[EL] Palmdale California VRA case (Fredric Woocher)

[Fredric Woocher]

No, David, I did not neglect the implication of footnote 15.  In fact, we started this dialogue this morning by agreeing that "A charter city, however, remains subject to the California Constitution and would be prohibited from adopting or maintaining a discriminatory electoral system or electoral practices that violate the equal protection clause or the right to vote.”  That is the same as what footnote 15 says.

Our disagreement, however, is that you appear to believe that proving a violation of the CVRA -- a state statute -- is the same as proving a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the state Constitution, even though the standards for proving a constitutional violation are different and even though the plaintiffs in the Palmdale case did not even allege, much less prove, an equal protection violation.

Please, let's move on and let me and the others on the list get some sleep.

Fredric D. Woocher
Strumwasser & Woocher LLP

Sent from my iPad

On Dec 5, 2013, at 9:29 PM, "David Ely" <ely at compass-demographics.com<mailto:ely at compass-demographics.com>> wrote:

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<mailto: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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