FORWARD TO ALL CALIFORNIANS
Finally! Our big federal lawsuit that we have been pushing for since May has been filed in San Diego Federal Court. We fully expect to succeed at the higher court and this case will most likely go all the way to the Supreme Court. Racially gerrymandered voting districts are racist, period. 100% unconstitutional and unAmerican. Hopefully this federal lawsuit will restore at-large voting to all of the many dozens of cities and school districts statewide that have switched to race-based Latino voting districts under threat of lawsuit from Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman and other deviant attorneys like him in CA. The Plaintiffs are asking for an injunction to freeze the districting process in dozens of cities and ultimately the overturning of the illegal and falsely named “California Voting Rights Act” of 2002.
I am also happy to report now that other Poway patriots that we know are now joining the lawsuit as plaintiffs. Our local activists are jumping into the fight to save California, as usual.
Thank you to everyone who has supported our efforts the past 6 months and especially to those who donated to our legal fund over the summer to get this lawsuit off the ground with the litigation strategy from Kassouni Law. To donate directly to the new law firm handling the lawsuit for their ongoing legal expenses, visit: https://www.ProjectonFairRepresentation.org/. After a thorough legal review by Constitutional legal experts, it has been determined that a federal lawsuit is the ONLY way we can save all of California from race-based district voting in our cities.
Law firm news release here:
Copy of the lawsuit (complaint):
SDUT Article:
Ex-Poway mayor sues over voting rights act
Oct. 4, 2017
Former Poway Mayor Don Higginson has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA).
Under threat of expensive litigation, Poway became the most recent city in San Diego County to be forced to change the way it elects its city council members, from an at-large system, which is said to violate the voting rights act, to a by-district system.
Higginson is being represented by The Project of Fair Representation, a nonprofit legal foundation based in Arlington, Va., which will fund the litigation. He filed the lawsuit Wednesday in San Diego federal court.
The voting rights act is designed to give minority members (Latinos/Mexican citizens/illegal aliens) of a community a better chance at representation on city council and other local government agencies.
When a demand letter was sent to the city this summer from Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman threatening to sue if Poway didn’t immediately change the way it elects its council, the city council reluctantly did so to avoid potentially costly legal fees in what history has shown would likely be a losing court battle.
In the demand letter, similar to dozens of others he has sent out locally and around the state in the last few years, Shenkman reminded the city that he had successfully sued “the City of Palmdale for violating the CVRA. After an eight-day trial, we prevailed. After spending millions of dollars, a district-based remedy was ultimately imposed upon the Palmdale city council, with districts that combine all incumbents into one of the four districts.”
Just this week, the Poway council finalized it’s decision to create four election districts.
Poway is a predominantly Caucasian suburban community of about 49,000 people with a Latino population of about 15 percent. Because the minority population is relatively small and not geographically bunched together, no district could logically be created that would create a minority-majority voting area.
Edward Blum, the president of The Project on Fair Representation, said Poway is representative of dozens of cities in the state that have been forced to change election systems. He said Higginson was chosen to front the lawsuit after Blum read online a column Higginson had written in the local Poway News Chieftain newspaper decrying the misuse of the CVRA.
Higginson is suing the State of California and the City of Poway, though the action against the city is only procedural.
“It was only because the city of Poway had a proverbial gun to its head that these districts were adopted,” Higginson said. “Every member of the City Council knew that it would cost Poway millions of taxpayer dollars to fight this in court.”
Higginson said the law is unconstitutional on its face because it requires gerrymandering based on race or ethnicity.
“In Poway,” he added, “where you are predominately Caucasian, it seems pretty foolish to even address that.
“Every voter in Poway should feel personally offended by the fact that being forced to go to district elections will eliminate your power to vote for a majority of the Poway City Council,” he said.
The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the CVRA under the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“The California Voting Rights Act forces jurisdictions to make race the sole factor in districting,” Blum said. “It splits apart multi-ethnic, multi-racial neighborhoods in order to create gerrymandered voting districts. This is bad for all citizens, regardless of their race or ethnicity. This law is clearly unconstitutional.”
The lawsuit relates comments made by all of the Poway councilman during the debate that preceded the elections system change.
“We’ve gone through denial, and we’ve gone through anger, and now we’re into acceptance,” Councilman John Mullin said. “So, to those of you in the audience who think that we should be fighting this, we concur. I have no illusions that this will lead to better government for our city. I’m pretty proud of the job we do as we are now constituted… . But having said all of that, again we have a gun to our heads and we have no choice.”
Deputy Mayor Barry Leonard said, “I get it. I hate it but I get it.” He explained his view that “we respond to everybody in the City. We don’t pick certain people in certain neighborhoods and say we’ll treat them any differently. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. So, I feel like we’re already being found guilty of something and we don’t have a chance to prove our innocence. It’s just the deck is stacked. So, rather than spend a million dollars of the taxpayers’ money, we roll over to these bullies.”
Blum said it will likely be months before a court date is set.
SDUT Editorial praises Federal Lawsuit; Slams Kevin Shenkman:
Poway ex-Mayor Higginson earns a rose for picking the right fight
A rose — the Peerless Point Man award — to former Poway Mayor Don Higginson for agreeing to put his honorable name on a federal lawsuit disputing the constitutionality of the 2001 California Voting Rights Act.
Over and over, this well-meaning legislation has been perverted to force cities to adopt district elections when there’s no evidence of ongoing racial discrimination or even that district elections will remedy past or current discrimination.
Poway is just the latest city to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into district elections under the threat of a lawsuit from a freebooting Malibu attorney who’s exploiting the CVRA to force district elections.
To the rescue comes the the Project on Fair Representation, a nonprofit with conservative donors that has a record of success filing state and federal cases against a whole range of legislated minority and racial preferences.
By the way, this shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
Even if you believe that minorities are unfairly underrepresented in government, district elections are not the rational remedy in all cases.
There’s no way, for example, that Poway with a spread-out 15 percent Latino minority population can gerrymander districts that will favor Latino candidates.
This lawsuit may take years to wind through the courts, but Higginson has done his city proud by lending his name to a long overdue challenge of an absurd status quo.
Jeff Schwilk
Founder, San Diegans for Secure Borders
USMC Retired
“No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy”
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