On July 30, a Superior Court Judge in Orange County, California, set a trial date of March 17, 2004 for Moreno v City of Anaheim, 30-2012-579998. This is the lawsuit that argues that Anaheim’s at-large city elections violate the California Voting Rights Act. Anaheim has a population of 336,265, and is the largest city in California that still elects all of its city council members at-large with neither ranked choice voting, cumulative voting, or limited voting.

The lawsuit was filed in June 2012. It has been delayed while the city had been given extra time to decide whether to abandon at-large elections. The city had considered districts, but had then merely changed the system to retain at-large elections, but to set up districts which would be used for candidate qualification. In other words, districts would exist and one candidate from each district would be elected, but the elections would still be at-large. The city argued that was enough to moot the lawsuit, but the court disagreed and set the trial date.