[EL] Palmdale California VRA case (Fredric Woocher)

[David Ely]

Being the obsessive that I am I went back and looked at the portion of
Johnson v. Bradley mentioned below.  I believe that you neglected the
implication of footnote 15.

 

FN 15. Of course, even if a given matter is deemed to be a municipal affair,
a charter city's regulation remains subject to the various guarantees and
requirements of the state and federal Constitutions. (See, e.g., Canaan v.
Abdelnour (1985) 40 Cal.3d 703, 710 [221 Cal.Rptr. 468, 710 P.2d 268, 69
A.L.R.4th 915] et seq. [striking, on equal protection grounds, charter city
provision banning write-in voting]; Rees v. Layton (1970) 6 Cal.App.3d 815,
822-823 [86 Cal.Rptr. 268] [striking, on equal protection grounds, charter
city provision allowing only incumbent to state occupation on ballot].)

 

 

From: Fredric Woocher [mailto:fwoocher at strumwooch.com] 
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2013 12:39 PM
To: David Ely; law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] Palmdale California VRA case (Fredric Woocher)

 

...

I don't think anyone could seriously contend that the choice of an at-large
vs. by-district election scheme does not deal with the "manner" or "method"
by which Palmdale's city councilmembers are elected, triggering the analysis
under subdivision (b) rather than subdivision (a) of article XI, section 5.
And under that analysis, as the California Supreme Court in Johnson v.
Bradley confirmed, the local law automatically prevails over the state
statute, without regard to whether the state law is narrowly tailored to
address a statewide (or even Constitutional) concern.  ....

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