Lawyer Kevin Shenkman Reflects on California Voting Rights Act Win Against Santa Monica
Shenkman says the city's vow to appeal will "create more antagonism between the city's elite who are represented by the council and the city's Latino residents."
November 26, 2018 at 04:56 PM
4 minute read
Back before the Thanksgiving holiday, the City of Santa Monica was hit with a tentative ruling from Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos, who found the citywide election system it uses to choose city council representatives violates the California Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution.
A team led by Kevin Shenkman of Malibu's Shenkman & Hughes represented Pico Neighborhood Association and former city council candidate Maria Loya at trial, claiming that the system, instituted in 1946, was designed to prevent Latino voters from picking the candidates of their choice.
The Nov. 8 ruling followed a six-week trial, which ran from August through mid-September. Although the judge didn't go into the reasons for the ruling, the trial loss was a blow for the city and its outside lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
“We are disappointed that [the tentative ruling] contains no reasoning in support of the court's decision, which we believe is based on an unjustified adoption of the plaintiffs' misguided and unsupported view of the law,” said Gibson Dunn's Theodore Boutrous Jr. in a statement issued in the wake of the ruling. The city, he said, would appeal to “allow the California Court of Appeal to address the significant legal issues of first impression posed by this case.”
In the wake of the decision, The Recorder caught up by email with the plaintiffs lawyer Shenkman, as he was displaced by the Woolsey Fire. The following is a transcript of that exchange, lightly edited for style.
The Recorder: What comes next?
Shenkman: The court has set a Dec. 7 hearing to determine what remedies to order. Presumably, once the court decides on the remedies, a judgment will be entered.
The tentative decision is a bit scant on details. Do you have a good sense what evidence and arguments carried the most weight with the judge?
Our case was pretty straightforward. While I can't speak for Judge Palazuelos, I think it is pretty clear that she saw through all of Santa Monica's distractions and self-righteous hypocrisy.
How did you and your team split up the argument and witness load?
We split up the witnesses as seemed to make sense as the trial went on, though I handled all of the witnesses/experts dealing with the issue of racially polarized voting.
What remedies do you intend to ask for in the next phase of the trial?
We will ask for implementation of district-based elections, with a special election as soon as April 2019 for all 7 seats.
I see that the city has already vowed to appeal the ruling. What are your thoughts on that move and this decision's prospects for standing up on appeal?
We are very confident that the court's decision will stand up on appeal. It is really disturbing how quickly Defendant's outside attorneys vowed to appeal, for a couple reasons: 1) the city council could not have voted, in compliance with the Brown Act, to appeal so quickly; and 2) neither the city council nor its outside attorneys bothered to reflect on the wisdom of the court's ruling or the harm that an appeal will inflict on the city. Ultimately, any appeal will only serve to waste even more millions of dollars that the city should instead be spending on schools, parks, safety and social services, and create more antagonism between the city's elite who are represented by the council and the city's Latino residents.
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