Pico Neighborhood Ass'n v. City of Santa Monica

• Docket Number: S263972
• Decision Date: 24 August 2023
• Parties: PICO NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION et al., Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: California Supreme Court

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PICO NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION et al., Plaintiffs and Respondents,
v.
CITY OF SANTA MONICA, Defendant and Appellant.

S263972

Supreme Court of California

August 24, 2023

Second Appellate District, Division Eight B295935

Los Angeles County Superior Court BC616804 Yvette M. Palazuelos Judge

Counsel:

Lane Dilg, City Attorney, George Cardona, Interim City Attorney; Gibson, Dunn &Crutcher, Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., Marcellus A. McRae, Kahn A. Scolnick, Tiaunia N. Henry and Daniel R. Adler for Defendant and Appellant.

Cole Huber and Derek P. Cole for League of California Cities and California Special Districts Association as Amici Curiae on behalf of Defendant and Appellant.

Strumwasser &Woocher, Bryce A. Gee and Caroline C. Chiappetti for The Santa Monica Transparency Project as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Defendant and Appellant.

John K. Haggerty as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Defendant and Appellant.

The Law Office of Joseph Pertel, Joseph A. Pertel; and Christopher M. Harding for League of Women Voters of Santa Monica, Alliance of Santa Monica Latino and Black Voters, Human Relations Council Santa Monica Bay Area and Community for Excellent Public Schools as Amici Curiae on behalf of Defendant and Appellant.

Shenkman &Hughes, Kevin I. Shenkman, Mary R. Hughes, Andrea A. Alarcon; Law Office of Robert Rubin, Robert Rubin; Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian &Ho, Morris J. Baller, Laura L. Ho, Anne P. Bellows, Ginger L. Grimes; Parris Law Firm, R. Rex Parris, Ellery S. Gordon; Law Offices of Milton C. Grimes, Milton C. Grimes; Schonbrun Seplow Harris &Hoffman, Paul Hoffman and John Washington for Plaintiffs and Respondents.

Panish Shea &Boyle and Brian Panish for Richard Polanco, Sergio Farias, Juan Carrillo, Richard Loa and Austin Bishop as Amici Curiae on behalf of Plaintiffs and Respondents.

Hogan Lovells US, Ira M. Feinberg, Erin Chapman, Zach Martinez, Patrick C. Hynds, Derek Centola and Joseph M. Charlet for FairVote as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Plaintiffs and Respondents.

Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman &Machtinger, Douglas E. Mirell and Michelle A. Mabugat for Sara Sadhwani, Bernard Fraga, Janelle Wong, Marisa Abrajano, Jason Casellas, Lorrie Frasure, Matthew Mendez Garcia, Christian Grose, Eric Gonzalez Juenke, Jane Junn, Taeku Lee, Gabriele Magni, Jennifer Merolla, Melissa Michelson, Jessica Lavariega Monforti, Jason Morin, Ricardo Ramírez, Paru Shah, LaFleur Stephens, Dara Strolovitch, Christopher Towler and Tom Wong as Amici Curiae on behalf of Plaintiffs and Respondents.

UCLA Voting Rights Project, Chad W. Dunn and Sonni Waknin for Matt Barreto, Lorrie Frasure, Chelsea Jones, Natalie Masuoka, Gary Segura, Efren Perez and Chris Zepeda-Millan as Amici Curiae on behalf of Plaintiffs and Respondents.

Keker, Van Nest &Peters, R. Adam Lauridsen and Connie P. Sung for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles and Asian Law Alliance as Amici Curiae on behalf of Plaintiffs and Respondents.

Rosenfeld Meyer &Susman and Todd W. Bonder for Oscar de la Torre as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Plaintiffs and Respondents.

Lowenstein &Weatherwax, Nathan Lowenstein and Kenneth J. Weatherwax for Bruce A. Wessel as Amicus Curiae.

Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Jonathan L. Wolff, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Heather Hoesterey and Kristin A. Liska, Deputy Attorneys General, for the Attorney General as Amicus Curiae.

Stephen Bosworth and L. Stevan Leonard as Amicus Curiae.

Justice Evans authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Guerrero and Justices Corrigan, Liu, Kruger, Groban, and Jenkins concurred.

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EVANS, J.

Local governments make many of the most important decisions that affect Californians' everyday lives. They build and repair public streets, they define a neighborhood's character through planning and zoning, and they decide where to place public parks and where to allow restaurants, bars, and liquor stores to operate. They make decisions about public transit and decide where to site industries that cause pollution. They provide police services and determine the level and type of policing and other first responder services, they educate our children, they operate or regulate local utilities, and they have the power to levy taxes. The people exercise control over these choices by electing representatives to city councils, county boards, boards of education, community college boards, special district boards, and other bodies.

The genius of representative government, in all its guises, is that it is responsive to the people it serves. But its ability to be responsive is dependent in a fundamental way on the assumption that each person's vote is of equal weight. While we often take that assumption for granted, sometimes the actual value of one's vote can vary based on the way the voting is structured. For example, a minority of voters may find itself unable to elect even a single member of a multimember body when the members are elected at large, but would be able to

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elect one or more representatives if the members were elected by districts or by another lawful method.

In such circumstances, the voting rules may effectively decide whether a group of voters can have a voice in the myriad decisions made by local representatives. With a seat at the table, the voters' representative can have a say in the topics and terms of the debate on the many crucial decisions that local governments make. Without a seat, though, the voters' voice may be effectively muted or silenced and their needs and preferences may be ignored or given less weight.

To address this problem, federal and state law restrict at-large voting systems from unfairly submerging or diluting the votes of a minority in the majority's greater numbers. Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. § 10301; VRA) prohibits states and their political subdivisions from using an at-large method of election when such a scheme would "result in unequal access to the electoral process" based on protected characteristics of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. (Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) 478 U.S. 30, 46 (Gingles).) In an effort to provide greater protections to California voters than those provided by the VRA, the Legislature subsequently enacted the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 (Elec. Code, § 14025 et seq.; CVRA). The CVRA prohibits an at-large method of election "that impairs the ability of a protected class" (id., § 14027) - as defined by race, color, or language minority group (id., § 14026, subd. (d)) - "to elect candidates of its choice or its ability to influence the outcome of an election, as a result of the dilution or the abridgment of the rights of voters who are members of a protected class" (id., § 14027).

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Both statutory schemes require a plaintiff to show racially polarized voting - i.e., that the protected class members vote as a politically cohesive unit, while the majority votes "sufficiently as a bloc usually to defeat" the protected class's preferred candidate. (Gingles, supra, 478 U.S. at p. 56; accord, Elec. Code, §§ 14026, subd. (e) [providing that "racially polarized voting" may be established by "[t]he methodologies for estimating group voting behavior as approved in applicable federal cases to enforce the [VRA]"], 14028, subd. (a).) The CVRA, however, "make[s] it easier to successfully challenge at-large districts" in two significant respects. (Assem. Com. on Elections, Reapportionment and Const. Amends., Analysis of Sen. Bill No. 976 (2001-2002 Reg. Sess.) as amended Mar. 18, 2002, p. 4.) First, 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. (Compare Elec. Code, § 14028, subd. (c) with Gingles, at p. 50.) Second, while a plaintiff can succeed under either the VRA or the CVRA by showing that the at-large method dilutes a protected class's voting power by impairing its ability "to elect" candidates of its choice (52 U.S.C. § 10301(b); Elec. Code, § 14027), only the CVRA allows the plaintiff to prevail by demonstrating, in the alternative, that the at-large method impairs the class's ability "to influence the outcome of an election." (Elec. Code, § 14027, italics added; cf. League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (2006) 548 U.S. 399, 446 (LULAC) (plur. opn. of Kennedy, J.) ["The failure to create an influence district . . . does not run afoul of § 2 of the [VRA]"].)

In this case, the trial court determined that because of racially polarized voting, the at-large method of electing city

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council members in the City of Santa Monica (the City) diluted Latino voters' ability to elect their preferred candidates and their ability to influence the outcome of council elections, as compared to several alternative electoral methods, including district elections. To remedy this violation, the trial court ordered the City to promptly conduct a special election using a seven-district map drafted by an expert who testified at trial.

The Court of Appeal granted a stay of the judgment and then reversed. It disagreed with the trial court's finding that the at-large method of election had "impaired Latinos' ability to elect candidates of their choice or to influence the outcome of an election." In the Court of Appeal's view, there had been no dilution of Latino voters' ability to elect their preferred candidates because Latino voters were too few and too geographically dispersed "to muster a majority, no matter how the City might slice itself into districts." The court likewise found no dilution of Latino voters' ability to influence the outcome of an election because a group's ability to influence an election, the Court of Appeal reasoned, has no meaning independent of the...