Settled: Modesto ($3 million + $1.7 million)

Modesto paid a reported $3 million to plaintiffs and $1.7 million to its own legal team to settle its case.

From the Santa Clara Weekly: Nearly ten years after the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) was passed into law, CVRA lawsuits and threats of lawsuits have cost California taxpayers over $8 million. When the 2002 law was enacted, municipalities didn’t recognize its implications, Fresno County schools superintendent Larry Powell told the Fresno Bee in 2009. Things changed in 2003, when Robert Rubin and Joaquin Avila of the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR) – drafters of the law – started bringing CVRA lawsuits against all kinds of elected bodies. Continue reading…