ANAHEIM, CA – Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has been ordered to release data related to accusations of racial bias, in a civil action by civil rights groups, reports the OC Register.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Walter Schwarm made the ruling following a public records lawsuit filed in 2022 by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundations of Northern and Southern California, the Peace and Justice Law Center, and activist group Chicanxs de Unidxs de Orange County.
According to the ACLU statement, Spitzer had refused to release prosecutorial data, policies, and training materials in violation of the Public Records Act (PRA).
“The judge’s order exposes what Spitzer had long denied: that his office operated with a policy of violating transparency laws, which concealed evidence of racial disparities in prosecutions,” said Emi MacLean, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and attorney for the plaintiffs in the case.
The groups asked the court to “scrutinize” Spitzer’s enforcement of the California Racial Justice Act (RJA), said the OC Register.
RJA “prohibits bias or discrimination in charging, conviction, and sentencing based on a defendant’s race, ethnicity, or national origin,” according to the Office of the State Public Defender, and the lawsuit claims Spitzer had unlawfully withheld records relating to racial bias in the office’s prosecution efforts.
The district attorney’s office responded that a majority of the data sought by the groups is posted on the OCDA website, said the OC Register.
But the ACLU’s statement charges, from at least March 2021 until August 2023, the office did not post the information on its website.
In 2023, the Orange County Superior Court issued a tentative ruling that the DA violated the PRA, and starting in December 2023, the office had begun publishing prosecutorial data on the OCDA website in response to the ruling, according to the ACLU statement.
Also in the lawsuit, a 2022 ACLU report was cited and revealed 5.8 percent of the criminal accused charged in Orange County were Black, although the group makes up only 2.1 percent of the population.
The report also noted the district attorney’s office is more likely to charge Black and Latino accused with felonies and sentencing enhancements than white people and less likely to offer Black and Latino people diversion as an alternative to jail.
