A couple weeks ago the radical Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a rulling declaring that the Voting Rights Act requirement that election materials be in various languages applies to recall petitions. The case was the succesful 2003 recall of Nativo Lopez from the Santa Ana Unified School District Board. See a quick recap here.
A bitter campaign by unions against Wal-Mart in Rosemead has been derailed by that decision. After the city council apporoved 5-0 a development plan for a Wal-Mart, the unions and other Wal-Mart haters went to work. First they defeated 2 or the three incumbents that supported Wal-Mart.
That still left them one vote shy of a majority. So Wal-Mart opponents started a recall against the two incumbent members that weren’t up for election. They collected enough signatures and the election was on until the Ninth Circuit made their decision.
Now, the majority put off the election citing the lack of multi-language recall petitions. See the story here.
For now the liberals on the Ninth Circuit have stopped the liberals in Rosemead. That is justice.
March 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
There is nothing just about applying a court decision to undue a successful recall petition three months after the fact.
The recall petitions were turned in for signature verification at the end of August. All signatures were witnessed by Rosemead-registered voters [as required by law]. Signatures from nearly one in four registered voters in the city were collected, well more than the number required by law. The form of the recall petitions were as required by law at the start of the process.
Yet, a court decision at the end of November is used to take the recall election off the ballot? Not just, at all.