LOS ANGELES (CN) — The California Supreme Court found Thursday that a state appeals court erred when it ruled against Latino voters in the city of Santa Monica in their voting rights fight against the city.
Associate Supreme Court Justice Kelli Evans wrote the opinion remanding the case to the appeals court, finding it had not applied the correct legal standard when it found the plaintiffs didn't satisfy dilution elements in bringing the case.
“To prevail on a [California Voting Rights Act] claim, a plaintiff who has established the existence of racially polarized voting in an at-large system need not prove that the protected class would constitute a majority — or, as the city proposes, a near majority — of a hypothetical single-member district,” Evans wrote in the 38-page opinion.
In April 2016, plaintiffs Pico Neighborhood Association and Maria Loya, a Latina registered voter, filed an action against the city of Santa Monica that claimed that the city’s at-large method of electing its city council unlawfully impaired the ability of Latino voters to elect their preferred candidates or influence the outcome of council elections.
According to the plaintiffs, the at-large system violated the California Voting Rights Act as well as the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. Since at-large voting was introduced 60 years ago, only one Latino had been elected to the city council.
Loya claimed that she and other Latinos who ran for city council were always defeated by bloc voting of the non-Latino electorate, even though she and other Latino candidates were preferred in the Pico neighborhood.
The case went to trial, where Los Angeles Superior Court determined in 2018 that because of racial polarization, the at-large system used in Santa Monica unlawfully diluted the electoral strength of its Latino residents within the meaning of the California Voting Rights Act, in that several alternative voting systems, such as district-based elections, would better enable Latino voters to elect candidates of their choice or influence the outcomes of elections.
The California Voting Rights Act prohibits the use of an at-large electoral system that dilutes the ability of a protected class from electing preferred candidates or influencing an election.
The trial court ordered the city to conduct a special election using a district map.
After the city of Santa Monica appealed, the state appellate court reversed the trial court’s ruling. It disagreed with the trial court’s assertion that at-large voting hampered Latinos’ ability to influence elections or elect preferred candidates because there were too few Latinos, and they were too geographically dispersed, to muster any majority, no matter how the city cut up the districts.
The plaintiffs then appealed the case to the California Supreme Court to review what constituted dilution under the California Voting Rights Act.
That court has now found that the appeals court applied the majority-minority standards of the federal Voting Rights Act to the case, even though that standard does not apply under the California Voting Rights Act.
While the two acts are similar, there are some differences.
“The CVRA, unlike the VRA, does not require a plaintiff to demonstrate that the members of the protected class would be geographically compact or concentrated enough to constitute a majority of a hypothetical single-member district,” Evans wrote.
A claim under the California voting law also doesn't require showing that at-large voting impairs a protected class's ability to elect candidates, only that the at-large method impairs its ability to influence the outcome of an election.
Because the court of appeals ruled that there was no voter dilution, it found it unnecessary to determine if racially polarized voting had been established.
“Because the Court of Appeal concluded that plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate dilution of the Latino vote, it did not consider whether voting in council elections was racially polarized. We have determined that the Court of Appeal relied on an incorrect legal standard to conclude that plaintiffs had failed to satisfy the dilution element of their CVRA claim,” Evans wrote.
Considering the circumstances, Evans wrote that it would be “appropriate” to remand the case to the court of appeal to apply the correct legal standard and decide whether plaintiffs have established that the at-large elections dilute their ability to elect their preferred candidate; whether plaintiffs have demonstrated the existence of racially polarized voting, and any other “unresolved issues.”
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