League of Women Voters asks to join redistricting lawsuit. ‘An assault on voting rights’
The League of Women Voters of San Luis Obispo County is requesting to join a lawsuit challenging the county’s recently adopted redistricting map, calling the map “an assault on voting rights.”
San Luis Obispo County Citizens for Good Government filed a lawsuit against the county in January, claiming in adopting the new map, also known as the Patten Map, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors “wrongly applied and flagrantly ignored the redistricting requirements set forth under California’s Fair Maps Act.”
The group aimed to halt the map from being implemented , but a judge ruled in February that the map — and the new district boundaries it sets up — could be used during the upcoming June and November elections. Meanwhile, the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the judge’s decision.
On Tuesday, the League of Women Voters — a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization — announced it was filing a motion to join Citizens for Good Government’s lawsuit in San Luis Obispo Superior Court.
“We consider the Patten Map an assault on voting rights,” League president Cindy Marie Absey said in a news release.
During a normal redistricting process where there is little population change, “few voters should be affected,” Absey said.
“Yet in SLO County, where we experienced very little population change, a redistricting map affecting 98,000 of our county’s eligible voters was adopted,” Absey said. “That’s 98,000 out of a total eligible voter pool in our county of approximately 217,000. The Patten Map has staggering impacts on voter rights.”
Absey said because of the new map, residents in Oceano, Los Osos, Morro Bay and parts of San Luis Obispo who would normally have voted on a supervisor during the June primary will instead not be voting on their representative until 2024.
She claimed the Patten Map also split up communities that were previously grouped together, most notably along the North Coast.
The League has opposed the Patten Map since before it was approved by the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors, and has been pursuing options for challenging it since it was adopted, according to the release.
To date, the lawsuit has been filed in San Luis Obispo Superior Court, but has not been scheduled for a full hearing.
This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 9:00 AM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said the League was joining the lawsuit. It has actually filed a motion to join.
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