Districting Suit Heads for Court : Supervisors: Board refuses to add two districts to the county, passing up last chance to avoid voting rights trial.

On the eve of trial, Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday passed up a chance--possibly their last--to settle a lawsuit designed to help a Latino win a seat on the county board, and a federal judge was asked to delay the June supervisorial election.

The supervisors voted 3-2 against expanding the board from five to seven members--a proposal that could have revived settlement talks and possibly delayed the trial, which is scheduled to begin today.

U.S. District Court Judge David V. Kenyon warned earlier Tuesday that he would reject any proposed settlement once the redistricting trial gets under way. “Once this trial begins,” he said, “it will proceed until this court renders its ruling.”

The historic suit by the U.S. Justice Department and two civil rights groups accuses the supervisors of drawing their districts in such way as to dilute the political clout of the county’s 2 million Latinos in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. Opening arguments were delayed until today because of procedural matters.

The Justice Department asked the judge Tuesday to consider delaying the June election until the trial is completed so that any new redistricting plan can be put into effect immediately.

The remapping proposals would place either Supervisors Ed Edelman or Pete Schabarum--who are up for reelection in June--in predominantly Latino districts.

The trial has been delayed for a month while Kenyon gave both sides an opportunity to settle the case. The supervisors and the plaintiffs traded proposals in the weeks before Christmas, but talks ended when the supervisors refused to make a counterproposal and called their plan to voluntarily redraw their district lines a “take it or leave it” offer.

The vote Tuesday against Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s proposal to expand the board went along well-established conservative-liberal lines.

Republican Supervisors Schabarum, Mike Antonovich and Deane Dana have consistently opposed expanding the board and--except for a short-lived proposal by Dana--have balked at negotiating a settlement. Liberals Hahn and Edelman have supported settlement and expansion of the board.

The supervisors said there are no ongoing settlement talks but would not rule out future negotiations, despite Kenyon’s warnings that no settlement will be considered once trial begins.

One county lawyer said the judge likely would embrace a settlement at any point in the trial rather than waste the court’s time. Added Schabarum: “It’s a strategy of the judge to force settlement.”

Edelman said, “We should make every effort to settle the case” during trial.

One of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Richard Fajardo of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said he is still open to settlement talks. “What the judge is now saying is the time for settlement negotiations has passed. He doesn’t want to get into the situation where political considerations are coming up and interfering with the trial.”

The trial is expected to last two to three months, but candidates for the 1st and 3rd supervisorial districts begin filing papers Feb. 12.

On Tuesday, attorneys for both sides wheeled into the courtroom dozens of waist-high stacks of boxes filled with evidence. Both sides expect to call about 100 witnesses, including the five supervisors and an army of political experts.

The trial is expected to offer a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering of the county board.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs, including the American Civil Liberties Union and MALDEF, said they will present evidence to show that the supervisors secretly devised a plan to split up Latino neighborhoods to protect their own political bases.

According to the papers filed Tuesday by the Justice Department, “Abraham Lincoln never split a rail as cleanly as the 1981 supervisorial district boundaries divide the Hispanic community.”

The supervisors, who have paid nearly $1 million in legal fees to a private law firm, contend that it was not possible to create a district with a majority of eligible Latino voters, using 1980 Census figures.

The plaintiffs contend that such a district can be created, comprising growing immigrant neighborhoods east and southeast of downtown Los Angeles, by using more recent population estimates. However, county attorneys contend that they are obliged only to follow 1980 census figures.

Both parties appeared close to a settlement last month when the Board of Supervisors agreed to redraw Schabarum’s district to bring the number of Latino voters in the area up to 36.5%. The compromise fell apart, however, when a counterproposal to increase Latino voters in Schabarum’s district to 49.4% was rejected by the board.