Opinion ID: 3040944
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Second and Third Gingles Preconditions

Text: Gingles’s second precondition required Bone Shirt to show that Indians are politically cohesive. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 51. “A showing that a significant number of minority group members usually vote for the same candidates is one way of proving the political cohesiveness necessary to a vote dilution claim, and, consequently, establishes minority bloc voting within the context of § 2.” Id.(internal citation omitted). The third Gingles precondition requires a plaintiff to demonstrate that “the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it—in the absence of special circumstances, such as the minority candidate running unopposed—usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Gingles, 478 U.S. at 51 (internal citation omitted). Much of the argument before the district court and in this Court addressed whether the statistical methods employed by Bone Shirt’s expert, Dr. Steven Cole, were sufficiently reliable. Cole employed bivariate ecological regression analysis (“BERA”) and homogenous precinct analysis (“HPA”). The State’s expert, Dr. Zax, employed ecological inference (“EI”) or “King’s Method.” Using BERA and HPA, Cole determined that Indian voters are highly cohesive; that is, Indians tend to vote for the same candidates. The district court accepted Cole’s BERA-based statistical analysis, even though “Cole admitted that [his] equation contains an error [and that] -18- the effect of that error is unknown.” 336 F. Supp. 2d at 1001-02. The Court points out that BERA has “long been accepted” by the courts. Ante at 9-10. I find it difficult to rely upon a statistical method that incorporates an admittedly erroneous equation that yields a result with an error of unknown quantity and effect. Daubert specifically requires a district court to consider “the known or potential rate of error” of the scientific method utilized by testifying experts. 509 U.S. at 594. It is difficult to weigh this factor in Daubert’s analysis if “the effect of that error is unknown.” 336 F. Supp. 2d at 1002. Nor am I persuaded that previous acceptance of BERA results permanently decides the matter. Science evolves, and scientific methods that were once considered unassailable truths have been discarded over time. Unreliable testimony based upon those outdated theories and methods must be discarded as well, lest scientific stare decisis ensure that such theories survive only in court. It may be that the validity of some scientific methods need not be constantly reestablished in case after case, but a statistical method that contains an apparently unquantified error would not be one of them. If Cole’s BERA-based testimony were the only basis for the district court’s opinion, I would likely hold that its conclusions were unsupported by competent evidence. Nevertheless, I do not find that the district court clearly erred when it found that Indians vote sufficiently cohesively and the white majority voted as a bloc to usually defeat the minority preferred candidate (“MPC”), thereby establishing the second and third Gingles preconditions. As the district court correctly noted, “all three methods employed by the parties’ experts in this case generate sufficiently similar results.” Id. at 1004. In other words, Cole’s BERA and HPA-based results and Zax’s EI-based results are substantially similar. While the State contends that this is not the case, the analysis it presents in its brief is based upon a misunderstanding of the proper approach to the issue. -19- First, the State’s expert used an approach that conflates the second and third Gingles preconditions. According to the State’s brief, “dilution may be found when there is first, racial polarization and, second, in a case in which there is racial polarization, the minority candidate loses.” The State further refines its approach by arguing that a particular race does not qualify as “polarized” unless at least 60 percent of Indians voted for the MPC and at least 60 percent of the white majority voted against him. But there is no support for this approach, as no Gingles precondition asks whether the white majority is also cohesive. To the contrary, the questions under Gingles’s second and third preconditions are whether the minority votes cohesively and whether “the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc” in most elections to defeat the candidate that the cohesive minority population prefers. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 51. Nothing in the case law prescribes that the white majority bloc must be of a certain size beyond the requirement that the bloc be large enough to defeat the MPC. As such, Dr. Zax’s assumption that only races where at least 60 percent of the white majority votes for the same candidate improperly skews his results. Second, the State diluted the proper analysis by relying heavily upon election results in races in other districts and for other offices, known as exogenous elections. As we have held previously, endogenous results are preferable to exogenous ones. Cottier, 445 F.3d at 1121. Moreover, the district court clearly found that endogenous results were preferable to exogenous results, and the State did not attack that finding in its appeal. The State also relied heavily upon results from District 27 when arguing that the white majority does not usually defeat the MPC. But it is hardly shocking that the white population usually cannot vote as a bloc sufficient to defeat the MPC in District 27—a district created to ensure that Indians could elect their MPC and where Indians enjoy a large supermajority. Contrary to the State’s argument, the precedent addressing this issue makes clear that courts must focus on election results from the -20- majority-white district. See, e.g., Gingles, 478 U.S. at 51 (holding that the minority proves the third precondition by showing that “submergence in a white multimember district impedes its ability to elect its chosen representatives” because the district’s “white majority” votes sufficiently as a bloc) (emphases added); see also League of United Latin Amer. Citizens, 126 S. Ct. at 2616 (“The Court has rejected the premise that a State can always make up for the less-than-equal opportunity of some individuals by providing greater opportunity to others.”); De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1003-04 (holding that the third precondition was satisfied by “a tendency of nonHispanic whites to vote as a bloc to bar minority groups from electing their chosen candidates except in a district where a given minority makes up a voting majority”) (emphasis added). If the State’s approach were correct, packing would be both the problem and the solution—i.e., having illegally packed Indians into one district, the State could then point out that Indians are sometimes able to elect their preferred candidate in the packed district. See Old Person, 230 F.3d at 1122 (noting that this approach “would permit white bloc voting in a majority-white district to be washed clean by electoral success in neighboring majority-Indian districts”). As the case law illustrates, the State’s approach to the issue is inappropriate. In this case, then, the elections that speak to this critical issue are those in District 26, the “white majority” district in question. And, at bottom, when analyzed under the proper framework, both experts’ analyses using all three methods—BERA, HPA and EI—support the conclusion that the Indians vote cohesively in that district and that the white majority usually votes as a bloc to defeat the MPC. As such, the district court did not clearly err when it held that the second and third Gingles preconditions had been met. -21-