Lee v. City of L. A.

• Decision Date: 19 November 2018
• Docket Number: No. 15-55478, No. 15-55502,15-55478
• Citation: 908 F.3d 1175
• Parties: Peter LEE, individual; Miri Park, individual; Ho Sam Park, individual; Geney Kim, individual; Yonah Hong, individual, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, Defendant-Appellee. Stanley Haveriland, individual; Theodore Thomas, individual; Horace Pennman, individual; Julia Simmons, individual; Heather Presha, individual; Sally Stein, individual, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. City of Los Angeles, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

908 F.3d 1175

Peter LEE, individual; Miri Park, individual; Ho Sam Park, individual; Geney Kim, individual; Yonah Hong, individual, Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.CITY OF LOS ANGELES, Defendant-Appellee.

Stanley Haveriland, individual; Theodore Thomas, individual; Horace Pennman, individual; Julia Simmons, individual; Heather Presha, individual; Sally Stein, individual, Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.City of Los Angeles, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 15-55478

No. 15-55502

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted January 9, 2017 Pasadena, California

Filed November 19, 2018

Rex S. Heinke (argued), John A. Karaczynski, Hyongsoon Kim, and Patrick E. Murray, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, Los Angeles, California; Ekwan E. Rhow, Bird Marella Boxer Wolpert Nessim Drooks Lincenberg & Rhow P.C.; for Plaintiffs-Appellants Peter Lee, Miri Park, Ho Sam Park, Geney Kim, and Yonah Hong.

Leo James Terrell, Law Offices of Leo James Terrell, Los Angeles, California, for Plaintiffs-Appellants Stanley Haveriland, Theodore Thomas, Horace Pennman, Julia Simmons, Heather Presha, and Sally Stein.

Robin B. Johansen (argued) and Thomas A. Willis, Remcho Johansen & Purcell LLP, Oakland, California; Harit U. Trivedi, Deputy City Attorney; Valerie L. Flores, Managing Assistant City Attorney; Michael N. Feuer, City Attorney; Office of the City Attorney, Los Angeles, California; for Defendant-Appellee.

Before: Jacqueline H. Nguyen^* and Paul J. Watford, Circuit Judges, and Mark W. Bennett,^** District Judge.

NGUYEN, Circuit Judge:

At least once every ten years, the City of Los Angeles (the "City") must redraw the boundaries of its Council Districts in accordance with the requirements of its City Charter. Unsurprisingly, this decennial exercise can ignite intense debate and political maneuvering. These debates often center around "communities of interest," which are frequently but not exclusively defined along racial or ethnic lines, and which the City must take into account in its redistricting. In Los Angeles, certain communities have been divided across two or more Council Districts for decades even when they have been historically concentrated in certain areas of the City. Here, for example, Koreatown in Los Angeles is the largest Korean community in the United States, but, because it has been split into multiple City Council districts, the community has encountered "difficulty getting elected officials to address [its] needs."

Even as the redistricting process endeavors to respect the integrity of these communities of interest, the City has recognized that it is "inevitable ... that some interests will be advanced more than others by the choice of a particular district configuration." The City Council (and the Commission charged with advising it) must make these tough calls, recognizing that not all communities will be satisfied with the outcome. While the City Council may consider the passionate advocacy of these local communities, they must ultimately adhere to the strictures of the United States and California Constitutions and the City Charter. Thus, the City Council generally may not act with race as a predominant motivating factor. Cooper v. Harris , ––– U.S. ––––, 137 S.Ct. 1455, 1463, 197 L.Ed.2d 837 (2017). Doing so would be presumptively unlawful under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, unless the City can meet the demanding burden of showing that such action was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. Id. at 1464.

In this appeal, we must decide whether Plaintiffs have presented sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment on the claim that the City was motivated predominantly by racial considerations in drawing its current Council Districts. That is, we consider whether the City primarily sought to maximize the voting power of certain racial groups over others when drawing Council Districts and subordinated all other considerations to that priority. On this record, we conclude that Plaintiffs have failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact on whether racial considerations predominated the City’s redistricting process. We further agree with the district court that legislative privilege protects local officials from being deposed. We therefore affirm the district court’s protective order and its order granting summary judgment in favor of the City.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

The Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission was created after Los Angeles voters adopted the current Los Angeles City Charter in 1999. The purpose of the Commission is to advise the Los Angeles City Council on the drawing of new Council District (alternatively, "CD") boundaries. These boundaries are drawn every ten years after each federal census with the goal of ensuring that each Council District contain "as nearly as practicable, equal portions of the total population of the City" as shown in the most recent census data. To the extent feasible, the boundaries are to be drawn to "keep neighborhoods and communities intact, utilize natural boundaries or street lines, and be geographically compact." In accordance with the City Charter, a Commission was appointed to propose new boundaries after the 2010 census. Since the previous redistricting in 2002, changes in population had caused imbalances across Council Districts that required rebalancing.

1. The Commission’s Initial Steps

The Commission began the redistricting process by holding several preliminary meetings between September 27, 2011 and December 5, 2011. At these initial meetings, the Commission was presented with the existing Council District boundaries along with population and demographic data from the 2010 Census. The Commission then held a series of public hearings throughout the City between December 5, 2011, and January 10, 2012. One of the issues raised at these hearings was whether the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council ("Koreatown") should continue to be split across multiple Council Districts or united into a single Council District. At the time, Koreatown fell within at least three Council Districts: CDs 4, 10, and 13. The majority of public participants at the hearings spoke in favor of joining Koreatown into a single Council District.

On January 11, 2012, the Commission held a meeting at which the Chair of the Commission proposed dividing the Commission into three ad hoc committees corresponding to three regions: (1) the San Fernando Valley; (2) West and Southwest Los Angeles; and (3) East and Southeast Los Angeles. Each committee would meet on its own and be responsible for drawing an initial map of the Council Districts within its assigned region. The Commission voted to approve this proposal.

2. The Ad Hoc Committees Draw the Initial Council District Boundaries

The committee assigned to West and Southwest Los Angeles (the "West/Southwest Committee") was responsible for drawing five Council Districts, including CD 10. CD 10 is west of downtown Los Angeles and split in half by the I-10 (Santa Monica Freeway). At the time of the 2012 redistricting, the 2010 Census data indicated that CD 10 was about 4.9% below its required population size. Its registered voters were 49.1% African American, and its Citizen Voting Age Population ("CVAP") percentages were 36.8% African American, 28.2% Latino, 17.1% Asian, and 15.9% White.

At the West/Southwest Committee’s first meeting, Commissioner Chris Ellison, who had been appointed to the Commission by City Council President Herb Wesson (CD 10’s councilmember), prepared his proposed boundaries for CD 10. These boundaries encompassed majority African American neighborhoods that had previously been in CD 8, such as Leimert Park and the "Dons" portion of Baldwin Hills. They also excluded from CD 10 a substantial portion of the "Palms" neighborhood (which had a minority of African American residents) and split Koreatown’s population between CD 10 and CD 13. In presenting his proposed boundaries, Ellison stated that he sought to increase the percentage of registered African American voters in CD 10 to over 50%. He later reiterated this intention in an email:

Being a historical African American opportunity district, we found it necessary to increase the AA population. We attempted to protect the historical African American incumbents in this district by increasing the black voter registration percentage and CVAP #s accordingly. As you can discern on the attachment, we were able to increase the numbers to 50.12% and 42.8%, respectively. This was a significant increase in black voters in CD 10 which would protect and assist in keeping CD 10 a predominantly African-American opportunity district.

He continued:

We agreed to move the western portion of CD 10 (Palms) into CD 5 and 11. This area is approximately 50% white voter registration or CVAP, 20% Latino CVAP and approximately 11% AA voter registration. This move would allow CD 10 to divest itself of this diverse populated area, and increase the AA population to the South.

After Ellison’s presentation, other Commissioners proposed alternative boundaries. Ellison’s proposed boundaries and the boundaries proposed by Commissioner Helen B. Kim received the most votes from the West/Southwest Committee with three votes each, but neither received a majority. Because both Ellison’s and Kim’s proposals received the same number of votes, the West/Southwest Committee should have submitted both proposals to a larger "Dispute Resolution" subcommittee to "stitch[ ] together" a compromise from the various proposals. However, this did not occur, and instead only Ellison’s proposal was presented to the Dispute Resolution subcommittee.¹ As a result, the West/Southwest Committee ultimately presented only Ellison’s proposal to the full Commission for approval.

3. The Commission Considers the Proposed Boundaries

Although the West/Southwest Committee formally presented Ellison’s proposal to the Commission, Commissioner Kim presented an alternative set of boundaries to...