.S. citizenship,” McDermott added. “That is not something available to non-citizens.”

McDermott also contended that 67% of the Latino voters are dispersed throughout the county, “which is to say, they do not live where most Hispanics live.”

“The suburbanization and assimilation of third-, fourth- and fifth-generation Hispanics render arguments about fragmentation meaningless,” the attorney added.

McDermott, whose private law firm is being paid more than $2.5 million to defend the county in the case, argued that the plaintiffs also have failed to prove, as required, that Latinos vote as a bloc.

He contended that as Latinos become upwardly mobile, they generally move out of the barrio and change their party registration from Democrat to Republican.

The plaintiffs are seeking to establish a predominantly Latino district, from which a Latino would have an improved chance of winning a seat on the county board. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, also plaintiffs in the case, have asked the judge to consider expanding the board from five to seven or nine members.

Kenyon, while emphasizing that he had not reached any decision on that issue, questioned whether bigger is better, pointing to the 15-member Los Angeles City Council, where it is “sometimes difficult to get things done.” He also pointed out that voters have twice rejected expansion of the county board.