Source: http://openjurist.org/488/us/469
Timestamp: 2014-04-18 19:45:52
Document Index: 797101266

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1983', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 1', '§ 103', '§ 6701', '§ 6705', '§ 5', '§ 1', '§ 1']

488 US 469 City of Richmond v. Ja Croson Company | OpenJurist
488 U.S. 469 - City of Richmond v. Ja Croson Company	Home488 us 469 city of richmond v. ja croson company
488 US 469 City of Richmond v. Ja Croson Company 488 U.S. 469
109 S.Ct. 706
102 L.Ed.2d 854
CITY OF RICHMOND, Appellantv.J.A. CROSON COMPANY.
Appellant city adopted a Minority Business Utilization Plan (Plan) requiring prime contractors awarded city construction contracts to subcontract at least 30% of the dollar amount of each contract to one or more "Minority Business Enterprises" (MBE's), which the Plan defined to include a business from anywhere in the country at least 51% of which is owned and controlled by black, Spanish-speaking, Oriental, Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut citizens. Although the Plan declared that it was "remedial" in nature, it was adopted after a public hearing at which no direct evidence was presented that the city had discriminated on the basis of race in letting contracts or that its prime contractors had discriminated against minority subcontractors. The evidence that was introduced included: a statistical study indicating that, although the city's population was 50% black, only 0.67% of its prime construction contracts had been awarded to minority businesses in recent years; figures establishing that a variety of local contractors' associations had virtually no MBE members; the city's counsel's conclusion that the Plan was constitutional under Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 65 L.Ed.2d 902, and the statements of Plan proponents indicating that there had been widespread racial discrimination in the local, state, and national construction industries. Pursuant to the Plan, the city adopted rules requiring individualized consideration of each bid or request for a waiver of the 30% set-aside, and providing that a waiver could be granted only upon proof that sufficient qualified MBE's were unavailable or unwilling to participate. After appellee construction company, the sole bidder on a city contract, was denied a waiver and lost its contract, it brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the Plan was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The Federal District Court upheld the Plan in all respects, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, applying a test derived from the principal opinion in Fullilove, supra, which accorded great deference to Congress' findings of past societal discrimination in holding that a 10% minority set-aside for certain federal construction grants did not violate the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment. However, on appellee's petition for certiorari in this case, this Court vacated and remanded for further consideration in light of its intervening decision in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 106 S.Ct. 1842, 90 L.Ed.2d 260, in which the plurality applied a strict scrutiny standard in holding that a race-based layoff program agreed to by a school board and the local teachers' union violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. On remand, the Court of Appeals held that the city's Plan violated both prongs of strict scrutiny, in that (1) the Plan was not justified by a compelling governmental interest, since the record revealed no prior discrimination by the city itself in awarding contracts, and (2) the 30% set-aside was not narrowly tailored to accomplish a remedial purpose.
822 F.2d 1355 (CA4 1987), affirmed.
(b) None of the "facts" cited by the city or relied on by the District Court, singly or together, provide a basis for a prima facie case of a constitutional or statutory violation by anyone in the city's construction industry. The fact that the Plan declares itself to be "remedial" is insufficient, since the mere recitation of a "benign" or legitimate purpose for a racial classification is entitled to little or no weight. Similarly, the views of Plan proponents as to past and present discrimination in the industry are highly conclusory and of little probative value. Reliance on the disparity between the number of prime contracts awarded to minority businesses and the city's minority population is also misplaced, since the proper statistical evaluation would compare the percentage of MBE's in the relevant market that are qualified to undertake city subcontracting work with the percentage of total city construction dollars that are presently awarded to minority subcontractors, neither of which is known to the city. The fact that MBE membership in local contractors' associations was extremely low is also not probative absent some link to the number of MBE's eligible for membership, since there are numerous explanations for the dearth of minority participation, including past societal discrimination in education and economic opportunities as well as both black and white career and entrepreneurial choices. Congress' finding in connection with the set-aside approved in Fullilove that there had been nationwide discrimination in the construction industry also has extremely limited probative value, since, by including a waiver procedure in the national program, Congress explicitly recognized that the scope of the problem would vary from market area to market area. In any event, Congress was acting pursuant to its unique enforcement powers under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 499-504.
(c) The "evidence" relied upon by Justice MARSHALL's dissent the city's history of school desegregation and numerous congressional reports—does little to define the scope of any injury to minority contractors in the city or the necessary remedy, and could justify a preference of any size or duration. Moreover, Justice MARSHALL's suggestion that discrimination findings may be "shared" from jurisdiction to jurisdiction is unprecedented and contrary to this Court's decisions. Pp. 504-506.
2. The Plan is not narrowly tailored to remedy the effects of prior discrimination, since it entitles a black, Hispanic, or Oriental entrepreneur from anywhere in the country to an absolute preference over other citizens based solely on their race. Although many of the barriers to minority participation in the construction industry relied upon by the city to justify the Plan appear to be race neutral, there is no evidence that the city considered using alternative, race-neutral means to increase minority participation in city contracting. Moreover, the Plan's rigid 30% quota rests upon the completely unrealistic assumption that minorities will choose to enter construction in lockstep proportion to their representation in the local population. Unlike the program upheld in Fullilove, the Plan's waiver system focuses upon the availability of MBE's, and does not inquire whether the particular MBE seeking a racial preference has suffered from the effects of past discrimination by the city or prime contractors. Given the fact that the city must already consider bids and waivers on a case-by-case basis, the city's only interest in maintaining a quota system rather than investigating the need for remedial action in particular cases would seem to be simply administrative convenience, which, standing alone, cannot justify the use of a suspect classification under equal protection strict scrutiny. Pp. 507-508.
Justice O'CONNOR, joined by THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Justice WHITE, concluded in Part II that if the city could identify past discrimination in the local construction industry with the particularity required by the Equal Protection Clause, it would have the power to adopt race-based legislation designed to eradicate the effects of that discrimination. The principal opinion in Fullilove cannot be read to relieve the city of the necessity of making the specific findings of discrimination required by the Clause, since the congressional finding of past discrimination relied on in that case was made pursuant to Congress' unique power under § 5 of the Amendment to enforce, and therefore to identify and redress violations of, the Amendment's provisions. Conversely, § 1 of the Amendment, which includes the Equal Protection Clause, is an explicit constraint upon the power of States and political subdivisions, which must undertake any remedial efforts in accordance with the dictates of that section. However, the Court of Appeals erred to the extent that it followed by rote the Wygant plurality's ruling that the Equal Protection Clause requires a showing of prior discrimination by the governmental unit involved, since that ruling was made in the context of a race-based policy that affected the particular public employer's own work force, whereas this case involves a state entity which has specific state-law authority to address discriminatory practices within local commerce under its jurisdiction. Pp. 486-493.
1. Since the Plan denies certain citizens the opportunity to compete for a fixed percentage of public contracts based solely on their race, Wygant' § strict scrutiny standard of review must be applied, which requires a firm evidentiary basis for concluding that the underrepresentation of minorities is a product of past discrimination. Application of that standard, which is not dependent on the race of those burdened or benefited by the racial classification, assures that the city is pursuing a remedial goal important enough to warrant use of a highly suspect tool and that the means chosen "fit" this compelling goal so closely that there is little or no possibility that the motive for the classification was illegitimate racial prejudice or stereotype. The relaxed standard of review proposed by Justice MARSHALL's dissent does not provide a means for determining that a racial classification is in fact "designed to further remedial goals," since it accepts the remedial nature of the classification before examination of the factual basis for the classification's enactment and the nexus between its scope and that factual basis. Even if the level of equal protection scrutiny could be said to vary according to the ability of different groups to defend their interests in the representative process, heightened scrutiny would still be appropriate in the circumstances of this case, since blacks constitute approximately 50% of the city's population and hold five of nine seats on the City Council, thereby raising the concern that the political majority may have acted to disadvantage a minority based on unwarranted assumptions or incomplete facts. Pp. 493-498.
(b) Legislative bodies such as the city council, which are primarily policymaking entities that promulgate rules to govern future conduct, raise valid constitutional concerns when they use the political process to punish or characterize past conduct of private citizens. Courts, on the other hand, are well equipped to identify past wrongdoers and to fashion remedies that will create the conditions that presumably would have existed had no wrong been committed, and should have the same broad discretion in racial discrimination cases that chancellors enjoy in other areas of the law to fashion remedies against persons who have been proved guilty of violations of law. Pp. 513—514.
1. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits state and local governments from discriminating on the basis of race in order to undo the effects of past discrimination, except in one circumstance: where that is necessary to eliminate their own maintenance of a system of unlawful racial classification. Moreover, the State's remedial power in that instance extends no further than the scope of the constitutional violation, and does not encompass the continuing effects of a discriminatory system once the system itself has been eliminated. Pp. 520-525.
2. The State remains free to undo the effects of past discrimination in permissible ways that do not involve classification by race—for example, by according a contracting preference to small or new businesses or to actual victims of discrimination who can be identified. In the latter instance, the classification would not be based on race but on the fact that the victims were wronged. Pp. 526-528.
O'CONNOR, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, III-B, and IV, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE, STEVENS, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined, an opinion with respect to Part II, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE, J., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts III-A and V, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., post, p. 511, and KENNEDY, J., post, p. 518, filed opinions concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 520. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined, post, p. 528. BLACKMUN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, J., joined, post, p. 561.
John Payton, Washington, D.C., for appellant.
Walter H. Ryland, Richmond, Va., for appellee.
"No partial or complete waiver of the foregoing [30% set-aside] requirement shall be granted by the city other than in exceptional circumstances. To justify a waiver, it must be shown that every feasible attempt has been made to comply, and it must be demonstrated that sufficient, relevant, qualified Minority Business Enterprises . . . are unavailable or unwilling to participate in the contract to enable meeting the 30% MBE goal." ¶ D, Record, Exh. 24, p. 1; see J.A. Croson Co. v. Richmond, 779 F.2d 181, 197 (CA4 1985) (Croson I).
"Unlike the review we make of a lower court decision, our task is not to determine if there was sufficient evidence to sustain the council majority's position in any traditional sense of weighing the evidence. Rather, it is to determine whether 'the legislative history . . . demonstrates that [the council] reasonably concluded that . . . private and governmental discrimination had contributed to the negligible percentage of public contracts awarded minority contractors.' " 779 F.2d, at 190 (quoting Fullilove, supra, 448 U.S., at 503, 100 S.Ct., at 2787 (Powell, J., concurring)).
On remand, a divided panel of the Court of Appeals struck down the Richmond set-aside program as violating both prongs of strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. J.A. Croson Co. v. Richmond, 822 F.2d 1355 (CA4 1987) (Croson II). The majority found that the "core" of this Court's holding in Wygant was that, "[t]o show that a plan is justified by a compelling governmental interest, a municipality that wishes to employ a racial preference cannot rest on broad-brush assumptions of historical discrimination." 822 F.2d, at 1357. As the court read this requirement, "[f]indings of societal discrimination will not suffice; the findings must concern 'prior discrimination by the government unit involved.' " Id., at 1358 (quoting Wygant, supra, 476 U.S., at 274, 106 S.Ct., at 1847) (emphasis in original).
In this case, the debate at the city council meeting "revealed no record of prior discrimination by the city in awarding public contracts. . . ." Croson II, supra, at 1358. Moreover, the statistics comparing the minority population of Richmond to the percentage of prime contracts awarded to minority firms had little or no probative value in establishing prior discrimination in the relevant market, and actually suggested "more of a political than a remedial basis for the racial preference." 822 F.2d, at 1359. The court concluded that, "[i]f this plan is supported by a compelling governmental interest, so is every other plan that has been enacted in the past or that will be enacted in the future." Id., at 1360.
In Fullilove, we upheld the minority set-aside contained in § 103(f)(2) of the Public Works Employment Act of 1977, Pub.L. 95-28, 91 Stat. 116, 42 U.S.C. § 6701 et seq. (Act) against a challenge based on the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause. The Act authorized a $4 billion appropriation for federal grants to state and local governments for use in public works projects. The primary purpose of the Act was to give the national economy a quick boost in a recessionary period; funds had to be committed to state or local grantees by September 30, 1977. The Act also contained the following requirement: " 'Except to the extent the Secretary determines otherwise, no grant shall be made under this Act . . . unless the applicant gives satisfactory assurance to the Secretary that at least 10 per centum of the amount of each grant shall be expended for minority business enterprises.' " Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 454, 100 S.Ct., at 2762 (quoting 91 Stat. 116, 42 U.S.C. § 6705(f)(2)). MBE's were defined as businesses effectively controlled by "citizens of the United States who are Negroes, Spanish-speaking, Orientals, Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts." Ibid.
The principal opinion in Fullilove, written by Chief Justice Burger, did not employ "strict scrutiny" or any other traditional standard of equal protection review. The Chief Justice noted at the outset that although racial classifications call for close examination, the Court was at the same time "bound to approach [its] task with appropriate deference to the Congress, a co-equal branch charged by the Constitution with the power to 'provide for the . . . general Welfare of the United States' and 'to enforce by appropriate legislation,' the equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment." 448 U.S., at 472, 100 S.Ct., at 2771. The principal opinion asked two questions: first, were the objectives of the legislation within the power of Congress? Second, was the limited use of racial and ethnic criteria a permissible means for Congress to carry out its objectives within the constraints of the Due Process Clause? Id., at 473, 100 S.Ct., at 2772.
"Here we deal . . . not with the limited remedial powers of a federal court, for example, but with the broad remedial powers of Congress. It is fundamental that in no organ of government, state or federal, does there repose a more comprehensive remedial power than in the Congress, expressly charged by the Constitution with competence and authority to enforce equal protection guarantees." 448 U.S., at 483, 100 S.Ct., at 2777 (principal opinion) (emphasis added).
That Congress may identify and redress the effects of society-wide discrimination does not mean that, a fortiori, the States and their political subdivisions are free to decide that such remedies are appropriate. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment is an explicit constraint on state power, and the States must undertake any remedial efforts in accordance with that provision. To hold otherwise would be to cede control over the content of the Equal Protection Clause to the 50 state legislatures and their myriad political subdivisions. The mere recitation of a benign or compensatory purpose for the use of a racial classification would essentially entitle the States to exercise the full power of Congress under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and insulate any racial classification from judicial scrutiny under § 1. We believe that such a result would be contrary to the intentions of the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, who desired to place clear limits on the States' use of race as a criterion for legislative action, and to have the federal courts enforce those limitations. See Associated General Contractors of Cal. v. City and Cty. of San Francisco, 813 F.2d, at 929 (Kozinski, J.) ("The city is not just like the federal government with regard to the findings it must make to justify race-conscious remedial action"); see also Days, Fullilove, 96 Yale L.J. 453, 474 (1987) (hereinafter Days) ("Fullilove clearly focused on the constitutionality of a congressionally mandated set-aside program") (emphasis in original); Bohrer, Bakke, Weber, and Fullilove: Benign Discrimination and Congressional Power to Enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, 56 Ind. L.J. 473, 512-513 (1981) ("Congress may authorize, pursuant to section 5, state action that would be foreclosed to the states acting alone").
It would seem equally clear, however, that a state or local subdivision (if delegated the authority from the State) has the authority to eradicate the effects of private discrimination within its own legislative jurisdiction.2 This authority must, of course, be exercised within the constraints of § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Our decision in Wygant is not to the contrary. Wygant addressed the constitutionality of the use of racial quotas by local school authorities pursuant to an agreement reached with the local teachers' union. It was in the context of addressing the school board's power to adopt a race-based layoff program affecting its own work force that the Wygant plurality indicated that the Equal Protection Clause required "some showing of prior discrimination by the governmental unit involved." Wygant, 476 U.S., at 274, 106 S.Ct., at 1847. As a matter of state law, the city of Richmond has legislative authority over its procurement policies, and can use its spending powers to remedy private discrimination, if it identifies that discrimination with the particularity required by the Fourteenth Amendment. To this extent, on the question of the city's competence, the Court of Appeals erred in following Wygant by rote in a case involving a state entity which has state-law authority to address discriminatory practices within local commerce under its jurisdiction.
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "[n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." (Emphasis added.) As this Court has noted in the past, the "rights created by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment are, by its terms, guaranteed to the individual. The rights established are personal rights." Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 22, 68 S.Ct. 836, 846, 92 L.Ed. 1161 (1948). The Richmond Plan denies certain citizens the opportunity to compete for a fixed percentage of public contracts based solely upon their race. To whatever racial group these citizens belong, their "personal rights" to be treated with equal dignity and respect are implicated by a rigid rule erecting race as the sole criterion in an aspect of public decisionmaking.
The role model theory employed by the lower courts failed for two reasons. First, the statistical disparity between students and teachers had no probative value in demonstrating the kind of prior discrimination in hiring or promotion that would justify race-based relief. 476 U.S., at 276, 106 S.Ct., at 1848; see also id., at 294, 106 S.Ct., at 1857 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) ("The disparity between the percentage of minorities on the teaching staff and the percentage of minorities in the student body is not probative of employment discrimination"). Second, because the role model theory had no relation to some basis for believing a constitutional or statutory violation had occurre