Court Opinion

ID: 9604975
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:29:01.422497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:25.661035
License: Public Domain

NEWMAN, J.
I concur in the judgment reluctantly. I have signed the concurring opinion of Kaus, J. in Citizens Against Forced Annexation v. Local Agency Formation Com. (1982) post, page 816 [187 Cal.Rptr. 423, 654 P.2d 193], also filed today. I agree with him that the state rationally may arrange a special-issue election to prevent the vote of a smaller, vitally concerned geographic group from being overwhelmed by the contrary ballot of a larger population with interests manifestly more diffuse. In my view, the state’s decision to do so need not invoke “strict scrutiny review.”
The lead opinion in Citizens is contra.  Acknowledging that fact, I acquiesce in the determination here that an election involving the entire Fullerton District is necessary.
My second concern relates to the deference that the plurality here have accorded the Board of Education’s view that Yorba Linda’s departure from the Fullerton District will not “promote racial or ethnic discrimination or segregation. ...” (Ed. Code, § 4200, subd. (e).) As my dissent in McKinny v. Board of Trustees (1982) 31 Cal.3d 79 [181 Cal.Rptr. 549, 642 P.2d 460] argued, the role of courts when they review racially sensitive fact finding by school agencies should not depend on whether “quasi-legislative” or “quasi-judicial” proceedings are involved (McKinny, pp. 103-104). Under Crawford v. Board of Education (1976) 17 Cal.3d 280 [130 Cal.Rptr, 724, 551 P.2d 28], the courts may defer to an agency’s judgment only when it shows a commitment to “meaningful progress” toward ending segregation and to “all reasonable and feasible steps” in that direction. Judicial responsibility should, I believe, include special scrutiny of administrative findings that no segregation exists or that a proposed decision will have no discriminatory or segregative impact.
My colleagues seem to have concluded otherwise (McKinny, supra, 31 Cal.3d at p. 88).  Therefore, again because of stare decisis, I bow to the conclusion that the board’s finding here has adequate support.
*808KAUS, J., (2b, (3b), (4b), (5b), (6c), (8c), (9b), (10c)—Concurring and Dissenting.—I agree with the majority that the State Board of Education substantially complied with section 4200 of the Education Code in adopting the school district reorganization plan, but that under the California Environmental Quality Act it should have conducted an initial environmental review of the effects of the plan—at least to determine whether a “negative declaration” was warranted—before giving final approval to the proposal. Accordingly, I concur in the portion of the judgment remanding the matter to the board for such an environmental review. I dissent, however, from the majority’s conclusion that the reorganization procedure at issue violates the equal protection clause because it limits the right to vote on the reorganization plan to those persons who reside in the proposed new district.1
Proposals for the alteration of municipal boundary lines or the reorganization of local political entities frequently pit the interests of those residents who will be most directly affected by the change—the residents of the area that may be annexed to, or severed from, an existing municipality or district—against the interests of the current residents of the annexing entity or of the remaining residents of the entity that may lose some of its constituents. There are many ways a state may choose to resolve these conflicting interests to ensure that school district and municipal boundary lines are established on a logical, well-planned basis that serves the interests of the region as a whole, as well as the interests of the most immediately affected entities. Under the procedures that are challenged in this case—and in the companion Citizens case (see fn. 1, ante) —this state has simply provided that once a reorganization proposal has been adopted by the proper regional or statewide planning agency, the reorganization can take effect if it is approved by a majority of those persons most directly affected by the plan, i.e., the residents who live in the area that is to be annexed *809to or severed from an existing district.2 Unlike the majority, I do not believe that such a procedure is “constitutionally suspect” or subject to “strict scrutiny” merely because residents of neighboring areas who may also be affected in some manner by the reorganization are not granted the right to vote on, and potentially veto, the proposal.3 As I explain, the governing United States Supreme Court decisions establish that states enjoy very broad discretion in devising procedures for the formation or reorganization of local political subdivisions, and no decision of which I am aware suggests that this broad discretion does not include the authority to grant a carefully limited measure of autonomy to residents of a local community who want to declare their independence from, or affiliation with, an existing political unit. Although the state could, of course, choose to give residents of other areas the opportunity to block such a change, I believe the majority errs in suggesting that the equal protection clause presumptively grants these other other persons a constitutional right to such veto power.
A major flaw in the majority’s analysis is its failure to take adequate note of the United States Supreme Court decision in Hunter v. Pittsburgh (1907) 207 U.S. 161 [52 L.Ed. 151, 28 S.Ct. 40], the seminal constitutional decision addressing a challenge to a state procedure regulating the formation and organization of local governmental entities. In Hunter, residents of Allegheny, Pennsylvania challenged the validity of a state statute which authorized the consolidation of two cities—Allegheny and Pittsburgh—if a majority of the total votes cast in a referendum in the two cities approved the consolidation. The plaintiffs in Hunter pointed out that because Pittsburgh had a much greater population than Allegheny, state law effectively permitted Pittsburgh to “swallow” Allegheny without any regard to the wishes of the Allegheny residents; they contended that such a reorganization procedure was patently unfair and unconstitutional.
*810The Hunter court unanimously rejected that constitutional challenge, explaining the exceedingly broad discretion which a state enjoys in regulating the formation or reorganization of political subdivisions within its boundaries: “Municipal corporations are political subdivisions of the State, created as convenient agencies for exercising such of the governmental powers of the State as may be entrusted to them. . . . The number, nature and duration of the powers conferred upon these corporations and the territory over which they shall be exercised rests in the absolute discretion of the State. . . . The State ... at its pleasure may modify or withdraw all such powers . . . expand or contract the territorial area, unite the whole or a part of it with another municipality, repeal the charter and destroy the corporation. All this may be done, conditionally or unconditionally, with or without the consent of the citizens, or even against their protest. In all these respects the State is supreme, and its legislative body, conforming its action to the state constitution, may do as it will, unrestrained by any provision of the Constitution of the United States. Although the inhabitants and property owners may by such changes suffer inconvenience, and their property may be lessened in value by the burden of increased taxation . . . there is nothing in the Federal Constitution which protects them from these injurious consequences. The power is in the State and those who legislate for the State are alone responsible for any unjust or oppressive exercise of it.” (207 U.S. at pp. 178-179 [52 L.Ed. at p. 159].)
Although subsequent cases have properly recognized that Hunter’s broad language must necessarily be qualified by a state’s fundamental constitutional obligation to avoid racial or other invidious discrimination (see, e.g., Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960) 364 U.S. 339 [5 L.Ed.2d 110, 81 S.Ct. 125]), recent Supreme Court decisions have not wavered from the basic proposition that states have “extraordinarily wide latitude ... in creating various types of political subdivisions and conferring authority upon them.” (Holt Civic Club v. Tuscaloosa (1978) 439 U.S. 60, 71 [58 L.Ed.2d 292, 303, 99 S.Ct. 383].) In my view, the majority fails to give adequate consideration to this fundamental point, a point which forms an important backdrop to the constitutional challenge in this case.
The decision in Hunter, of course, preceded the voting rights cases of the 1960’s and 1970’s by several decades, and the majority has apparently concluded that under those cases the referendum procedure at issue here is constitutionally suspect because it grants the right to vote to some individuals who will be affected by the proposal—the residents who live in the area to be severed from, or annexed to, an existing district or city—but not to residents of other areas who also will be in some way affected by the proposal. There is a fundamental difference, however, between the voting discrimination cases relied on by the majority and the cases now before us. In the voting discrimination *811cases, the equal protection claim arose from the fact that the challenged statutes excluded, or discriminated against, one class of potential voters within a single governmental entity—most typically affording real property owners within a city or county a greater voice than nonproperty owners with respect to a matter of general governmental concern. (See, e.g., Kramer v. Union School District (1969) 395 U.S. 621 [23 L.Ed.2d 583, 89 S.Ct. 1886]; Curtis v. Board of Supervisors (1972) 7 Cal.3d 942 [104 Cal.Rptr. 297, 501 P.2d 537].) In the present cases, by contrast, the only “discrimination” that is present arises from the state’s allocation of decision-making authority between separate localities. Individuals who reside in the non-Yorba Linda portion of the Fullerton High School District—and, in the Citizens case, the residents of Rancho Palos Verdes, the “annexing city”—are not barred from voting on the proposed reorganizations because they do not own real property or the like; rather the Legislature has decided that in matters of local reorganization the more numerous populations of existing school districts or cities should not invariably be able to control the destiny of a smaller community which wants to run its own show. In my view, recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court make it clear that the Constitution does not prohibit such a procedure.
Lockport v. Citizens for Community Action (1977) 430 U.S. 259 [51 L.Ed.2d 313, 97 S.Ct. 1047] is perhaps the closest case in point. In Lockport, the court faced a constitutional challenge to a New York law which provided that a new county charter could go into effect only if it was approved in a referendum election by concurrent majorities of the county’s city and noncity dwellers. In the election in question, a proposed charter had been approved by a substantial majority of city dwellers but had been narrowly defeated by the less numerous noncity voters; thus, by virtue of the concurrent majority provision, the charter proposal failed, despite the fact that it had been approved by a majority of the votes cast in the election. In Lockport, several residents challenged the concurrent majority requirement as a violation of equal protection, invoking the same line of voting cases relied upon by the majority in the present case. They claimed that the procedure violated one person-one vote principles, giving the less numerous noncity voters a disproportionate power to thwart the wishes of a majority of all those affected by the vote.
The Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, rejected the equal protection contention. At the outset, the court explained that “[t]he equal protection principles applicable in gauging the fairness of an election involving the choice of legislative representatives [i.e., the one person-one vote cases] are of limited relevance ... in analyzing the propriety of recognizing distinctive voter interests in a ‘single-shot’ referendum. In a referendum, the expression of voter will is direct, and there is no need to assure that the voters’ views will be ade*812quately represented through their representatives in the legislature. The policy impact of a referendum is also different in kind from the impact of choosing representatives—instead of sending legislators off to the state capítol to vote on a multitude of issues, the referendum puts one discrete issue to the voters. That issue is capable, at least, of being analyzed to determine whether its adoption or rejection will have a disproportionate impact on an identifiable group of voters. If it is found to have such a disproportionate impact, the question then is whether a State can recognize that impact either by limiting the franchise to those voters specially affected or by giving their votes a special weight.” (430 U.S. at p. 266 [51 L.Ed.2d at p. 321].)
After concluding that New York could reasonably believe that county charter revisions might have a differential impact on city and noncity dwellers because such revisions would frequently transfer some functions or duties from towns or cities to the county, the Lockport court went on to uphold the constitutionality of the challenged procedure in language that has particular significance for the cases before us. Because of its pertinence, I quote the passage at some length. The court stated: “The ultimate question then is whether, given the differing interests of city and noncity voters in the adoption of a new county charter in New York, those differences are sufficient under the Equal Protection Clause to justify the classification made by New York law. . . . If that question were posed in the context of annexation proceedings, the fact that the residents of the annexing city and the residents of the area to be annexed formed sufficiently different constituencies with sufficiently different interests could readily be perceived. The fact of impending union alone would not so merge them into one community of interest as constitutionally to require that their votes be aggregated in any referendum to approve annexation. Cf. Hunter v. Pittsburgh, 207 U.S. 161. Similarly, a proposal that several school districts join to form a consolidated unit could surely be subject to voter approval in each constituent school district. [1] . . . [I]n terms of recognizing constituencies with separate and potentially opposing interests, the structural decision to annex or consolidate is similar in impact to the decision to restructure county government in New York. In each case, separate voter approval requirements are based on the perception that the real and long-term impact of a restructuring of local government is felt quite differently by the different county constituent units that in a sense compete to provide similar governmental services. Voters in these constituent units are directly and differentially affected by the restructuring of county government, which may make the provider of public services more remote and less subject to the voters’ individual influence. [1] Theprc..sions of New York law here in question no more than recognize the realities of these substantially differing electoral interests. Granting to these provisions the presumption of constitutionality to which every duly enacted state and federal law is entitled, we are unable to conclude that they violate the Equal Protection *813Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” (Italics added; fns. omitted; 430 U.S. at pp. 271-273 [51 L.Ed.2d at pp. 324-325].)
This passage from Lockport is instructive in a number of respects. First, it makes clear that in fashioning a referendum procedure for annexation proceedings, a state may properly recognize that residents of an area to be annexed and residents of the annexing entity will very frequently have “separate and potentially opposing interests” in the proposed annexation and that—contrary to the majority’s suggestion—an electoral process which distinguishes between these differently affected groups retains its “presumption of constitutionality.” Second, the Lockport decision establishes that a state may devise its electoral procedures to protect the distinct interests of separate political entities, and may permit the views of a less-populous entity to prevail even if this defeats the wishes of a majority of all persons who will be affected by the decision.
Unlike in Lockport, of course, in the cases before us the electoral procedures do not give the residents of each separate entity a veto, but instead limit the referendum to the voters of the area to be annexed or severed. The Supreme Court’s decision in Holt Civic Club v. Tuscaloosa (1978) 439 U.S. 60 [58 L.Ed.2d 292, 99 S.Ct. 383], however, lays to rest any claim that this difference renders the procedure unconstitutional. At issue in that case was an Alabama statutory scheme which granted the right to vote for a city’s legislators only to persons residing within the city boundaries, but at the same time gave the city authority to enact police and other regulations which governed certain populated areas outside the city limits. The plaintiffs in Holt, residents of an area on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa, contended that this statutory scheme denied them equal protection, asserting that because they were directly affected by the city’s police regulations they—like the city’s residents—should have the right to vote in its elections.
The Supreme Court rejected the constitutional claim, emphasizing that its past voting rights cases had all recognized the legitimacy of limiting the vote to those persons who were residents of the political entity vested with the authority to make a particular legislative decision. The court observed that many municipal decisions have effects outside the boundaries of the municipality, but that such effects have never been considered sufficient to bestow on nonresidents a constitutional right to vote in municipal elections. Spuming a suggestion that any system which denies the right to vote to some persons affected by a municipality’s decision must be evaluated under a strict scmtiny test, the Holt court—citing Hunter with approval—reaffirmed that states have “extraordinarily wide latitude ... in creating various types of political subdivisions and conferring authority upon them” (439 U.S. at p. 71 [58 L.Ed. 2d at p. 303]) and held that the equal protection question was simply whether the statutory scheme *814“bear[s] some rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose.” (Id., at p. 70 [58 L.Ed.2d at p. 302].)4
In this case, as in Holt, the statutory scheme is not constitutionally suspect simply because it limits the vote to residents of the area to be annexed or severed. Although this area may not yet technically be a separate political entity, Lockport makes clear that its residents’ interests are sufficiently different from others affected by the proposal that a state can properly treat it as a distinct entity. Furthermore, there is clearly a rational basis for the statutory classification at issue here: the state could reasonably decide—as a matter of substantive reorganization policy—that when a regional or statewide planning agency concludes that a reorganization proposal is in the best interest of the region and affected local entities, and when the residents of the local community whose affiliation is to be altered desire the change, individuals living in other local areas should not have the power to block the reorganization. Although the state could have concluded that another decision-making process was preferable, there certainly is nothing irrational in the procedure at issue here.
In sum, the combined teachings of Hunter, Lockport and Holt demonstrate that the election procedure before us is not unconstitutional. The majority’s invocation of the strict scrutiny standard is not true to these cases and reads into the equal protection clause a constitutional preference for centralized decision-making that simply is not warranted. As one federal court recently observed in upholding an annexation procedure comparable to that at issue here: “[A]nnexation has its pros and cons, and . . . under our Constitution’s principle of federalism, it is the prerogative of the individual states to resolve the conflicting interests involved in annexation disputes as they see fit. . . . The Constitution . . . enacts neither principles of consolidated metropolitan government nor *815those of decentralized government in villages and towns.” (Moorman v. Wood (E.D.Ky. 1980) 504 F.Supp. 467, 473, 477.)
The majority’s conclusion is perhaps attributable to an underlying concern that, on the facts of this case, the electoral procedure may favor a reorganizational proposal that will have an adverse impact on school integration. In other factual settings, however, the consolidated voting arrangement which the majority holds is constitutionally favored will have precisely the opposite effect; if, for example, the State Board of Education approved the expansion of a largely white school district to include an area with a predominantly minority school population in order to promote greater desegregation, the majority’s approach—if consistently applied—would provide the residents of the “white” district with the power to veto the reorganization. This example demonstrates that the effect of a reorganization plan on school desegregation is an entirely distinct issue from the question of the general validity of an annexation on secession procedure under the equal protection clause. In my view, the majority’s approach to the latter question is not supported by the controlling constitutional authorities and will substantially impair the state’s ability to experiment with different systems of checks and balances to protect and accommodate the diverse interests that are inevitably present in local reorganization contravenes.
Richardson, J., concurred.

 My differences with the majority’s equal protection analysis extend as well to the majority’s reasoning in the companion case of Citizens Against Forced Annexation v. Local Agency Formation Com. (1982) post, page 816 [187 Cal.Rptr. 423, 654 P.2d 193] which concerns an annexation, rather than a secession election. Although the voting procedures in the two cases are quite similar, the majority reaches opposite conclusions in the two matters, upholding the constitutionality of the procedure in Citizens, but striking down the procedure here.
The majority attempts to explain this inconsistency in result by suggesting that the state has a more “compelling” interest in the annexation procedure than the secession procedure, but the suggested distinction seems strained at best. In the case of both annexation and secession, the state has a comparable interest in assuring that local boundary lines are drawn so that government services are reasonably accessible to all citizens and are cost-efficient. Moreover, in both instances the state also has a legitimate interest in granting local communities some measure of control over their own destiny.

 Actually, the governing statute in this case does not require that the election be held only in the territory to be severed from an existing district, but instead simply authorizes the relevant county committee on school district organization to “determine if ... the election shall be held only in such territory.” (Ed. Code, § 4375.) Although the county committee’s authority to designate the area in which the vote is to be held may, as a practical matter, permit the committee to affect a particular election’s outcome, no claim has been made that the committee’s power in this regard is itself unconstitutional and I do not address this aspect of the statutory scheme.

 The majority suggests at one point that because the residents in adjoining areas do not vote in the secession or annexation election, the procedures at issue in this case and in Citizens deny “any voice to [these individuals] either directly or through their elected officials.” (See Citizens, post, p. 816.) This suggestion, however, totally ignores the critical role played in the reorganization process by the pertinent regional planning agencies—the county committee on school district reorganization in this case, and the county LAFCO in Citizens. The Legislature has consciously designed the membership of these regional planning agencies to assure that the agencies are broadly representative of all citizens of the affected regions. (See Ed. Code, §§ 4290-4293; Gov. Code, §§ 54780-54784.)

 I find absolutely nothing in the Holt opinion to support the majority’s claim that that decision requires, or even authorizes, a court to look beyond the state-prescribed boundaries of a local governmental unit in order to “determine the constitutionally relevant boundaries . . . and subject to strict scrutiny any measure which limits voting within those boundaries.” (Ante, p. 803.) On the contrary, Holt specifically rejected just such an approach, holding that the Alabama statutes were to be measured under the rational basis test even though they denied the vote to nonresidents of the city who were directly affected by the city’s legislative acts.
In this regard, the Holt decision directly undermines the reasoning of the earlier Court of Appeal decision in Hawn v. County of Ventura (1977) 73 Cal.App.3d 1009 [141 Cal.Rptr. 111], upon which the majority heavily relies. In Hawn, the court applied the strict scrutiny standard in striking down a county ordinance which gave residents of an incorporated city an opportunity to vote on any proposal to locate an airport “in whole or in part” within the city’s borders, but which did not afford a comparable vote to noncity voters who might also live in the vicinity of a proposed airport. In light of Holt, however, the strict scrutiny test appears inappropriate; although the airport proposal in Hawn, like the police regulations in Holt, may have directly affected nonvoting nonresidents as well as voting residents, Holt makes clear that that is not sufficient to render the electoral process constitutionally suspect. Instead, Holt establishes that a state may reasonably permit a city’s electorate to decide matters which affect the city but which also have some extraterritorial effec