The Malibu law firm alleging Cypress is in violation of the state’s voting rights laws has served the city with a second demand letter, this time including two residents as plaintiffs and demanding a final response no later than July 21, 2022.
“I write on behalf of our clients, Malini Nagpal, Katie Shapiro and Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and its members residing within the City of Cypress (“Cypress” or “City”)… We wrote to you in September 2021 and write now in an abundance of caution to ensure that we have complied with the pre-filing requirements,” said attorney Kevin Shenkman in the letter.
“Cypress relies upon an at-large election system for electing candidates to its governing board. Moreover, voting within the city is racially polarized, resulting in minority vote dilution, and, therefore, the City’s at-large elections violate the California Voting Rights Act,” he claimed in a demand letter makes the same allegations made in the firm’s letter in September of 2021.
What’s different now is the addition of two local citizens as plaintiffs, Malini Nagpal, BC-DMT, Ph.D, and Katie Shapiro, as well as the Southwest Voter Education Project, said Shenkman.
In a statement, Nagpal said “I am doing it because it’s the right thing to do. Aside from the fact that Cypress should be in compliance with the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA), districting would allow the city governance to more intimately represent people from all socioeconomic statuses,” she said.
“Each council member would raise the concerns and needs of the district they represent,” said Nagpal, “thus ensuring equal/equitable representation, which has been missing from City of Cypress governance for quite a while,” she said. The city’s governance should be representing the people that make up the city. This includes diversity in socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and abilities.”
Shapiro, in a separate statement, said “I was both shocked and appalled when Cypress City Council voted on districting, in closed session, after very few voter-outreach attempts at offering a clear understanding of what districting would mean for our community.”
“We are asking for transparency and because this order appears too tall and too unmanageable for our city government, I am joining Mr. Shenkman in holding Cypress leadership accountable,” said Shapiro.
“The Brown Act is a measure created so that corruption and secrecy are kept at bay. Government only works when the public is informed, not the other way around,” said Shapiro.
Cypress is currently being sued by CalAware for meeting in closed session consistently since the first Shenkman demand letter was served on Cypress dated Sept. 21, 2021.
Finally, after several closed sessions, and three so-called forums, the city council voted 4-1 to reject district-based elections, with Council member Frances Marquez voting against the motion to reject.
In April, the city issued a response to Shenkman’s initial letter, written by Fred Galante, the city’s legal counsel.
Writing on behalf of the city of Cypress, city attorney Fred Galante called Shenkman’s assertion of violations were of the “cookie cutter” variety, noting also that his demand letter was “boiler-plate.”
“Certainly, these undeniable trends of Asian Americans succeeding in the City’s at-large elections confirm that Cypress is not the appropriate target for your cookie cutter CVRA letters,” said Galante in his response to Shenkman.
“I explained to you that the City’s demographer found no evidence of racially polarized voting. As such, it would not only be appropriate for SVREP to provide this basic information it purports to have in support of its letter,” said Galante.
Shenkman said Galante’s response to the Sept. 21 letter was “unnecessarily and inappropriately rude,” which Shenkman said is behavior “way beyond” the normal rules of civility that generally prevails between opposing attorneys in court.
“If Mr. Shenkman is offended about my letter explaining that many of the statements in his original letter are boilerplate allegations, that point is based on my review of various letters Mr. Shenkman has sent other jurisdictions with the exact same wording. It was not intended to insult, but instead to point out that Cypress does not fit within those boilerplate allegations,” said Galante in a statement this week.
Although the city claims to have performed a demographic study that supports the claims dismissing the need for district-based elections that are made in Galante’s response, yet the study has never been discussed at a city council meeting nor has it been released to the public, despite multiple PRA requests.
Moreover, the Malibu attorney said Cypress Council’s three so-called public “election forums” were a “sham,” and little more than events orchestrated “to score political points.” From the beginning, said Shenkman, the city’s response to the whole affair was “dishonest and disingenuous.”
Attendance records indicate total attendance for all three forums for which the city paid $40,000 to a contractor was less than two hundred citizens in a city with 50,000 citizens.
Shenkman called the city’s response to the CVRA allegations “almost laughable.”
If Cypress continues to defy the alleged CVRA violations, Shenkman predicted the city will lose in court. Given the size of the city compared to similar cities, Shenkman estimated the cost to Cypress taxpayers will ultimately be in the millions.
Santa Monica’s lawsuit, still ongoing, he said, could ultimately cost the city upwards of $20 million, said Shenkman.
Meanwhile, he said the City of La Palma, in contrast, has already passed a resolution for a good faith effort to comply. Should they formally create districts, he said, La Palma’s legal costs are limited to $30,000.