U.S. Justice Dept. Will Check Redistricting Plan : Politics: A complaint that the newly drawn supervisorial districts dilute Latinos’ voting strength will be assessed.

A U.S. Department of Justice official said Wednesday that, as a matter of routine, its attorneys will look into charges by a Latino organization that the Board of Supervisors violated the Voting Rights Act when it adopted a new redistricting plan.

The Orange County Hispanic Redistricting Committee sent a letter to the department Wednesday saying that the county’s newly drawn boundaries for its five supervisorial districts unlawfully dilutes Latino voting strength.

“We certainly listen to what anybody has to say about a plan, and then make our own determination as to how it will impact voters in any given area,” spokesperson Amy Casner said from Washington.

She said the department has been busy investigating numerous claims from throughout the country of Voting Rights Act violations. Every 10 years, after the U.S. census numbers are released, electoral bodies have to redraw boundaries to reflect shifts in population.

Casner said she did not know how long it would take to make a determination about Orange County’s plan, which was adopted on Tuesday.

In the new plan, the supervisorial boundaries look much as they do now, except that Santa Ana--the county’s only city in which Anglos are in the minority--will be split among three districts.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton’s 1st District, which has the highest percentage of minorities and now includes all of the city of Santa Ana, would contain a population that is 64% minorities under the new plan, including 47% Latinos. Currently it is 62% minority, and 46% Latino.

Supervisors have said that their plan complies with the law, and because Orange County already has a Latino and a woman on the board, the charges of unfair representation are unfounded.

“Our county counsel certainly indicates that we are on solid ground,” said Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez.

Members of the Latino redistricting group, however, say that in light of how much the county’s ethnic population has grown in the past 10 years--the Latino population almost doubled and the Asian population nearly tripled--supervisors could have drawn a district where one ethnic group predominated.

“Our proposal is not one where we’re asking for another Hispanic on the Board of Supervisors,” said Ruben A. Smith, counsel for the committee. “What we’re asking for is the potential to elect the most qualified candidate . . . who is accountable specifically to the community which in this county we feel has the most need.”

Smith made his remarks during a press conference attended by four attorneys and several others who make up the nonpartisan Hispanic Redistricting Committee. Several of them pointed out that Vasquez, while a Latino, represents the 3rd District, which is only 15% Latino. They have maintained that the 1st District, with the largest Latino population, must be drawn in a way that gives them “the ability to influence an election,” as Smith said the law requires.

Attorney David A. Valles, also president of the Orange County Mexican-American Bar Assn., said a recent opinion from state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, in response to questions from Gov. Pete Wilson, bolsters their position.

“It says that in creating new boundaries, the creation of majority-minority districts takes precedence over all other criteria,” Valles said.

Stanton pointed out that the map the Latino redistricting group is submitting with its letter to the Justice Department also splits Santa Ana.

“It’s an incredible piece of gerrymandering,” he said. “It shows the consistent inconsistency of their arguments.