Supervisors Sued Over Remap Appeal : Redistricting: Action on behalf of taxpayers seeks to block board from spending $500,000 to fight ruling that found supervisorial districts biased against Latinos.

Los Angeles County supervisors were slapped with a taxpayers’ suit Thursday seeking to block the spending of $500,000 in public funds for retiring Supervisor Pete Schabarum to appeal a court ruling that found the supervisorial districts discriminate against Latinos.

The Superior Court suit alleges the expenditure is “an unlawful gift of public money” and violates the public’s “right to alter the government at the ballot box” by committing the county to spend the money even if a future Board of Supervisors drops the appeal.

The suit also seeks a court order preventing liberal Supervisors Ed Edelman and Kenneth Hahn from continuing to use public funds for a private attorney to represent their interests in the voting rights case.

The five-member board’s conservative majority approved the $500,000 expenditure at a closed-door meeting last month.

The suit was filed by Mark Ridley-Thomas, Joyce S. Fiske and Angela Weimer.

Fiske is a past president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and Ridley-Thomas is director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles. They filed the suit as taxpayers, and their organizations are not involved. Weimer is a Latina activist.

The money--paid to the law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft--is being held in a trust and will be returned to the county if the supervisors continue to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

County Counsel DeWitt Clinton said he had not seen the suit and could not comment. But he has said the $500,000 expenditure provides a public benefit because the county may have to pay “several million dollars” in attorneys’ fees to plaintiffs in the voting rights case, unless the redistricting ruling is overturned. Clinton also has said that supervisors believe “there are important legal issues that should be decided.”

The $500,000 is an addition to $4 million the county has spent fighting the voting rights case brought in 1988 by the U.S. Justice Department, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon will hold a hearing Tuesday on a redistricting plan approved by the board’s conservative majority. The plaintiffs have urged the judge to reject the plan, which would place Edelman in a new, predominantly Latino district.