No Further Delay, Please

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon will hear arguments today on a request that he stay his order directing the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to present him with a legally acceptable redistricting plan by June 27.

Kenyon issued the order following a lengthy trial in which the board’s five members were found to have conspired to maintain themselves in office by denying the county’s 2 million Latinos the voting rights to which they are legally entitled. Now the board’s majority--which already has enjoyed nine years in power on the basis of an electoral system that has been found illegal-- wants the judge to postpone the June deadline so that it can pursue an immediate appeal. It is worth noting in this context that, over the past two years, the supervisors, who repeatedly have claimed the county is unable to adequately fund many essential human services, have spent $4 million in legal fees defending their indefensible and self-interested affront to this basic civil right. (If Kenyon awards legal fees to the plaintiffs, the county will be liable for an additional $2 million in costs.)

Naturally, the plaintiffs are opposed to further delay and to the board’s additional request that Kenyon allow the November election between Sarah Flores and Judge Gregory O’Brien, even though the boundaries of the 1st District seat they are contesting have been judged to have been illegally drawn. The latter issue is a knotty one, fraught with the often conflicting considerations that arise when the willful misconduct of one co-equal branch of government forces another to intervene in its affairs.

Since passage of the Voting Rights Act, federal judges have generally conducted such intervention with an integrity and tact that has vindicated the public’s faith in the judiciary as the ultimate guardian of its constitutional rights. Judge Kenyon’s conduct of this case stands squarely in that tradition.

The district boundaries the supervisors illegally drew for themselves in 1981 are more than lines on a map. They are a web of deceit and discrimination. Every day they are allowed to remain in place is another day of disgrace.