BOARD OKS NEW COUNTY SEAL 3-2 IN FACE OF OPPOSITION.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday to approve a new county seal to avoid a lawsuit threatened by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

The new design eliminates a Christian cross, which was the focus of the ACLU's complaint, as well as oil derricks and the image of the Roman goddess Pomona. The goddess of fruits is replaced by an American Indian woman holding a bowl of acorns, and the new seal adds a depiction of a cross-free San Gabriel Mission.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who voted along with Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gloria Molina to revise the seal, said it should be a ``unifying symbol.''

``It should not be a symbol that divides us,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``It should be a symbol that every man, woman and child identifies with. That's why the courts have said that a predominant symbol of any religion, whether Christianity, Judaism or Islam, at the exclusion of others is not constitutional.''

The supervisors turned aside pleas to keep the official seal the county has used for the last 47 years.

A lawyer for the family of artist Millard Sheets told the supervisors that altering Sheets' 1957 design is ``intellectual property theft'' and ``no better than plagiarism.''

The mayor of Signal Hill - with nearly 600 operating oil wells - pleaded to keep the oil derricks on the seal in honor of the role the industry played in county history.

An American Indian woman criticized the central figure in the new design, saying she felt ``insulted and personally offended that you are asking me as a Native American woman to be exposed to a barefoot subservient woman serving the county of Los Angeles.''

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who along with Don Knabe voted against the new seal, also criticized the design.

``The top of the mission has a cross on it,'' Antonovich said. ``What is depicted here is the back door, the rear-end of the church.''

In a related development Tuesday, U.S. District Judge James Otero declined to issue a temporary restraining order barring the supervisors from replacing the seal on thousands of county buildings at an estimated cost of $800,000 over several years.

On Friday, lawyers asked the court to stop the supervisors on behalf of county employee Ernesto Vasquez, who has a pending lawsuit to prevent the removal of the cross from the seal on the grounds that it would violate the Constitution by sending a message of government hostility toward Christians.

Otero is expected to issue an order in about two weeks to address issues raised by the county in its motion to dismiss the case.

Opponents have prepared a petition to force a special election to overturn the supervisors' agreement with the ACLU. Organizers need to gather more than 341,000 signatures of voters by March 1 to force a special election.

Burke said a special election would cost far more than the new seal.

``My understanding is it will cost about $12 million. While everyone is worried about spending $800,000, the $12 million is no problem.''

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com

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The redesigned county seal replaces the goddess Pomona with an American Indian woman, replaces the contested cross with a crossless ``mission,'' and eliminates oil derricks.