Source: http://openjurist.org/452/us/130
Timestamp: 2015-03-30 00:09:25
Document Index: 516425260

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 1973', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5']

452 US 130 McDaniel v. Sanchez | OpenJurist
452 U.S. 130 - McDaniel v. Sanchez	Home452 us 130 mcdaniel v. sanchez
452 US 130 McDaniel v. Sanchez 452 U.S. 130
101 S.Ct. 2224
68 L.Ed.2d 724
W. C. McDANIEL et al., Petitioners,v.Jose SANCHEZ et al.
After holding that the apportionment plan for precincts from which county commissioners were elected to serve on the Commissioners Court for Kleberg County, Tex., was unconstitutional because of substantial population variances in the precincts, the District Court directed county officials to submit a proposed reapportionment plan to the court. The Commissioners Court then employed an expert to prepare a new plan and subsequently adopted his plan and submitted it to the District Court. The court approved the plan and authorized the Commissioners Court to conduct 1980 primary and general elections under it, rejecting respondents' contention that § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Act) required the county, a jurisdiction covered by the Act, to obtain preclearance from either the Attorney General of the United States or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia before the plan could become effective. The Court of Appeals vacated the District Court's order, holding that "[a] proposed reapportionment plan submitted by a local legislative body does not lose its status as a legislative rather than court-ordered plan merely because it is the product of litigation conducted in a federal forum," and that the Act required preclearance.
Held : Congress intended to require compliance with the statutory preclearance procedures under the circumstances of this case. Whenever a covered jurisdiction submits a proposal reflecting the policy choices of the elected representatives of the people—no matter what constraints have limited the choices available to them—the preclearance requirement of the Act is applicable. Pp. 137-153.
(a) The statement in East Carroll Parish School Board v. Marshall, 424 U.S. 636, 96 S.Ct. 1083, 47 L.Ed.2d 296—which held that a court-adopted reapportionment plan suggested by the local legislative body there involved was a judicial plan for purposes of substantive review—that the plan was also a judicial plan for purposes of § 5 preclearance was dictum and does not control this case. Pp. 139-146.
(b) The language of § 5 does not unambiguously answer the question, but the legislative history of the 1975 amendments of the Act shows that it was intended that the statutory protections are to be available even when redistricting by the governmental body is ordered by a federal court to remedy a constitutional violation that has been established in pending federal litigation. Pp. 146-153.
Richard A. Hall, Corpus Christi, Tex., for petitioners.
Robert J. Parmley, Alice, Tex., for respondents.
We granted certiorari to decide whether the preclearance requirement of § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended,1 applies to a reapportionment plan submitted to a Federal District Court by the legislative body of a covered jurisdiction2 in response to a judicial determination that the existing apportionment of its electoral districts is unconstitutional. Relying on East Carroll Parish School Board v. Marshall, 424 U.S. 636, 96 S.Ct. 1083, 47 L.Ed.2d 296 (per curiam), the District Court held that the plan submitted to it in this case was a judicial plan and thus excepted from the requirements of § 5. Relying on Wise v. Lipscomb, 437 U.S. 535, 98 S.Ct. 2493, 57 L.Ed.2d 411, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed; it held that because the plan had been prepared by a legislative body, it was a legislative plan within the coverage of § 5. We are persuaded that Congress intended to require compliance with the statutory preclearance procedures under the circumstances of this case. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
The covered jurisdiction in this case is Kleberg County, a rural county in Texas. Under Texas law, a Commissioners Court, which is composed of four county commissioners presided over by the county judge, is authorized to govern Kleberg County. The county is divided periodically by the Commissioners Court into four commissioners' precincts, each of which elects a resident to the position of county commissioner. The county judge is elected at large. The county commissioners and the county judge serve 4-year terms.3
In January 1978, four Mexican-American residents of Kleberg County brought this class action against various county officials alleging that the apportionment of the four commissioners' precincts denied individual residents of the larger precincts a vote of equal weight, and unconstitutionally diluted the voting strength of the county's substantial Mexican-American population.4 After a trial,5 the District Court rejected the plaintiffs' claim that the county's apportionment plan unconstitutionally diluted the voting power of Mexican-Americans as a class, but held that individual voters were denied equal representation because of the substantial disparity in the number of residents in each commissioners' precinct.6 The District Court therefore directed the county officials to submit a proposed reapportionment plan to the court within six weeks, and scheduled a hearing on the validity of the proposal for four weeks thereafter.7
Pursuant to the District Court's order, the Commissioners Court undertook the task of devising a new apportionment plan. The Commissioners Court employed Dr. Robert Nash, a statistician and the Dean of the College of Business at Texas A. & I. University, to prepare a new plan, instructing him to define the commissioners' precincts "on a one-person/one-vote basis."8 With one insignificant modification, the9Commissioners Court officially adopted the plan prepared by Dr. Nash as the plan it would submit to the District Court.
Respondents objected to the proposed plan. They challenged the data used by the Dean, they claimed that the plan diluted the voting strength of Mexican-Americans, and they contended that the Voting Rights Act required the county to obtain preclearance from the Attorney General of the United States or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia before the plan could become effective.10 After an evidentiary hearing, the District Court rejected both of respondents' factual contentions, and held as a matter of law that the Voting Rights Act did not require preclearance. The court entered an order approving the new plan and authorizing the Commissioners Court to conduct the 1980 primary and general elections under it. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-21 to A-23.
Without expressing any opinion with respect to the constitutionality of the new plan, the Court of Appeals vacated the District Court's order in a per curiam opinion. See 615 F.2d 1023 (1980). Reasoning that "[a] proposed reapportionment plan submitted by a local legislative body does not lose its status as a legislative rather than court-ordered plan merely because it is the product of litigation conducted in a federal forum," id., at 1024, the Court of Appeals held that the Voting Rights Act required preclearance. The court thereafter denied petitioners' application for a stay pending filing and consideration of a petition for writ of certiorari. On August 14, 1980, however, Justice POWELL, in his capacity as Circuit Justice, entered an order recalling the mandate and staying the judgment of the Court of Appeals pending disposition of the petition for certiorari. 448 U.S. 1318, 101 S.Ct. 7, 65 L.Ed.2d 1142. We granted that petition because the question presented is important and because the answer suggested by our prior opinions is not free of ambiguity. 449 U.S. 898, 101 S.Ct. 265, 66 L.Ed.2d 127.11
In this Court, the county officials contend that the Voting Rights Act does not apply to a plan that "(a) was prepared and presented in response to an order by the district court, (b) was not prepared by county officials but by a third party expert, (c) was not adopted by the county before submission to the court, (d) was considered by the trial court to be court-ordered, and (e) was put into effect only after county officials were ordered to do so by the trial court."12
We first consider the significance of the distinction between legislative and court-ordered plans as identified in our prior cases. We then review our decisions in East Carroll and Wise v. Lipscomb, on which the District Court and the Court of Appeals respectively placed primary reliance. Finally, we examine the statute and its legislative history.
* Texas and its political subdivisions are covered by the Voting Rights Act. Briscoe v. Bell, 432 U.S. 404, 97 S.Ct. 2428, 53 L.Ed.2d 439.13 Section 5 of the Act is applicable whenever a covered jurisdiction "shall enact or seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1972. . . ." 42 U.S.C. § 1973c. A reapportionment plan is a "standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting" within the meaning of § 5, Georgia v. United States, 411 U.S. 526, 531-535, 93 S.Ct. 1702, 1708, 36 L.Ed.2d 472, and it is undisputed that Kleberg County is a covered jurisdiction. What is in dispute is whether that jurisdiction did "enact or seek to administer" a proposed reapportionment plan when it presented that plan to a Federal District Court as a proposed remedy for a constitutional violation. If the statute does apply, then the plan must be precleared either by the Attorney General of the United States or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia before it may become effective.14 In such a preclearance proceeding, it is not sufficient to demonstrate that the new plan is constitutional; the covered jurisdiction also has the burden of demonstrating that the districting changes are not motivated by a discriminatory purpose and will not have an adverse impact on minority voters. See e. g., City of Rome v. United States, 446 U.S. 156, 172-173, 100 S.Ct. 1548, 1559-1560, 64 L.Ed.2d 119. Two polar propositions are perfectly clear. First, the Act requires preclearance of new legislative apportionment plans that are adopted without judicial direction or approval. See Georgia v. United States, supra. Second, the Act's preclearance requirement does not apply to plans prepared and adopted by a federal court to remedy a constitutional violation. See Connor v. Johnson, 402 U.S. 690, 91 S.Ct. 1760, 29 L.Ed.2d 268 (per curiam ).15 Petitioners contend that the Act does not apply to this reapportionment plan because it is a court-ordered plan, while respondents argue that the Act does apply because the plan was prepared and submitted on behalf of the local legislative body.
In prior reapportionment cases not arising under the Voting Rights Act, we have recognized important differences between legislative plans and court-ordered plans. Because "reapportionment is primarily the duty and responsibility of the State through its legislature or other body, rather than of a federal court," Chapman v. Meier, 420 U.S. 1, 27, 95 S.Ct. 751, 766, 42 L.Ed.2d 766, the Court has tolerated somewhat greater flexibility in the fashioning of legislative remedies for violation of the one-person, one-vote rule than when a federal court prepares its own remedial decree. Thus, in Chapman we held that "unless there are persuasive justifications, a court-ordered reapportionment plan of a state legislature must avoid use of multimember districts, and, as well, must ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with little more than de minimis variation." Id., at 26-27, 95 S.Ct., at 765-766 (footnote omitted).16 In contrast, reapportionment plans prepared by legislative bodies may employ multimember districts and may result in greater population disparities than would be permitted in a court-ordered plan. See Connor v. Finch, 431 U.S. 407, 414-415, 97 S.Ct. 1828, 1833-1834, 52 L.Ed.2d 465. Cf. Mahan v. Howell, 410 U.S. 315, 93 S.Ct. 979, 35 L.Ed.2d 320.
In this case, we are concerned only with the question whether the reapportionment plan submitted to the District Court should be considered a legislative plan for purposes of preclearance under § 5. We are not presented with any question concerning the substantive acceptability of that plan. Nonetheless, we draw significant guidance from prior cases in which the substantive acceptability of a reapportionment plan, rather than the applicability of § 5, was at issue.
In East Carroll Parish School Board v. Marshall, 424 U.S. 636, 96 S.Ct. 1083, 47 L.Ed.2d 296 (per curiam), the plaintiff contended that population disparities among the parish's wards had unconstitutionally denied him the right to cast an effective vote for representatives to the school board and the police jury, the governing body of the parish. The District Court found that the parish's existing apportionment was unconstitutional. As a remedy, the court adopted a reapportionment plan, suggested by the police jury, that provided for at-large election of the members of both the police jury and the school board. Following the 1970 census, the District Court directed the police jury and school board to submit revised reapportionment plans. They resubmitted the plan calling for at-large elections, and the District Court again approved this plan. After a divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's decision,17 the court sitting en banc reversed on the ground that the multimember arrangement approved by the District Court was unconstitutional.18
When we reviewed the case, we concluded that it was improper for the Court of Appeals to base its decision on a constitutional ground in view of the fact that the District Court had violated the frequently reaffirmed "rule that when United States district courts are put to the task of fashioning reapportionment plans to supplant concededly invalid state legislation, single-member districts are to be preferred absent unusual circumstances." Id., at 639, 96 S.Ct., at 1085. Thus, we held in East Carroll that the plan approved by the District Court was a judicial plan for purposes of substantive review.
Although the issue was not raised by the parties, we also stated in East Carroll that the plan was a judicial plan for purposes of § 5 preclearance. Neither of the parties had argued that § 5's preclearance requirement was applicable in that case. However, the United States, as amicus curiae, had contended that, because the plan had been submitted by the legislative bodies of a covered jurisdiction, preclea