Plaintiffs Urge Judge to Reject Supervisors’ Redistricting Scheme : Voting rights: Attorneys attack the county’s plan as biased against minorities. A ruling is due today.

Civil rights attorneys Tuesday urged a federal judge to reject a Los Angeles County redistricting map, saying it is “selfishly callous toward minority communities.”

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon said he will rule today on whether to accept the plan.

He told both sides in the voting rights case to be prepared to begin arguments immediately on alternative maps submitted by the plaintiffs in case he rejects the county supervisors’ plan.

In closing arguments Tuesday, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department and three civil rights groups took turns attacking the county plan.

“The board adopted this plan with the intent to deprive the Hispanic community of a realistic opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” said Richard Fajardo of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Steven H. Rosenbaum of the Justice Department said, “The process by which the plan was produced showed both cynicism and contempt for the public.” He pointed out that the plan was adopted in secret.

Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union attacked the plan as a “deliverance of contemptuousness” and said it is “by its design and its execution, selfishly callous toward minority communities.”

The ACLU lawyer accused Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Deane Dana of backing a Latino, Sarah Flores, to succeed retiring Supervisor Pete Schabarum in order to undercut the case--an allegation that both supervisors deny.

Federal courts “have refused to permit rare minority success or exploitation of the electoral process by frustrated and single-minded politicians, openly antagonistic to the Voting Rights Act, to get in the way of a Voting Rights Act suit,” Rosenbaum said.

The plan was drawn by the board’s conservative majority in response to Kenyon’s June 4 ruling that current supervisorial district boundaries weaken the political influence of the county’s 3 million Latinos.

It places liberal Supervisor Ed Edelman in a new 74% Latino district stretching from downtown Los Angeles to El Monte and Rosemead and southeast to Montebello and Pico Rivera. The maps proposed by the plaintiffs would create a Latino district without an incumbent.

Theodore M. Shaw, an attorney for the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, also objected that the plan dilutes the voting rights of blacks by adding Beverly Hills and West Hollywood to Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s South-Central Los Angeles district.

Defending the supervisors’ plan, county lawyer John E. McDermott said, “The county did the only thing the court ordered the county to do”--create a Latino majority district.

He contended that Edelman’s chances against a Latino would be “poor” in the new 3rd District, which excludes most of the incumbent’s Westside political base.

McDermott argued that the plaintiffs want to tip the balance of power on the board from conservatives to liberals.

“In the end, it’s all politics,” McDermott said. “Do we sacrifice a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican? I would suggest your honor, that is not your choice to make.”

In an unrelated action, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday voted 10 to 1 to declare support for expanding the county board to nine members, but the Board of Supervisors deadlocked 2 to 2 over a proposal to submit a board expansion proposal to voters. The swing vote, Pete Schabarum, was out of town fishing, an aide said.