California has sued Huntington Seashore, alleging that the town’s new regulation requiring voters to point out photograph identification is a violation of state regulation.
The 320-page lawsuit, filed Monday in Orange County Superior Courtroom, accuses Huntington Seashore of violating California’s Structure and the state election code over a brand new constitution modification that might require voters to point out photograph identification in native elections beginning in 2026.
Huntington Seashore has argued that the town constitution grants native officers the authority to deal with municipal points, together with native elections. Along with the photograph identification requirement, the modification requires that Huntington Seashore present 20 in-person polling locations and monitor poll drop bins.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta mentioned Monday that Huntington Seashore’s constitution doesn’t exempt the town from following state legal guidelines that govern voter registration and election integrity. The photograph identification requirement “will not be solely misguided — it’s blatantly and flatly unlawful,” Bonta mentioned at a information convention in downtown Los Angeles.
“They’ve drastically overstated the authority they suppose they’ve,” mentioned Bonta, a Democrat. “They’ve willfully violated the regulation, they’ve openly violated the regulation. … They know precisely what they’re doing, and they’re doing it anyway.”
Voters in Huntington Seashore permitted the regulation by passing Measure A on the March 5 poll, with 53.4% assist. Michael Gates, Huntington Seashore’s metropolis legal professional, mentioned in a press release that “the individuals of Huntington Seashore have made their voices clear on this problem.”
“Town will vigorously uphold and defend the need of the individuals,” Gates mentioned.
Bonta’s lawsuit is the most recent conflict between California and Huntington Seashore, which has thrust itself into the crosshairs of state lawmakers and the nation’s tradition wars for the reason that begin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the last 4 years, officers within the conservative seaside city have declared it a “no masks and no vaccine-mandate” metropolis, sued the state over zoning necessities so as to add housing and a “sanctuary metropolis” immigration regulation, created a panel to display kids’s books within the metropolis library for sexual content material and permitted the voter ID measure for the March poll regardless of threats of a lawsuit.
After the Huntington Seashore Metropolis Council started discussing the voter ID measure final fall, Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, California’s prime election official, warned in a letter to metropolis officers that the measure was unlawful and will immediate a lawsuit.
California regulation requires voters to confirm their identities after they register to vote and imposes felony penalties for fraudulent registration, Bonta and Weber wrote. The state doesn’t require photograph identification on the polls however does require that voters present their names and addresses.
The Huntington Seashore Metropolis Council voted 4 to three in October to position the voter ID regulation on the March poll.
Councilmembers Tony Strickland and Gracey Van Der Mark, who backed the measure, wrote of their poll argument that “excessive insurance policies” permitting noncitizens to vote “have been spreading” and that the measure would “endlessly defend Huntington Seashore’s elections.”
Three council members who opposed the measure mentioned that the town’s elections, overseen by the Orange County Registrar of Voters, are safe and that Huntington Seashore was not ready to supervise its personal elections.
Weber, a Democrat, mentioned Monday that her workplace investigates claims of voter fraud and has “not discovered it to be true that California, nor another state, suffers from an incredible quantity of fraud.”
The voter ID measure “is mostly a resolution searching for an issue,” Weber mentioned.
A Huntington Seashore resident sued in November to dam the voter ID measure. The ACLU of Southern California and Incapacity Rights California filed briefs in assist of the lawsuit, arguing that voter ID legal guidelines impose extreme burdens on Black, Latino and low-income voters.
Orange County Superior Courtroom choose Nick Dourbetas declined to cease the measure from showing on the poll however wrote in his December ruling that if the measure handed “and if its implementation raises a difficulty of constitutionality, at that time, it might be applicable for judicial overview.”
Bonta warned Huntington Seashore final fall that one other aspect of the constitution modification — monitoring poll drop bins — might additionally violate state regulation.
The state’s lawsuit doesn’t point out drop bins. Bonta mentioned state officers will probably be watching how the Huntington Seashore regulation is applied to make sure it doesn’t run afoul of a prohibition on taking images, movies or in any other case recording voters at polling locations or poll drop bins “with the intent of dissuading one other individual from voting.”