Judge Dismisses Santa Monica Minority Voting-Rights Lawsuit, a Turning Point in a Decade-Long Legal Fight
SANTA MONICA, California — A voting-rights lawsuit in Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, that has run for about a decade reached a major judicial turn on November 7. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Daniel Crowley granted the city's motion to dismiss, a significant setback for the long-running dispute over the city's council election system. The judge directed city attorneys to prepare a formal written order for the plaintiffs' counsel to review, leaving an appeal an open question.
The case was first filed in 2016 by plaintiffs including the Pico Neighborhood Association and local resident Maria Loya, who have long challenged Santa Monica's at-large election system as potentially diluting the political representation of some minority communities. Under at-large elections, all eligible voters vote for every council member rather than choosing representatives by district. District-election advocates argue that when ethnic populations are unevenly distributed, at-large voting can make it hard for smaller communities to elect their preferred candidates; defenders of the at-large system say council members should answer to the whole city and that district elections can divide communities politically.
The dispute centers on the California Voting Rights Act, which aims in part to keep election systems from unreasonably diluting the voting power of protected groups. The case has passed through multiple levels of courts and become a landmark in California local-election disputes, with implications for other Los Angeles County cities. Minority communities, including Chinese, Latino and other Asian American residents, have paid growing attention to representation on city councils, school boards and water district boards in recent years.
Source: Santa Monica Daily Press
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：圣塔莫尼卡市政厅。Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 3.0。 / Photo: Santa Monica City Hall. Via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
