Opinion ID: 551345
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Rejection of the Supervisors' Proposal

Text: 51 After it found that the County's districting plan was statutorily and constitutionally invalid, the district court gave the County 20 days to develop and propose a remedial plan of its own. The County submitted a plan, but the district court rejected it because, although it did create a district that had a Hispanic majority, it unnecessarily fragmented other Hispanic populations in the County. The district court found that such fragmentation posed an impediment to Hispanic political cohesiveness. Furthermore, the district court objected to the placement of the Hispanic majority district in a section controlled by a powerful incumbent, rather than in the one section that had a naturally occurring open seat, an open seat that was in the heart of the Hispanic core. For these reasons, the district court found that the County's plan did not represent a good faith effort to remedy the violation. 52 The County objects to the district court's rejection of its proposal. It argues that the district court may not substitute even what it considers to be an objectively superior plan for an otherwise constitutionally and legally valid plan, citing Wright v. City of Houston, 806 F.2d 634 (5th Cir.1986); Seastrunk v. Burns, 772 F.2d 143, 151 (5th Cir.1985). 53 However, there appear to be at least two fundamental reasons why the district court was not required to defer to the plan put forward by the supervisors in this case. First, as two of the supervisors themselves point out in their separate brief on the issue, the plan that the Board submitted to the district court could not, under the County's charter, have been considered a Board Redistricting plan, because only three members voted in favor of it, not the four required for such matters. Los Angeles County Charter, Art. II, Sec. 7 (1985). Thus, the proposal was not an act of legislation; rather, it was a suggestion by some members of the Board, entitled to consideration along with the other suggestions that had been received. Second, the district court found that it did not constitute a good faith attempt to remedy the violation because, inter alia, it used unnatural configurations in order to place an Anglo incumbent in the new Hispanic district, and it fragmented some Hispanic communities in other districts in the same manner in which the Board had deliberately diluted Hispanic influence in the past. 54