An Orange County judge heard arguments Tuesday, Feb. 3, in a pivotal case that could force Huntington Beach to switch to district elections to give minority voters the opportunity to have more sway in City Council races.
In May 2024, the Latino voter rights nonprofit Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Victor Valladares, a Democratic activist and Huntington Beach resident, filed the lawsuit against the city, arguing that its voting method has prevented Latino residents from electing candidates of their choice and “rendered the city vulnerable to wild swings toward extremism.”
Huntington Beach currently employs an at-large voting method that allows voters to cast ballots for all open council seats. Under a by-district system, voters would only choose a representative from their own geographic district.
The lawsuit, which is expected to be deliberated in court for a couple of weeks, will determine whether the city’s at-large election method violates the California Voting Rights Act, a 2002 law aimed at protecting the voting power of minority groups. City and local governments across the state have since been sued or threatened with legal action under the law in recent years, and many have switched to district elections. A Claremont McKenna College study last spring found 7.6% of California cities used district elections prior to the Voting Rights Act, and now more than 47% do.
Kevin Shenkman, the attorney for Valladares and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, argued to Judge Craig Griffin that the at-large or “plurality block” method dilutes the voting power of Latinos, who make up 20% of the population in a city of about 200,000.
According to expert analysis Shenkman said he would be presenting during the trail, City Council candidates backed by a majority of Latino voters have not won an election in more than 20 years. During the 2020 election, for example, Oscar Rodriguez received two-thirds of the Latino vote, but could not secure a seat on the council, he said.
The result of this racialized vote dilution is neglect, Shenkman said, arguing residents of the largely Latino enclave of Oak View have for years dealt with the stink and harmful environmental impacts of a 17-acre garbage dump in their community.
The city’s outside counsel, Norman Dupont, said Tuesday that Huntington Beach’s at-large voting method is not “racially polarizing” because Latino candidates, including Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark and former Councilmember Tito Ortiz, have been elected to the “highest governing body” in the city. Dupont repeatedly invoked Van Der Mark’s birth name, Gricelda Larrea, to highlight her Mexican and Ecuadorian parentage.
Huntington Beach’s relatively large City Council — comprising of seven members instead of five — and a law limiting representation to two consecutive terms provide “additional opportunities” for candidates from minority backgrounds to be elected, argued Anthony Taylor, another of the city’s attorneys.
“We already have seven councilmembers, term limits and two Latinos elected recently,” Taylor said. “The system works.”
Shenkman countered in an interview later that Van Der Mark, despite her Hispanic heritage, was not the chosen candidate of Latino voters — and her election cannot therefore be used to demonstrate the voting power of the electorate.
“It’s not about the color of one’s skin or where one’s parents came from,” Shenkman said. “Gracey did not receive the support of Latino voters.”
The trial, which continues with expert testimonies, has been nearly a decade in the making. Shenkman first sent a letter to Huntington Beach in 2017 alleging that the city’s at-large elections violated the California Voting Rights Act.
In December 2024, an Orange County judge denied the city’s motion for summary judgment and moved the case toward trial. Huntington Beach requested a jury trial, but the motion was denied.
Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a nonprofit with offices in Texas and California, has successfully challenged several Orange County cities over their voting practices, most making the change without a legal fight.