Public Interest Briefs

Center Wins Case on Behalf of Proponents of Recall Petition

Judge Overturns Retroactive Application of City Ordinance

On Behalf of the local sponsors and 12,000 signers of a petition to recall Los Angeles City Councilman Arthur Snyder, the Center won two decisive judicial rulings ordering the City Clerk of Los Angeles to accept the recall petitions for filing and to proceed with counting the signatures on the petitions. The ordinance requiring that all material relating to the recall process, including the legal notice initiating the campaign, be printed bilingually. The City attempted to impose the new requirements on the Snyder recall effort, which had begun several weeks before the ordinance was passed.

In December 1983, local citizens in the 14th Councilmanic District, a primarily Hispanic Eastside district, filed a notice of intent and began to circulate petitions to recall Councilman Snyder. Three weeks later, the Los Angeles City Council by a 14-0 vote adopted the new bilingual requirement. Upon learning of the new ordinance, the recall sponsors voluntarily withdrew the petitions from circulation and reprinted them in Spanish and English for future signers. But when the recall sponsors subsequently attempted to file their bilingual petitions with the Los Angeles City Clerk, the Clerk rejected them on the ground that the proponents failed to republic the initial legal notice in both languages.

The Center went to Superior Court immediately and obtained a ruling in favor of the petitioners. The Judge ruled that the bilingual requirement could not be applied retroactively and that, by their having reprinted the petitions themselves, if not the notice of itent, the proponents had substantially complied with the ordinance, The Judge ordered the Clerk to accept the petitions and to begin counting and verifying the 12,000 signatures that had been collected.

Barely a week after the Court’s decision, however, the City Clerk once again stopped the signature-counting process, claiming that the circulators’ affidavits attached to the petitions were not in the technical form called for by the City Charter. The form asked the circulators to state the address at which they were registered to vote instead of their current residence address. The City Charter requires the home address to be listed in order to certify that the circulator is a legal resident of the district in which the petition is being circulated. The recall proponents pointed out to the Clerk that they had merely used the form that had been given to them by the Clerk’s office. Nevertheless, the Clerk insisted that he could not accept an improper form, regardless of its source, and he invalidated all 12,000 signatures on that technical ground.

The Center went back to Superior Court to ask the Judge either to order the Clerk to continue to count the signatures despite the technical defect in the form or to allow the circulators to sign new affidavits that would comply with the City Charter provisions. At a hearing on the issue, the Judge agreed that the Clerk’s office had misled the local sponsors by giving them the wrong affidavit and ruled that the City Charter’s requirement could be met if the petition circulators provided proper replacement affidavits. The Judge then ordered the Clerk to continue the process of counting and certifying the signatures on the petitions.

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