New Supervisor Districts Upheld by Appeals Court

A federal appeals court affirmed Friday that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors discriminated against Latinos in drawing district boundaries, clearing the way for dramatic changes in political representation for many of the county’s 8 1/2 million residents.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a new political map for the county that was drawn by civil rights groups and approved in August by U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon.

Kenyon, ruling on a historic voting rights suit filed in 1988 against the county, had determined that the supervisors deliberately set out to dilute Latino voting power nine years ago when they redrew supervisorial districts.

The appeals court decision sends the case back to Kenyon to schedule an election for a successor for retiring Supervisor Pete Schabarum from a new, heavily Latino 1st District.

The new district boundaries, designed to help a Latino win a seat on the powerful county board, could signal an end to a decade of conservative control on the governing body of the nation’s most populous county.

“We agree with the district court that the supervisors’ intentional splitting of the Hispanic core resulted in a situation in which Hispanics had less opportunity than did other county residents to participate in the political process and to elect legislators of their choice,” Judges Mary Schroeder and Dorothy Nelson concluded in a 35-page majority opinion issued in San Francisco.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich said the county, which has spent nearly $5 million fighting the lawsuit, will seek a review from an 11-member panel of the appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We feel there was no discrimination,” Antonovich said. “The Hispanic growth is based on a population shift that occurred in the mid- and late-1980s. Those census shifts are something we could not have anticipated.”

Mark Rosenbaum, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, a plaintiff in the Voting Rights Act case, said, “We are thrilled. Finally the sign on the boardroom door that says ‘Hispanics need not apply’ has come down.”

The plaintiffs, including the Justice Department and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, will ask Kenyon to order a February election in the redrawn 1st District, said Richard Fajardo, a lawyer for MALDEF.

Amy Casner, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said, “We are very pleased with today’s decision and we hope this will clear the way for a special election as soon as possible.”

The appeals court ruling comes only a few days before what was to be a new election for the 1st District seat. Kenyon canceled the runoff scheduled for Tuesday between former Schabarum aide Sarah Flores and Superior Court Judge Gregory O’Brien in the existing 1st District.

Flores and O’Brien, if they remain candidates, would have to run new primary campaigns. They could face some of the same candidates they beat in June, plus such veteran Latino politicians as Los Angeles City Council members Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina and U.S. Reps. Ed Roybal (D-Los Angeles) and Esteban Torres (D-La Puente).

Flores said Friday that she will stay in the race, even though she is now likely to face a field of stronger Latino politicians.

“I am going to be a candidate and work hard to achieve success,” said Flores. “I’m in it for the duration.”

O’Brien said he will drop out of the race if the decision is upheld, because he is not willing to move from his Glendora home into the new 1st District.

Both sides in the legal dispute agreed that if an opinion by Judge Alex Kozinski concurring with the discrimination finding but dissenting on a remedy is compelling enough, it might persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

Kozinski, a conservative jurist whose views are thought to fall into line with the majority on the high court, wrote, “The record is littered with telltale signs that reapportionments going back at least as far as 1959 were motivated, to no small degree, by the desire to assure that no supervisorial district would include too much of the burgeoning Hispanic population.

“When the dust has settled and local passions have cooled,” Kozinski said, “this case will be remembered for its lucid demonstration that elected officials engaged in the single-minded pursuit of incumbency can run roughshod over the rights of protected minorities.”

In his dissent, Kozinski objected to the use of total population, instead of citizenship, for the apportionment base. He said the new political map has districts where “a vote cast in District 1 counts for almost twice as much as a vote cast in District 3.”

“This issue will have immediate and growing significance as large populations of aliens are taking up residence in several of our largest states,” he wrote.

But Schroeder and Nelson wrote that counting citizens rather than total population results in inequities.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn said he hopes the ruling will force conservative supervisors to reconsider their opposition to expansion of the board from five to seven members in order to settle the litigation.

Schabarum, reached at his home near Palm Springs, refused to comment.

Kenyon ruled in June that the five Anglo supervisors, in order to preserve their seats, diluted Latino political influence by fragmenting Latino neighborhoods among three districts.

Latinos make up a third of the county’s population, but no Latino has served on the five-member board since 1875.

The new 1st District stretches from El Sereno and Lincoln Heights east to Irwindale and La Puente and southeast to Santa Fe Springs.

Under the court-ordered reapportionment plan, the 1st District’s composition increases from the present 49% Latino to 71% Latino. Latinos represent 51% of the registered voters of the redrawn district. The district, which is now 50% Democratic and 41% Republican and tends to vote for conservatives, would become 66.5% Democratic and 23.3% Republican.

The new political map shifts all five supervisors to new neighborhoods. Supervisor Ed Edelman loses East Los Angeles from his current 3rd District. He retains his Westside political base and picks up Malibu and Santa Monica from 4th District Supervisor Deane Dana and more of the San Fernando Valley from Antonovich.

Antonovich’s 5th District still includes Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena and picks up part of the San Gabriel Valley now represented by Schabarum. Dana’s coastal district is extended north into the San Gabriel Valley.

Hahn’s 2nd District, which takes in South-Central Los Angeles, picks up Compton.

Times staff writer Philip Hager contributed to this story from San Francisco.