Plaintiffs Say County Remap Still Biased : Voting: A strong Anglo incumbent in a new Latino district would prevent Latino representation, critics say. The plan also dilutes voting clout of blacks, they charge.

Civil rights attorneys told a federal judge Thursday that they will urge him to reject a redistricting plan drawn by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, saying it fails to remedy discrimination against Latinos.

Plaintiffs in the historic voting rights case will argue that the recent reapportionment was guided by “intentional discrimination of the same character” that led the judge to declare the current district boundaries illegal, said Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

During a crowded hearing, U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon scheduled another hearing for July 13 before deciding whether to accept the plan submitted last week by the supervisors. The judge did not hear arguments for or against the plan.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs, including the U.S. Justice Department, asked Kenyon to order the supervisors to disclose their private talks leading up to adoption of the new plan.

Kenyon said he would rule in the next few days on the plaintiffs’ request to interview five supervisors and look at all maps considered by county officials during private meetings. County attorneys opposed the request, saying it would needlessly delay the proceedings.

The 1 1/2-hour session was attended by Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Pete Schabarum and a bevy of the supervisors’ political aides. The front of the courtroom was jammed with more than a dozen lawyers, including a team of attorneys representing the board’s conservative majority and a separate lawyer representing the liberal minority--all paid for at taxpayer expense.

Kenyon told the plaintiffs--the U.S. Justice Department, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the ACLU--to file papers by the middle of next week stating their objections to the plan. The plaintiffs have said they also may submit alternate political maps--including proposals expanding the board from five to seven or nine members.

Outside the courtroom, ACLU attorney Rosenbaum said of the plan: “It continues the same intentional discrimination against the Hispanic community and now has the additional feature of discriminating against the Afro-American community as well.”

Ted Shaw, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, an intervenor in the case, said the plan dilutes the voting power of blacks by adding high-voting Anglo Beverly Hills and Hollywood to Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s heavily black South-Central Los Angeles district.

Richard Fajardo, a MALDEF lawyer, also called the map “more of the same” discrimination. He said the plan excludes heavily Latino neighborhoods in the San Gabriel Valley from a proposed Latino district.

Justice Department attorneys declined comment, but Rosenbaum of the ACLU said that the federal government intends to oppose the county plan.

Schabarum, who has consistently denied that the county intentionally discriminated against Latinos in its 1981 redistricting, said that any complaints about the latest plan should be laid at the feet of Kenyon.

“The plan recommended by a majority of the board is simply a response to Judge Kenyon’s order,” Schabarum said after the hearing. “That’s his mischief, not ours.”

Schabarum said the plaintiffs “wanted a slam dunk Hispanic district and we’ve given them that district. Now they are just being greedy” in opposing the proposed redistricting plan.

The redistricting plan was submitted to Kenyon last week in response to the judge’s June 4 ruling that the board’s 1981 drawing of district boundaries violated the federal Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Latinos.

The board’s conservative majority has voted to appeal Kenyon’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. In the meantime, the supervisors submitted to the judge a plan that would change political representation for many of the county’s 8 1/2 million residents and place Supervisor Ed Edelman in a new Latino district.

The proposed new Latino district stretches from El Sereno and Lincoln Heights on the edge of downtown Los Angeles east to El Monte and Rosemead and southeast to Montebello and Pico Rivera. It contains two thin fingers, one extending to Edelman’s home in Westwood and another snaking out to heavily Latino neighborhoods at the north end of the San Fernando Valley.

The new 3rd district would be 74% Latino, up from 47% in Edelman’s existing territory. Latinos account for 45% of the registered voters of the new district.

Jonathan Steinberg, attorney for Edelman and Hahn, attacked the plan as a “political prank” by conservative supervisors to maintain control of the board. Steinberg argued that the new Latino district would require Latino candidates to run against a powerful and well financed incumbent, “despite the fact that a true Hispanic core district can easily be fashioned in a five-district or seven-district plan that would avoid pitting potentially under-funded Hispanic candidates against an incumbent.”

Sarah Flores, a Latino candidate who was the top vote-getter in the June election to succeed Schabarum, attended the hearing and was represented by a lawyer. Her opponent in a November runoff, Superior Court Judge Gregory O’Brien, also was present.

Kenyon said he would rule in the next few days on Flores’ request to be an intervenor in the case, but said, “The court is tentatively thinking that her voice should be heard.”

The plaintiffs oppose Flores’ intervention. “She took a calculated risk,” the ACLU and MALDEF said in papers submitted to Kenyon. “That risk must be borne by the candidate, not the disenfranchised Hispanics residing on either side of the current and unlawfully drawn lines of District 1.”

Times staff writer Frederick M. Muir contributed to this report