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By Miriam Raftery
Photo: Vince Kattoula, President, Chaldean Coalition (Screenshot via CBS 8 video)
March 9, 2022 (San Diego’s East County) – The nonprofit Chaldean Coalition has filed a lawsuit contending that Chaldeans are being disenfranchised by San Diego County’s supervisorial redistricting in East County, where most of this ethnic and religious minority group resides.
The lawsuit, filed March 4 in Superior Court, claims the division of the close-knit community between two supervisorial districts is illegal under the California Election Code, which incorporates other state and federal statutory and constitutional law.
The suit was filed by attorneys from LiMandri & Jonna LLP, a Rancho Santa Fe firm with a specialty in civil rights, against the County of San Diego, its Independent Redistricting Commission, and its Registrar of Voters. The Chaldean Coalition seeks a stay, as well as preliminary and permanent injunctions, to restrain application of the County’s new Supervisorial Districts and require the redrawing of such maps in compliance with the law.
“The process of drawing representative district boundaries, whether at the federal Congressional level, the State Assembly and Senate level, or the County Supervisorial level, has a very clear requirement laid out by the California Supreme Court,” stated attorney Paul M. Jonna, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP. “The district boundaries may not be drawn in a way that splits up a racial minority group—whether intentionally or otherwise. Yet that is exactly what has happened here. The County of San Diego Redistricting Commission, in drawing the county’s new supervisorial district boundaries, split the Chaldean religious and ethnic group living in East County right down the middle.”
The lawsuit contends that the redistricting violates the “communities of interest” provisions in the Election Code, which codify into the redistricting process the Equal Protection guarantees of the California Constitution.
The complaint contends that the commission intentionally diluted the influence and voice of the Chaldean community, with some in the district currently represented by Supervisor Joel Anderson and others in the district represented by Supervisor Nathan Fletcher.
In an interview with ECM, Jonna said that unlike other groups such as Hispanics and blacks, which are scattered throughout San Diego County, "What's unique about Chaldeans is that they are a smaller minority heavily concentrated in a small community."
Around 63.4% of Chaldeans live in the El Cajon region, including Rancho San Diego. Another 8.6% live in Spring Valley, 4.3% in La Mesa, and 27.1% in other areas of the County. The suit seeks to put Rancho San Diego and part of Spring Valley back into District 2, where it has historically been, instead of District 4.
Ironically, Jonna says, the redistricting as it stands did not provide equal population in each district. "District 4 is now overpopulated and District 2 is underpopulated, so putting the Rancho San Diego area back into District 2 would actually make the population deviation lower." He argues that the redistricting is "arbitrary and capricious."
The County has declined to comment, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
Vince Kattoula, President of the Chaldean Coalition, an advocacy group recognized by the Chaldean Catholic Diocese of St. Peter the Apostle, was quick to define the focus of the lawsuit. “This case is not about political parties,” assured Kattoula, “This is about ensuring that all ethnic minority communities, including the Chaldean community, which have worked so hard to find a voice in the United States, are protected, respected and heard.”
San Diego’s Chaldean community began 71 years ago with the first Chaldean-San Diegan immigrant arriving in 1951. Others converged in San Diego in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1973, 117 Chaldean families organized the first Chaldean parish in San Diego, named St. Peter’s. Throughout the 1970s, greater numbers of Chaldean immigrants began arriving in San Diego. In that decade, the President of Iraq tried to force Chaldeans to give up the Chaldean-Aramaic language, passing laws prohibiting its teaching in public schools, and tried to forcibly impose Arabic instead. These policies began the Chaldean diaspora.
The nonpartisan citizens’ redistricting commission spent over a year drawing up new boundaries, accepting community input during the process. State law requires that redistricting must not have partisan considerations but must have districts of approximately equal population that are contiguous, compact, and don’t break up protected communities.
The process becomes challenging, however, when there are multiple racial, ethnic or religious minority groups as in El Cajon and nearby communities where most Chaldean Christians reside – as well as many Latino residents, Muslim immigrants, and a growing number of African-Americans. Some members of those groups also spoke out during the redistricting process to argue against breaking up their communities into separate districts.
“The Commission chose to prioritize the ‘BIPOC community’ (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) a recent political term popularized by Black Lives Matter meant to highlight white supremacy in the U.S., over an actual, constitutionally protected religious and ethnic minority community that has established roots and a deep history in East County. This was done at the behest of PANA—a newly founded nonprofit also funded by Black Lives Matter—whose clear goal was to break up the Chaldean community and dilute their vote,” explained Jonna, who speculates, “This is likely because Chaldeans traditionally vote overwhelmingly conservative.”
Jonna adds ,“There is no rational explanation for why the commission split up the Chaldean community by halving the community between districts, and particularly by excising only one segment of the El Cajon region—the heart of the Chaldean community in Rancho San Diego with St. Peter’s Cathedral. The new maps exacerbate the inequality of population between the two districts and create a non-compact district that now has another district jutting into it.”
The attorney for the Chaldeans says some Commission members were disqualified from sitting on the Commission, because they had recently run for political office or were registered lobbyists.
Kattoula says his hope is that “each and every ethnic minority community throughout the nation that has been recently impacted by redistricting, use this case and the work done by the Chaldean Coalition to save their community and ensure its voices are heard, regardless of political views.”
Jonna, along with partner Charles LiMandri and co-counsel Jeffrey Trissell and Mark Myers, are working together to protect the rights of the San Diego area Chaldean community, and to uproot what they believe is gerrymandering of the electoral process.
Read the Verified Petition for Writ of Mandate or Prohibition filed March 4, 2022, in the Superior Court of the State of California County of San Diego – Central Division by attorneys at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, on behalf of the Chaldean Coalition in Chaldean Coalition v. The County of San Diego Independent Redistricting Commission et al. here.
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