Report for 1992 Santa Monica Charter Commission

Could someone make a plausible prima facie legal case that the at-large election system in Santa Monica was adopted and/or maintained with a racially discriminatory purpose? After reviewing the legal standards for proving such a case under the federal Voting Rights Act, I present facts drawn from a preliminary examination of two episodes, the adoption of the council-manager government in 1946 and the defeat of a referendum that would have substituted district for at-large elections in 1975. Since convenient summaries of those facts may be located in the paragraphs numbered 34, 35, and 42, below, I will not restate them here. 

My basic conclusions are, however, worth underlining: Although legal cases are always difficult to predict, there are enough signs of a racially discriminatory intent in the adoption of the charter in 1946 that, if someone brought a case, the city would have to defend itself. Because voting rights law is quite specialized, most jurisdictions that are sued either settle before trial or hire expensive outside counsel. Los Angeles County ended up spending more than $12 million on its recent redistricting suit. The case for a discriminatory purpose in 1975 is much weaker than that for 1946, but if a court were to find a discriminatory intent in either instance, the city would lose the case, according to current case law. If Santa Monica wishes to avoid the embarassment of defending itself against a serious charge of racial discrimination, and if it prefers spending scarce resources on things other than high-priced lawyers, it should replace the at-large system with election by districts.