SLO County citizens’ group files lawsuit over Patten redistricting map
A local citizens’ group on Thursday filed a lawsuit against San Luis Obispo County to overturn a controversial redistricting map adopted by the Board of Supervisors in late 2021.
SLO County Citizens for Good Government is pursuing the lawsuit in San Luis Obispo Superior Court because the group believes “the Board of Supervisors wrongly applied and flagrantly ignored the redistricting requirements set forth under California’s Fair Maps Act,” according to a news release.
The lawsuit asks the court to direct the county to “vacate and set aside its approval adoption of (the Patten map ordinance).” It also asks the court to prevent the county from “preparing, planning, taking, implementing, approving or relying on an action based on the challenged ordinance.”
Citizens for Good Government retained attorneys from Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger, a San Francisco law firm, to represent them in the civil suit.
The group formed in December in response to the conservative board majority’s support for a five-district map drawn by Arroyo Grande resident Richard Patten and backed by the local Republic Party. It describes itself as a “nonpartisan coalition of SLO County citizens concerned that the Patten map undermines local democracy by seizing and entrenching partisan advantage rather than promoting competitive elections.”
Patten’s map significantly changed the existing district layout by packing most Democratic voters into two coastal districts. It breaks Morro Bay and Los Osos away from the rest of the North Coast, which in turn added inland areas like Atascadero and San Miguel.
It also broke Oceano away from Nipomo and put Morro Bay and a large chunk of San Luis Obispo in a narrow, dog bone-shaped district.
Supervisors voted 3-2 to adopt the map on Dec. 14, and SLO County Citizens for Good Government announced its intent to take legal action soon after. The map ordinance supervisors approved goes into effect on Thursday.
“The Republican majority of the supervisors adopted a map that employed sophisticated cracking and packing techniques to gain partisan advantage, which Elections Code section 21500 (d) expressly forbids,” said Linda Seifert, board member of Citizens for Good Government.
Civil lawsuits provide only the plaintiffs’ perspectives — they don’t include defendants’ points of view.
County Counsel Rita Neal said couldn’t respond to the lawsuit on Thursday, when contacted by The Tribune.
“At this time, I haven’t seen a lawsuit, nor has the County been served with a lawsuit. Thus, I can’t comment for the moment,” she said.
Lawsuit says Patten map gerrymanders districts to benefit Republicans
In addition to the Citizens for Good Government organization, the lawsuit also names three people impacted by the newly drawn districts as plaintiffs.
Patricia Gomez of San Luis Obispo, Allene Villa of Oceano and Don Maruska of Los Osos all claim Patten’s map will negatively impact them. Gomez said the map “discriminates against her on the basis of her political affiliation” and separates her and other city residents from communities of interest like Avila Beach, Pismo Beach, Grover Beach, the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport and the San Luis Obispo Country Club.
Villa, president of the Oceano Advisory Council, said she was expecting to vote for a District 4 supervisor in 2022, but the new map moves her community into District 5. This means she will have had to wait six years instead of four to vote for a supervisor by the time she casts her ballot in 2024. Maruska, whose community was also moved into District 5, is in the same situation as Villa.
The lawsuit points out that supervisors didn’t need to alter the districts in a meaningful way to ensure there are equal numbers of people in each district. The county’s redistricting consultant said the new Census data showed there wasn’t a substantial population shift, and the existing districts could legally stand with a few minor adjustments.
“The law also makes clear that any redistricting must respect and give priority to long-standing communities of interest, not dilute any minority voices, and not be used to favor one political party over another,” said Mike Normoyle, a Citizens for Good Government member and one of the attorneys who helped prepare the lawsuit.
“Yet the end result of the Patten map is to radically rearrange, essentially destroy, long-standing communities of interest while giving greater credence to lower-ranked criteria such as keeping cities whole,” he added. “This demonstrably leads to the radical redrawing of districts where immediate partisan advantage is gained for elections next June and for the rest of the decade, in clear violation of the Fair Maps Act.”
The lawsuit also argues Patten’s map “deliberately creates three districts with significantly more Republicans than Democrats,” even though the county has more registered Democrats than Republicans.
The Tribune analyzed voter registration data and found that the county’s old district map leaned Republican, but Patten’s map increases the party’s advantage over Democrats.
So far, Citizens for Good Government has raised about $200,000 from more than 1,000 donors, said Quinn Brady, a group spokeswoman. The group may ultimately need to raise double that amount to fund its case, but the amount members have raised “signals the level of outrage and support on this issue.”
“This will be a sustained legal effort,” Brady said in the release. “We will continue fundraising to have resources ready to take every step necessary to ensure a fair and free democracy for SLO County.”
