Court Skeptical of Democrats’ Remap Pleas

Lawyers for Democrats in the Legislature and Congress asked the state Supreme Court on Monday to reject new political boundaries drawn at the court’s direction and instead adopt district lines approved by the Legislature and vetoed by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

But the high court justices, in a case that could reshape California’s political landscape, peppered the Democrats’ lawyers with questions, sounding skeptical of the argument that the court-drawn plan would give Republican candidates an unfair advantage.

The justices, who are expected to issue a decision by Jan. 28, seemed more sympathetic to requests by Latino, black and Asian-American groups to shift the proposed boundaries in a way that would give those ethnic communities a better chance to elect representatives.

Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and Daniel Kolkey, a lawyer for Wilson, endorsed several of the Latino group’s suggestions and urged the court to alter its proposed congressional boundaries in order to more closely adhere to the U.S. Supreme Court’s one-person, one-vote doctrine.

Lungren, who will be called upon to defend the court’s plan if it is challenged in federal court, said these changes would make the new boundaries better able to withstand review by the federal judiciary.

The Supreme Court is drawing the new district lines for the Assembly, Senate, Congress and the State Board of Equalization to break a stalemate between the Democratic-controlled Legislature and the Republican governor. The state Constitution requires that the lines be redrawn every 10 years to reflect population shifts detected in the U.S. census.

The line-drawing is a crucial political act, because the placement of a boundary can change the characteristics of the electorate in a district, making it more winnable by either a Democratic or Republican candidate.

Under lines drawn by Democrats in 1982 and signed into law by lame-duck Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., Democrats hold a 47-33 edge in the Assembly and outnumber Republicans 24 to 13 in the Senate, where there is one vacancy and two members are independents. Democrats hold 26 of the 45 seats in California’s congressional delegation, which will grow to 52 seats this year because of the state’s population growth.

The lines considered by the court on Monday were drawn by three retired judges--known as special masters--appointed by the court in September. The masters said they drew their lines without regard to their potential partisan political impact.

But Jonathon Steinberg, a lawyer for most of the state’s Congressional Democrats, said this “blindfolded” approach to redistricting was wrong because, whether the court liked it or not, the results of its plan will help shape the outcome of elections for the rest of this century.

Steinberg compared the masters’ logic to someone throwing an anvil from a 10th-story window and saying they weren’t concerned about where it would land.

He said the plan is unfair because it would give the GOP a solid shot at winning a majority of the congressional delegation even though Republicans make up only about 40% of the electorate.

Joseph Remcho, the state Assembly’s lawyer, said the masters’ plan would result in a “permanent partisan gerrymander” favoring the Republicans.

The lawyers were frequently interrupted by questioning from the justices, who seemed prepared to defend the plan drawn for them by the retired judges.

Justice Armand Arabian suggested that ignoring politics was the “preferable approach” to redistricting. Arabian compared the court’s masters to three expert chefs who had prepared a meal from “pure” ingredients that now was being criticized by the Democrats.

“You want more seasoning,” he told Remcho.

Justice Ronald M. George, Wilson’s sole appointee on the court, said “anything done on a neutral basis would end up causing great change.”

“Isn’t it a virtue to abstain from considering incumbency and political effects?” he asked Remcho.

Wilson’s lawyer, Kolkey, told the court that there was “no reason to have a political fairness test” as long as the plan was drawn using neutral criteria. In any case, he added, “we believe these plans are politically fair.”

Kolkey did offer amendments that would reduce the difference in population among the proposed congressional districts. Under the masters’ plan, some districts differ by as much as 1,400 from the “ideal” population of 572,308. The governor’s changes would bring every district to within at least two people of the ideal total.

Kolkey and Lungren also supported attempts by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to increase the number of Latino voters in two central Los Angeles districts and a district in the Central Valley.

With those changes, Lungren said, “we would have a plan that could stand up to scrutiny.”