Redistricting of County Stands, High Court Rules : Government: Supervisors lose their final appeal. The decision clears the way for election of a Latino on Jan. 22.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a historic Los Angeles County redistricting plan, ending a 2 1/2-year voting rights case that has paved the way for election of the first Latino supervisor in this century.

Without comment, the high court rejected the county’s final appeal of a lower court finding that the all-Anglo Board of Supervisors discriminated against Latinos in drawing district boundaries in 1981.

The case comes to an end just two weeks before a Jan. 22 primary to elect a Latino supervisor from a new, court-drawn 1st District.

The decision left in place a new political map that changes representation for many of the county’s 8.5 million residents and could tip the balance of power from conservative to liberal on the governing board of the nation’s most populous county.

“Well, the Board of Supervisors today ran out of courts,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the U.S. Justice Department in bringing the 1988 suit against the county.

“The message of this case,” Rosenbaum said at a Los Angeles press conference, “is that you cannot take ethnic communities and divide them up for the benefit of Anglo politicians. . . . It means that the Anglo politicians who are in power have to go about redistricting in an entirely new fashion or they’re going to be brought to court.”

Antonia Hernandez, president of MALDEF, said, “It’s finally over. . . . We will finally see the Hispanic community have the opportunity to elect a representative of its choice.”

With the county appeals now exhausted, federal Judge David V. Kenyon will hold a hearing to decide how much the county should be required to pay the plaintiffs for their legal expenses.

The county had spent $6,069,933 fighting the case as of Dec. 31, according to the county counsel’s office, which refused to make available a breakdown of the expenditures. MALDEF and the ACLU could not provide an estimate of their costs Monday, but MALDEF lawyer Richard Fajardo said, “I know we’ll hit the $2-million mark, but I don’t know how much higher.”

The U.S. Justice Department spent nearly $2 million on the case, said a department official. The federal government cannot seek to recover attorneys’ fees from the county. But the Justice Department has filed a claim seeking to recover $300,000 from the county for the cost of depositions and transcripts of the trial proceedings.

One other issue still pending before Kenyon is a Justice Department request for a 15-year requirement that supervisors clear changes in district boundaries with the attorney general or Kenyon.

The three members of the board’s conservative majority, Mike Antonovich, Deane Dana and Pete Schabarum, could not be reached for comment on the Supreme Court action. They were in Sacramento attending Gov. Pete Wilson’s inauguration and did not return calls placed through their office.

Antonovich issued a statement saying, “I am disappointed. . . . It is ironic that a Hispanic woman, Sarah Flores, who won the June primary in the 1st District, was denied her opportunity to be elected supervisor in the district where she resides while a male incumbent (Ed Edelman) who won the June primary in the 3rd District will be allowed to serve a full four-year term representing hundreds of thousands of people who never voted for him.”

Liberal supervisors Edelman and Kenneth Hahn sought to deflect any political fallout for the cost of the litigation, pointing out that they sought to settle the case early by supporting expansion of the board from five to seven members.

“I’m happy to see that we can now put this matter behind us and get on with the more pressing business of county government,” Edelman said.

The supervisors have made no decision on when they will officially take over their new districts, but Edelman said the transition “should be done as quickly as possible.”

The high court’s action came as no surprise. Last month, the justices refused to stay the Jan. 22 election, prompting civil rights attorneys to declare that the case was probably over.

“The dark cloud has been lifted,” said Flores, one of four prominent Latinos in the race. Flores, who finished first in an invalidated June primary in the old 1st District, was fearful that the high court would throw out the results of the new election.

Also running Jan. 22 are Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina and state Sens. Charles Calderon and Art Torres, as well as five other candidates.

Monday’s action by the high court may have a broader significance for state and local redistrictings that follow finalization of 1990 census figures.

In 1964, the Supreme Court said that electoral districts should be made equal based on the principle of “one person, one vote.” But the court never spelled out precisely whether that meant districts should be based on population or the number of eligible voters. One of the appeals court judges who heard the Los Angeles County case said the issue was important because large numbers of immigrants reside in California and other states.

The Los Angeles County case strongly suggests that a population count is the answer.

In their final appeals, county attorneys argued that, while each of the five supervisorial districts has roughly 1.7 million residents, the new 1st District has about 400,000 fewer eligible voters than the other districts. Officials say many Latinos in the 1st District are not citizens and are not eligible to vote.

Justice Department lawyers argued that for at least 25 years, county officials have followed the standard California practice of dividing up districts based on their population. To argue now that this is unconstitutional “represents a quite recent change of heart” and “a peculiarly inappropriate” basis for blocking the new Latino majority district, the Justice Department contended.

The 1988 voting rights lawsuit accused the five supervisors of splitting the county’s 3 million Latinos among three districts, thereby diluting their voting strength. Although Latinos make up a third of the county’s population, no Latino has served on the board since 1875.

Last June, following a three-month trial, Kenyon ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. In August, he approved a new political map drawn by a UCLA demographer hired by the ACLU and MALDEF. Kenyon also threw out the results of the June primary in the old 1st District and ordered a new election in a redrawn 1st District.

In November, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Kenyon’s ruling. Kenyon then ordered the Jan. 22 primary. If no candidate receives a majority, the top two vote-getters will face off Feb. 19.