Group Wants 2nd All Latino District in Calif.

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Redistricting Committee’s new constituency lines was met with fierce opposition by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).

At issue for the group is the fact that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors provisional-redistricted map failed to generate a second “Latino-majority supervisorial district.”

The Latino legal civil rights organization contends five of the County Supervisors neglected their obligation to create a second all-Latino district as mandated by the federal Voting Rights Act.

“They need to respect the Federal Voting Rights Act (in order to) avoid an expensive lawsuit the county is guaranteed to lose,” said Thomas Saenz, President and General Counsel of MALDEF

The Latino legal civil rights organization states that between 2000 and 2010, the Latino population in Los Angeles County grew by nearly half a million residents, while the non-Latino population lost nearly 150,000 people. Latinos now make up almost half the county's population.

MALDEF asserts, that the majority of the County Supervisors -- specifically Supervisors Mike Antonovich, Don Knabe, and Zev Yaroslavsky -- "oppose creating a second Latino supervisorial district." The group feels the supervisors are more interested in preserving their comfortable, current district lines.

A statement from MALDEF says this is not the first time Los Angeles County has put incumbents' comfort ahead of voting rights. The first Latino member of the Board of Supervisors, Gloria Molina, was elected only twenty years ago after the County lost a Voting Rights Act lawsuit that proved the supervisors had INTENTIONALLY sought to prevent the creation of a Latino district.

The statement goes on to say, the Supervisors are on the verge of again adopting a map that disrespects the Latino community and its population growth. Moreover, they are on the verge of VIOLATING the Voting Rights Act, by failing to create a new Latino district when they know that one is warranted. The Advisory Commission was presented with several proposed maps creating a second Latino-majority district, but the representatives appointed by Supervisors Antonovich, Knabe, and Yaroslavsky rejected each of those proposals.