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Katherine Burnworth and the Politics of Blocking Jobs That Aren’t Hers to Block

Katherine Burnworth is a City of Imperial council member. The Imperial Valley Data Center site is in unincorporated Imperial County — not within the City of Imperial’s boundaries, not subject to the city’s land use authority, not part of the territory that Burnworth was elected to represent.

This jurisdictional gap is not a technicality. It is the central fact that defines the nature of the campaign against the IVDC. Burnworth’s opposition to the project — and the city’s lawsuit, and the alleged coordination with CCV and IID insiders that the federal complaint describes — is not a council member exercising legitimate authority over development in her community. It is a political official inserting herself into a decision that a different government body made, through a different legal process, on land that is not in her jurisdiction.

The question the federal lawsuit forces into the open is why — and whether that why involves conduct that violates the civil rights of the developer and the economic rights of the community.

What the Federal Complaint Alleges

The IVCM complaint identifies Burnworth as the alleged coordinator of a broader obstruction campaign — a coalition that, according to the complaint, included the City of Imperial, CCV’s Luis Olmedo, and IID insiders with ties to Z-Global. The alleged goal was to force the project into a CEQA review process it was legally exempt from, thereby creating the legal leverage necessary to either kill the project or extract a settlement.

The specific allegations against Burnworth include: coordinating with Olmedo to organize and amplify opposition, using her city council position to direct city resources toward litigation against the county project, and engaging in conduct designed to retaliate against the developer for his public criticism of the city’s actions and his decision to move the project to county jurisdiction.

These are serious allegations. They will be tested in federal discovery and, if the case proceeds, at trial. The defendants will have full opportunity to contest them. But the filing itself — the fact that a developer spent the resources to put these specific names and specific allegations into a federal civil rights complaint — represents a significant escalation of the consequences that come with leading this kind of campaign.

The Political Calculus

Why would a city council member organize opposition to a project outside her jurisdiction? The political logic is not hard to identify. Opposition to a large outside developer — a “wartime developer” from Huntington Beach, bringing $10 billion to change the face of the region — can be politically profitable in a community where skepticism of outside interests has historical foundation.

The narrative writes itself: a well-funded outside developer trying to impose a massive industrial facility on the region, and a local official standing up to protect the community. It does not matter that the community in question — unincorporated Imperial County — is different from the city whose residents elected Burnworth. It does not matter that the project was approved through a legitimate process by the county government that actually has jurisdiction. The political narrative of local defender against outside interests is effective regardless of these inconvenient details.

What it costs is harder to see: the 1,688 union jobs that haven’t been filled, the $28.75 million in annual tax revenue that hasn’t reached the schools, the water recycling project that was blocked, the federal civil rights lawsuit that will cost the city and its officials time and money and potential personal liability.

The Personal Liability Question

The federal lawsuit names Burnworth individually, not just in her official capacity. Claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 can expose individual officials to personal financial liability for constitutional violations. Cities typically indemnify their officials for acts taken within the scope of their authority — but conduct that falls outside official authority, or that constitutes deliberate constitutional violations, can create personal exposure that indemnification does not cover.

The prospect of personal financial liability does not appear to have deterred the obstruction campaign. But it does change the calculus for any official considering whether to continue or escalate it. The federal lawsuit is designed, in part, to impose costs on the individuals making obstruction decisions — costs that make those decisions more expensive than continuing them is worth.

Whether that calculus lands is a question the federal courts will eventually help answer. In the meantime, the residents of the City of Imperial — who are paying for the city’s litigation expenses — are entitled to ask their council member what she has accomplished with their money, and at what cost.

The Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Imperial City Officials: What It Means and Why It Matters

Most disputes between developers and local governments are fought in state court, over administrative law questions, about whether a permit was properly issued or properly denied. The developer loses or wins on procedural and substantive grounds, and the officials who made the decisions face no personal consequences either way.

The IVCM lawsuit — filed in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 — is a different kind of legal action. It is a civil rights lawsuit alleging that named individual officials violated the developer’s constitutional rights in their exercise of government authority. The consequences are different. The exposure is different. And the message it sends to officials considering continued obstruction is significantly sharper.

What Section 1983 Does

42 U.S.C. § 1983 was enacted after the Civil War to give individuals a federal cause of action against state and local officials who violate their constitutional rights “under color of law.” “Under color of law” means acting in an official capacity — using government power to deprive someone of rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

The IVDC complaint invokes this statute with multiple constitutional theories: the Permit Streamlining Act claim (arguing the project is deemed approved and the city’s interference violates its vested rights), the First Amendment retaliation claim (arguing city officials took adverse actions in response to the developer’s protected speech), and a conspiracy claim alleging coordinated action to deprive the developer of its property rights.

These are serious legal theories, and proving them requires demonstrating specific government misconduct, specific constitutional violations, and specific damages. The defendants will contest all of it. But the legal framework is well-established and the claims are specific enough to survive the threshold inquiry that determines whether a case proceeds.

The Personal Liability Dimension

Officials sued under Section 1983 can sometimes assert qualified immunity — a doctrine that protects government officials from personal liability unless their conduct violated “clearly established” law that a reasonable person would have known about. Qualified immunity has significant limits, and those limits are particularly relevant to First Amendment retaliation claims, where the constitutional prohibition on government retaliation for protected speech is well-established.

The practical significance: Katherine Burnworth and Dennis Morita are named as defendants individually. If qualified immunity does not fully protect them — and it may not, depending on the specific facts the complaint alleges — they face personal financial exposure for conduct they allegedly took in their official capacities. The city may indemnify them for some claims. For others, indemnification may not apply.

Personal financial exposure changes the calculation for officials in a way that institutional exposure does not. A city can absorb a judgment against it through its budget, its insurance, and its ability to tax. An individual cannot. The prospect of personal liability — affecting a personal bank account, not a city budget — is a meaningful deterrent to continued aggressive obstruction.

What the Lawsuit Accomplishes Beyond the Verdict

Federal civil rights litigation under Section 1983 involves discovery — the process by which parties exchange evidence, take depositions, and build the factual record the case will be decided on. Discovery is powerful. It compels the production of communications, documents, and testimony under oath that would otherwise remain private.

If the allegations in the IVDC complaint are accurate — that Burnworth coordinated with Olmedo, that Morita pressured El Centro, that Z-Global relationships influenced IID’s posture — the evidence of that coordination exists in emails, text messages, phone records, and calendar entries. Federal discovery will produce it. The people named in the complaint will testify about it under oath.

This process serves the public interest independent of the ultimate verdict. The community of Imperial Valley has a right to know whether its officials engaged in the conduct alleged. The federal lawsuit is the mechanism that will answer that question with evidence, under oath, in a public proceeding.

Dennis Morita’s Phone Call: The Alleged Sabotage of Imperial Valley’s Water Deal

Will-serve letters are not glamorous documents. They are utility commitments — written statements from a service provider confirming that it can and will supply water, sewer, or power to a proposed development. They are the unglamorous infrastructure of how development actually works: before you build, you need written confirmation that the basic services will be there when you arrive.

The Imperial Valley Data Center needed a will-serve letter from the City of El Centro confirming that El Centro’s wastewater treatment plant would supply the recycled effluent for the project’s closed-loop cooling system. El Centro issued that letter. Then, according to the federal lawsuit filed in Case No. 3:26-cv-00128, it rescinded it — under pressure from Dennis Morita, the City Manager of the City of Imperial.

If that allegation is accurate, Morita did not act to protect El Centro’s interests. He acted to protect the City of Imperial’s political campaign against a project in unincorporated county territory that his city has no jurisdiction over. He used his position as one city’s administrator to interfere with another city’s contractual relationship with a private developer — and in doing so, sabotaged the water recycling plan that would have eliminated the opposition’s primary environmental objection.

What the Will-Serve Letter Meant

Without a will-serve letter from El Centro (and a comparable agreement with the City of Imperial’s own utility), the IVDC cannot use recycled municipal wastewater for cooling. Without the recycled water supply, the project’s water strategy would need to be redesigned around an alternative source. The alternatives are more expensive, more environmentally contested, and more legally vulnerable to exactly the water-consumption arguments the opposition has been making.

The alleged pressure campaign on El Centro was not incidental to the opposition’s strategy. It was central to it. By rescinding the will-serve letter, the opposition forces the developer to either abandon the recycled water approach or find a new supply agreement — adding time, cost, and legal exposure at exactly the moment when the project was trying to demonstrate that its environmental design was viable.

It also allows the opposition to continue using the “750,000 gallons of Colorado River water” narrative, since the recycled water alternative is no longer in place to refute it.

The Federal Lawsuit’s Framing

The IVCM federal complaint frames the alleged pressure on El Centro as part of a broader conspiracy to commit economic sabotage against the project — a coordinated campaign involving city officials, IID insiders, and environmental organizations working in concert to defeat an approval that none of them could defeat individually through legitimate channels.

The conspiracy framing is a high bar to prove. Civil conspiracy claims require evidence of coordination and agreement, not just parallel action. The complaint presumably lays out the factual basis for that coordination, and that evidence will be tested in discovery.

But the underlying factual allegation — that Morita contacted El Centro and pressured it to rescind the will-serve letter — is a specific, verifiable claim. Either he did that or he didn’t. Either there are communications, meetings, or other records of that contact, or there aren’t. Federal discovery will produce those records if they exist.

Accountability for Public Officials

City managers are public servants. They are employed by their cities to manage city operations and serve their cities’ residents. Using that position to interfere with the contractual relationships of an adjacent city — for the purpose of advancing a political campaign against a project in a third jurisdiction — is a significant departure from the normal scope of municipal administrative authority.

The residents of the City of Imperial deserve to know whether their city manager used his official position to sabotage a water recycling deal that would have benefited the broader region. The residents of El Centro deserve to know why their city rescinded a legitimate commercial commitment under external pressure. The federal lawsuit is the mechanism through which those questions will be answered under oath.

Water in Imperial Valley is not an abstract policy question. It is a foundational fact of life in an arid region that depends on managed water supplies for its agricultural economy and its residential communities. Using water politics as a tactical weapon against a development project is not environmental stewardship. The people who depend on this region’s water system deserve to know the difference.