News

Plaintiffs requested $1.8 million in fees, but the judge reduced the award to “only” $162,500 (and the District had to pay its own legal team) From the Associated Press: A Madera County judge slashed more than $1.6 million from legal fees sought by attorneys who filed a lawsuit against a school district over the way it conducted elections, officials said Thursday. The Madera Unified School District did not contest the 2008 lawsuit, but lawyers billed the district for $1.2 million, a fee later increased to $1.8 million, according to district officials. The district called the attorneys' bill a money grab and feared it would force administrators to cut money for books and lunches to pay it. Continue reading...

The District paid plaintiffs $110,000, and the District had to pay its own legal team. As the nation’s legislatures get set for what is sure to be a bruising battle over redistricting, California is facing its own specific electoral problems that will undoubtedly lead to a wave of costly lawsuits. While numerous states have to comply with the Voting Rights Act, California has its own unique law that practically guarantees litigation: The California Voting Rights Act of 2001. Unless local districts take preemptive action, millions of dollars will soon be going down the drain in losing lawsuits. Continue reading...

A school district in southeastern Los Angeles County is illegally diluting the voting clout of Latinos and barring them from elective office by using an at-large electoral system for school board races, according to a lawsuit filed this week. No Latino has been elected to the seven-member board in the ABC Unified School District since 1997, although the ethnic group makes up nearly one-fourth of adults of voting age, according to the lawsuit filed by MALDEF, a leading Latino legal civil rights organization, and the Los Angeles law firm of Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho. Continue reading...

No amounts for this case have been reported. The Whittier Latino Coalition is delaying its threatened lawsuit against the city over alleged violation of the California Voting Rights Act lawsuit, a spokesman said Tuesday. The group had originally set July 17 as its deadline for the city to commit to district elections or face legal action. Continue reading...

No amounts for this case have been reported. The lawyer for plaintiffs who have now sued three local entities said his firm is hoping the defendants settle because going to trial “won’t benefit anyone,” said Kevin Shenkman of Shenkman & Hughes, a Malibu law firm that’s suing the city of Santa Clarita and two local school districts. “You only need to look to Palmdale to see that that doesn’t help — to look at the hole that they’ve dug themselves into,” Shenkman said. Continue reading...

No amounts for this case have been reported. The College of the Canyons and the Sulphur Springs School District were added to the list of Santa Clarita Valley municipal agencies sued by two law firms for allegedly hosting election systems that dilute the Latino vote, says The Santa Clarita Valley Signal.  The plaintiffs claim that the at-large method for electing representatives – whereby voters throughout a municipal agency choose from a pool of common candidates rather than electing by districts – prevents Latino voters from electing candidates of their choice, a violation of the 2001 California Voting Rights Act. Continue reading...

Ceres Unified reportedly paid plaintiffs less than $3,000 and allowed the plaintiffs to draw the District’s new trustee election areas.