“Everyone thinks of Santa Monica as a liberal bastion of very open-minded people, and yet the court’s findings describe a history that’s much more sullied than people are aware,” said UC Irvine professor Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert.
to change the structure of its City Council and pay him millions in legal fees. But Santa Monica didn’t back down; it hired the blue-chip firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to defend it when Shenkman sued in 2016.
In her decision, Palazuelos declared that the city’s at-large elections abetted a decades-long pattern of disenfranchising its Latino population. The judgment noted that in the 72 years since the current election system was set up, only one Latino had been voted onto the council. “The current members of the Santa Monica City Council were elected through unlawful elections,” Palazuelos wrote. “Latino residents of Santa Monica, like all other residents of Santa Monica, deserve to have their voices heard in the operation of their city.”
Lawyers for the city believe that an appeals court could end up reversing some of the judge’s conclusions. They argue that this ruling will not create a majority-minority district in the Pico neighborhood or fulfill the plaintiff’s goal of getting more minorities elected to the City Council.
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