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JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SUES PASSAIC CITY, NEW JERSEY

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department today sued the city of Passaic, New Jersey, claiming that the city's method of electing its governing body does not provide an equal opportunity for Hispanic citizens to participate in the electoral process.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, alleges that the at-large method used to elect Passaic City Council members violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it dilutes the voting strength of Passaic City's Hispanic citizens. Today's lawsuit is the result of an extensive investigation conducted by the Civil Rights Division into the city's electoral practices and history.

"The Voting Rights Act guarantees that all citizens have the right to fully participate in the democratic process," said Bill Lann Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. "We hope today's lawsuit will help bring down the barriers preventing Hispanic citizens in Passaic City from having an equal opportunity to elect a representative to the City Council."

Although the 1990 Census showed that Hispanics made up 46 percent of the voting age population in Passaic City, Hispanic voters have had only limited success in electing the candidates of their choice to the seven-member City Council. Under the current method, each of the City Council's members is elected at large, meaning the candidates receiving the highest number of votes will be elected.

The Justice Department's analysis of previous city elections found that Hispanic voters in Passaic City are politically cohesive, but that non-Hispanic voters, who form a majority of the City's electorate, usually support different candidates and vote as a bloc, leading to the defeat of Hispanic voters' candidates of choice. This bloc voting, in combination with the use of an at-large election system, results in the dilution of the voting strength of Hispanic citizens in Passaic City, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

In June 1999, the Justice Department reached a separate settlement agreement with the city and county of Passaic to resolve claims that both the city and county violated the bilingual provisions of the of the Voting Rights Act, which require jurisdictions to provide election materials in another language if more than 5 percent of the voting age citizens are minorities with limited English skills and the illiteracy rates of those citizens exceed the national illiteracy rate. As a result of the agreement, the county and city, have among other things, instituted a Spanish language election information program in addition to translating all election related materials into Spanish.

Today's lawsuit seeks a change in the method of electing Passaic City council members that would give Hispanic voters an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.

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