Scholars File Brief Against Gates Ruling

Relying on aging city records and historical analyses, 11 scholars joined with the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday in an attempt to overturn a judge’s decision to reinstate Police Chief Daryl F. Gates in the aftermath of the Rodney G. King beating.

An amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief filed Monday argues that Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian misinterpreted the City Charter when he reversed the Police Commission’s decision to place Gates on an involuntary 60-day leave.

The brief, filed in the 2nd District Court of Appeal, was drafted by the ACLU of Southern California on behalf of 10 university professors and a history museum curator to buttress two appeals of Sohigian’s ruling--one by the Police Commission and the other by a coalition of civil rights groups.

“The judge’s ruling is ahistorical, if not anti-historical; it undoes that which the Charter was principally drafted to accomplish,” the 40-page brief states.

Sohigian ruled that the City Council had the authority to reinstate Gates as partial settlement of a suit the chief filed against the city. He relied on a provision in the 66-year-old Charter giving the council control over litigation.

The judge reasoned that the commission’s authority to manage the Police Department is subordinate to the council’s authority to settle lawsuits. He agreed with the city attorney that the city has a “unitary” form of government--somewhat akin to a corporation--and that the Police Commission and the council cannot be at odds with one another in court.

But the scholars--most of them Southern California historians and political scientists--argued that Sohigian “created an exceptional ‘litigation veto’ ” that the framers of the Charter never intended.

“Somebody handed Judge Sohigian the wrong charter,” said Steven P. Erie, associate professor of political science at UC San Diego, at a press conference held Monday by the ACLU.

According to Erie, the judge’s ruling is consistent with the 1889 City Charter, the predecessor to the current 1925 document that governs the city. The earlier Charter gave the council extensive authority over the Police Department and other city agencies; the 1925 Charter was intended to give that authority to independent commissions, Erie said.

“We think this case is a matter of history, a matter of what the Charter says and means,” said Mark Rosenbaum, legal counsel for the ACLU. “The documents that these scholars examined are documents that are entirely missing from the record of the case.”

“There is selective history going on here,” countered Senior Assistant City Atty. Fred Merkin, who represented the City Council. “If you simply look at who is supposed to be running the Police Department then, yes, the answer is it is the Police Commission. But if you look at the history of who controls litigation . . . it’s always been done by the city attorney and the City Council, without exception.”