Joaquin Avila — lawyer fought for Latino voting rights
Joaquin Avila, a pioneering voting-rights attorney whose victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and the California Legislature helped to empower Latinos and other minorities at the ballot box, has died of cancer at his home in Seattle. He was 69.
“Our nation has lost a steadfast hero-warrior for the Constitution and for human rights,” said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, positions that Avila held from 1982 to 1985. He had previously worked as a staff attorney for MALDEF in California and Texas, and remained in voting-rights work throughout his career, litigating more than 70 cases.
In California’s Central Valley “his name is mentioned in reverent tones, and with good reason,” said San Francisco civil rights attorney Robert Rubin, who worked on cases with Avila. “He’s been responsible for so many legal victories that have protected and advanced political empowerment of Latinos and other groups.”
One such case came from Monterey County, where county supervisors had changed judicial elections from a system of individual districts to countywide “at-large” votes, diminishing the prospects of Latinos, who made up one-third of the county’s population, of being elected to a judgeship.
Because of a history of voting discrimination, the county was required to seek U.S. Justice Department approval for changes in its election laws. County officials argued that no approval was needed because a state law had ratified its action, but Avila and Rubin, representing Latino voters, won an 8-1 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999 requiring the county to seek federal clearance for any such changes.
Avila also won a precedent-setting ruling from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1989 requiring Watsonville to switch from at-large to district elections, paving the way for the first election of Latinos to the City Council.
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the section of the federal Voting Rights Act that had required many state and local governments to clear new election laws with the Justice Department. By then, however, California had its own Voting Rights Act, which Avila drafted and helped to steer through the Legislature in 2002.
The law, the only one of its kind in the nation, allows minorities to challenge at-large elections in cities and local agencies that have a history of racially polarized voting and a likelihood of diluting minority voting power. Lawsuits and even the prospect of suits under the law have caused hundreds of local governments to move to district-by-district elections.
Avila was still defending the law at the end of his life, fighting a conservative group’s suit that contended the redistricting was unconstitutional race-based discrimination, said Denise Hulett, a MALDEF attorney also working on the case. A federal judge in San Diego has upheld the law, but opponents plan to appeal.
“After he left MALDEF, he continued to do (voting-rights work) on his own dime. It was not something that made him rich,” Hulett said.
That was evident in 1996, when Avila won a “genius grant” fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation and said he would use the $295,000 award to pay debts from the costs of his votingrights suits.
Avila was born in Compton (Los Angeles County) and attended Yale University, becoming one of the first Mexican-Americans to enroll there, and Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1973. He maintained a law practice in Fremont after leaving MALDEF, then became director of the National Voting Rights Advocacy Initiative at Seattle University School of Law.
His son Joaquin Avila Jr. described his father as “a kind and caring person who helped people who were in trouble, just as he did during his career.”
Avila died Friday, surrounded by family members at his home. He is survived by his wife, Sally Avila; his children, Joaquin, Angelique and Salvador Avila; and a brother, Jaime Avila.
Plans for a public memorial are pending.