Voting rights advocate reshaped California politics
California’s Latino community has lost its greatest voting rights gladiator. Today, many of us in politics or those sitting as judges owe a tremendous debt to Joaquin Avila’s lifetime of trailblazing advocacy.
No one was more accomplished than Avila when it came to fighting for Latino political empowerment and representation. He successfully won landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging discriminatory electoral systems that diluted minority political power throughout California and the Southwest. Most recently, his work led to the current switching by hundreds of California local governments to district elections.
The legendary civil rights lawyer lost his battle to cancer on March 9.
Avila’s fight to empower poor communities arose through his own experience growing up in the tough neighborhoods of Compton, a community primarily composed of African-Americans and Latinos in South Central Los Angeles. In 1966, he graduated from Centennial High School as class valedictorian and went on to become one of the first Chicanos to graduate from Yale University in 1970 and Harvard Law School in 1973.
He joined the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1974. He successfully challenged discriminatory voting systems across the state of Texas. His leadership quickly led him to MALDEF’s top position as president and general counsel in 1982.
Three years later, Avila opened his own private voting rights office. He took on the landmark case of Gomez v. City of Watsonville. Three Latino plaintiffs and Avila claimed that the at-large elections system was unconstitutional and violated the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the time, Latinos in Watsonville made up half of the city’s population but had never elected a single Latino to the City Council.
No one was more accomplished than (Joaquin) Avila when it came to fighting for Latino political empowerment and representation. He successfully won landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging discriminatory electoral systems that diluted minority political power throughout California and the Southwest.
The plaintiffs further contended that the at-large system unlawfully diluted the minority vote and unfairly disenfranchised Latinos due to the long history of racially polarized voting.
District elections, on the other hand, would divide Watsonville into geographic districts in which each would vote for its own representative. Avila argued that districts would give a stronger voice, more cohesion and increased voting power to Latinos.
Although Avila initially lost in the district court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed it by a 3-0 decision in 1988. It stated that Latinos in California had been subjects of “ubiquitous historical and current racial discrimination.”
Avila would use the Watsonville case to successfully challenge other electoral systems and redistricting plans, including the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in the early 1990s. The result was the creation of a Latino district and the election of the first Latina board member.
But what is probably Avila’s most transformative work was designing the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, authored by then-state Sen. Richard Polanco. Avila drafted the state legislation to be similar to the federal Voting Rights Act but streamlined the burden of proof needed and provided additional remedies. That law now has resulted in nearly 300 cities, school boards and other local governments switching to district elections, most without litigation, to allow more Latinos and other people of color to have more equitable representation.
“When we walk into a courtroom, it to me just represents that the local community is finally having its day,” Avila said, “When we do get a victory, it’s the greatest sense of satisfaction. We’re finally winning and getting an institution to respond and correct the inequities that have existed in the past. And you’re vindicated.”