SD City Council enables lawsuit over La Jolla cityhood signatures

Last Updated on June 19, 2025

The San Diego County agency accused of overruling the Registrar of Voter’s stated insufficiency stands by its verification practices.

Fewer than two weeks after San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria publicly objected to the certification of signatures supporting a San Diego County inquiry into La Jolla’s detachment from San Diego, the City Council authorized the City Attorney to file litigation against the county agency.

The San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission is standing by its practices, however, citing authorization to do so and transparency in its process.

LAFCO certified the Association for the City of La Jolla’s signatures April 29, confirming more than the required 25 percent of La Jolla voters supported ACLJ’s application to LAFCO to consider La Jolla’s cityhood.

La Jolla is currently a community within the city of San Diego, beholden to San Diego’s laws and policies; no other groups have gotten this far in recurrent quests for La Jolla’s incorporation.

In January, ACLJ formally applied to LAFCO asking for incorporation; the application requirements included the petition, which was first sent to the county Registrar of Voters for verification.

The ROV validated 6,523, short of the required 6,750 needed.

LAFCO then verified an additional 240 signatures, leading to the certification and ACLJ’s celebration.

The addition of the LAFCO-verified signatures “is outrageous,” Gloria wrote in an April 29 press release, adding city staff who sat in on the process have “serious concerns about the exceptionally broad interpretations made by LAFCO staff to overrule the ROV.”

“LAFCO did not overrule the ROV,” LAFCO responded in a May 2 letter to Gloria’s office. “Rather, it followed sequenced procedures and exercised lawful discretion expressly delegated by the [state] legislature.”

California government code gives LAFCO’s executive officer (Keene Simonds) “the sole authority to determine the petition’s overall validity,” LAFCO wrote.

The LAFCO Certificate of Sufficiency followed ACLJ’s challenge of the 240 signatures “that had been initially disqualified by the ROV for reasons other than having a matching signature on file,” LAFCO added.

ACLJ President Trace Wilson said April 30 that the ROV has a different verification process and will not accept abbreviations (like “Ave” for “Avenue”) and other minutiae, whereas LAFCO will.

Gloria’s office continued its protest, however, and the City Council greenlit his request to initiate litigation during closed session May 12.

“From the outset, I’ve made it clear that the city of San Diego has serious concerns about LAFCO’s exceptionally broad and questionable interpretations that led them to overturn the county Registrar of Voters’ official determination that the La Jolla secession petition was insufficient,” Gloria said in a press release later that day.

“The decision by LAFCO to overrule the Registrar undermines public confidence in the integrity of this signature-verification process and sets a troubling precedent. This litigation aims to provide San Diegans with the transparency they deserve, hold LAFCO accountable for its arbitrary and capricious decisions and affirm the Registrar’s original certification of insufficiency.”

ACLJ has no comment, Wilson said.

LAFCO has not yet seen the lawsuit, and remains committed to its May 2 response, LAFCO Priscilla Mumpower told lajolla.ca.

“We have, and will continue to remain, open and transparent with the LAFCO Commission, the city, applicants and the public regarding the process and status of this proposal,” she added. “We remain committed to fulfilling the obligations and responsibilities outlined to San Diego LAFCO in state law, which grants LAFCO with the authority to be inclusive in enfranchising residents, rather than disenfranchising them.”