Opinion ID: 727396
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Shaw II

Text: 92 and Bush 93 In its conclusion, the district court characterized plaintiffs' § 2 claim, [a]s a practical political matter, an effort to segregate political districts by race [which] can only serve to deepen racial divisions by destroying any need for voters or candidates to build bridges between racial groups or to form voting coalitions. 861 F.Supp. at 1531 (citing Holder v. Hall, 512 U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2599 (Thomas, J., concurring) (size of voting district does not violate § 2)). The Plaintiffs would have the court assume 'that members of the racial group must think alike and that their interests are so distinct that the group must be provided a separate body of representatives in the legislature to voice its unique point of view.'  Id. (quoting Holder, 512 U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2599). Surely, all voting rights cases are premised on minority status and, necessarily, seek some special treatment of minority voters shown to have been denied that guarantee. Eliminating poll taxes, literacy tests, and multimember districting schemes which submerged minority voters in majority populations perhaps were the easier remedies. In this new round, the challenge has turned to single member districts drawn to remedy minority vote dilution which ostensibly balkanize minority and majority populations in alleged violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. 94 At this point, we must digress from the immediate resolution of this case to the Supreme Court's most recent guidance to address two of the district court's concerns and preempt the argument, based on these recent cases, that any remedy here may unwittingly violate the Equal Protection Clause. Despite this apparent detour, we shall return to the substance of plaintiffs' claim: a fair opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. 95 On the one hand, adherence to Gingles to remedy violations of § 2 necessarily implicates race. On the other hand, how closely that remedy comes to triggering the Court's equal protection angst seems to arise when a constitutional line is drawn at cartographic departures from 'traditional districting principles.'  S. Issacharoff, The Constitutional Contours of Race and Politics, 1995 S.Ct. Rev. 45, 47 (1996). The latest round of Supreme Court cases from Miller v. Johnson, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 2475, 132 L.Ed.2d 762 (1995), to Shaw I, Shaw II, and Bush scrutinizes these outer limits of race-based districts where § 5 of the VRA mandated a cure which the Court then found violated the Equal Protection Clause. Upon this new terrain, Gingles retains viability to determine the § 2 violation, but, once found, Shaw II and Bush teach us that race cannot override all other traditional districting principles any more than reasonably necessary to remedy the violation. 96 In each of the recent cases, the proposed district's bizarre shape triggered strict scrutiny, unmistakably suggesting that race was the legislature's predominant consideration in redistricting. Miller, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2488. In Miller, the newly created Eleventh District was geographically a monstrosity, stretching from Atlanta to Savannah. --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2484. However, [s]hape is relevant not because bizarreness is a necessary element of the constitutional wrong or threshold requirement of proof, but because it may be persuasive circumstantial evidence that race for its own sake, and not other districting principles, was the legislature's dominant and controlling rationale in drawing its district lines. Id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2486. Consequently, to satisfy the strict scrutiny the Eleventh District triggered, the Court held, the State must demonstrate that its districting legislation is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest. Id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2490. Miller left open the question whether compliance with the VRA, standing alone, can provide a compelling interest independent of any interest in remedying past discrimination. Id. at ---- - ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2490-91. However, under a correct reading of the statute, id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2491, the proposed district was not required. 97 Bush answered the question left open in Miller. In her separate concurrence, in which four Justices joined, Justice O'Connor announced, compliance with the results test of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is a compelling state interest. --- U.S. at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 1968. As we noted, in Colorado, compliance with the VRA falls second only to the one person, one vote requirement and precedes all traditional districting concerns. Consequently, if a § 2 violation is found, Colorado has a compelling state interest in seeking a remedy tailored by its traditional districting principles. 98 It is now a given that shape triggers strict scrutiny, and in this case the State argued, and the district court agreed, plaintiffs' proposed alternative district was not geographically compact. In a vote dilution case, once plaintiffs have established the second and third Gingles' preconditions, the Gingles' compactness requirement is the entry into the narrow tailoring question. If the state has a compelling interest in avoiding § 2 liability and if the minority population is concentrated enough to form a majority-minority district, the state must tailor its districts narrowly to serve that interest. Id. at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 1971 (Kennedy, J., concurring). Although Justice O'Connor concluded § 2 does not require a non-compact majority-minority district, Justice Kennedy observed, neither does [ § 2] forbid it, provided that the rationale for creating it is proper in the first instance. Districts not drawn for impermissible reasons or according to impermissible criteria may take any shape, even a bizarre one. Id. at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 1972. 99 Justice O'Connor clarified the contours of proof necessary for a state to have a compelling interest in remedying discrimination under § 2. Two conditions, Justice O'Connor wrote, must be satisfied: First, the discrimination that the State seeks to remedy must be specific, identified discrimination; second, the State must have had a strong basis in evidence to conclude that remedial action was necessary, before it embarks on an affirmative action program. Id. at ---- - ----, 116 S.Ct. at 1962-63 (citation omitted) (internal quotations omitted). For purposes of proof, Justice O'Connor accepted as valid a claim of vote dilution caused by racial bloc voting for the state's § 2 compliance defense. Id. 100 The factual predicates for these recent cases cannot be ignored. In each challenged district, voters were grouped solely on the basis of race, even when the district didn't address the precise violation found, Shaw II, when geographical and political boundaries were ignored, Shaw II (district followed interstate highway); and Bush (district fragmented precincts and neighborhoods). In each instance, the individuals were selected solely on the basis of their race, raising the specter of a new genre of political apartheid. 40 In our case, plaintiffs' proposed alternative district attempted to bring together Hispanic voters who also live in geographically connected areas that share the same agricultural and rural communities of interest, along with various socioeconomic concerns. Thus, although race figures in the configuration of the proposed alternative Hispanic majority district, it is not in substantial disregard of customary and traditional districting practices. Miller, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2497 (O'Connor, J., concurring). Moreover, Justice O'Connor acknowledged the nature of the expressive harms with which we are dealing, and the complexity of the districting process, are such that bright-line rules are not available. Bush, --- U.S. at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 1964. 101 Miller and its progeny, thus, offer a solution for remedying a found violation. Four principles emerge from these cases which sharpen the focus on the existing alleged violation. First, redistricting in which racial concerns predominate, done even for remedial purposes, is subject to strict scrutiny. Second, compliance with § 2 of the VRA constitutes a compelling governmental interest. Third, the discrimination the state seeks to remedy must be specific. Fourth, the state must have a strong basis in evidence to conclude the Gingles ' preconditions exist to justify the redistricting as reasonably necessary to comply with § 2. Fifth, states may intentionally create majority-minority districts and otherwise take race into consideration without coming under strict scrutiny so long as traditional districting criteria are not subordinated. Id. at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 1969. 102 In response to our order to the parties to address these latest cases, plaintiffs rely upon Justice Kennedy's statement the compactness requirement refers to the compactness of the minority population, not to the compactness of the contested district. Id. at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 1971. Plaintiffs urge the distinction was lost on the district court which superimposed the shape of the proposed alternative district exclusively and ignored the size and compactness of the Hispanic population in south central Colorado. Plaintiffs insist the Bush plurality would permit even a bizarrely shaped district that is narrowly tailored to fit the found VRA violation. The State reads these recent cases to underline the correctness of the district court's order. 103 As we earlier discussed, the district court's definition of geographically compact was too limited and did not incorporate the notion of compactness of the minority population itself, not simply the area enclosing them. Second, in deciding whether any remedy was available, the district court diffused the compactness inquiry with concerns over impacting adjacent districts. While it cannot be gainsaid that increasing the minority population in one area will necessarily extract minority population from another, without this phenomenon, no majority-[minority] districts would ever be created. Clark, 21 F.3d at 95; Houston v. Lafayette County, Miss., 56 F.3d at 610-11. In fact, no county in south central Colorado including the Valley, Pueblo, and Trinidad, emerged after the 1992 redistricting with an Hispanic voting age majority population. 41 In any event, the concern is better addressed to the remedial phase of this litigation in which the State must have the first opportunity to draw HD 60. 104 Again, because plaintiffs sought only to establish the possibility of an alternative district, we do not linger on its specifics, the counties and cities it splits, or the mathematical scores it generates. Districting plans are integrated bundles of compromises, deals, and principles ... representing an array of values, some relatively neutral, some intensely partisan. Expressive Harms, 585. At this stage, it remains academic to compare the proposed alternative to other oddly shaped or unusually large districts in Colorado. Suffice we recognize the proposed alternative evidences none of the extreme bizarreness of any of the districts that offended the Court and leave the drawing of boundaries to the area of politics in which it belongs.