Opinion ID: 3159024
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Challenge to the Merits

Text: The voters also contend the court rested its finding that their case ceased to be meritorious after June 25 on a legally erroneous interpretation of their Voting Rights Act and one-person-one-vote claims. We disagree. We begin with the Voting Rights Act claim. The Supreme Court, in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 50–51 (1986), established a three-part prima facie framework for a vote-dilution claim under Section Two of the Act. First, plaintiffs must prove their minority group is “sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.” Sanchez v. State of Colo., 97 F.3d 1303, 1310 (10th Cir. 1996). Second, they must show “the minority group is politically cohesive.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Third, they must show “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.” Id. These factors are necessary, but not sufficient, to establish a vote-dilution claim. In selecting June 25 as the “magic date,” the district court concluded that the voters’ experts never established the Gingles factors, and that Mr. Sanderoff’s report simply confirmed that failure. The Mayor does not dispute that the voters’ expert Dr. Lonna Rae Atkeson purported to identify racially polarized voting. See App. 128 (Dr. Atkeson asserting that “the evidence is clear that racially polarized -20- voting is present,” which she concluded was “indicative of the need for majorityminority districts within the city to provide minorities an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice”). The first Gingles prong is not contested; the question is whether Dr. Atkeson’s testimony sufficed to establish the last two prongs. The voters correctly emphasize that the second and third Gingles factors can be addressed “conjunctive[ly].” Sanchez, 97 F.3d at 1315. But that does not tell us whether Dr. Atkeson actually addressed those factors. The voters breeze over this point, assuming that asserting the existence of racially polarized voting is sufficient shorthand for asserting the final two Gingles factors. That assumption is incorrect. Dr. Atkeson made two statements: (1) an assertion that racially polarized voting exists; and (2) an “assertion” that was really plaintiffs’ desired conclusion in disguise—i.e., that Latinos were being deprived of an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. This does not satisfy Gingles, because it ignores entirely whether the white majority was actually voting as a bloc to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate. That omission is perhaps unsurprising in light of Mr. Sanderoff’s finding that in every election selected by Dr. Atkeson “in which . . . Hispanic voters had a preferred candidate,” it turns out “the preferred candidate of the Hispanic population won the election.” App. 70; see also id. at 470 (testimony at sanctions hearing reiterating this deficiency in Dr. Atkeson’s report). -21- Put another way, the district court only erred if a general assertion that racially polarized voting exists suffices to satisfy Gingles’s third prong. The voters provide no cases for that proposition, and we doubt they could. Consider a case where racially polarized voting exists, but a minority is nevertheless electing candidates of its choice. In that case, the requirement that the white majority votes as a bloc to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate would be unsatisfied. While racially polarized voting is necessary to satisfy the third prong, it is not sufficient. We indicated as much in Sanchez, where, albeit in our discussion of the first prong, we noted that “part of the Gingles threshold inquiry” is whether the district court “can fashion a permissible remedy in the particular context of the challenged system.” Sanchez, 97 F.3d at 1311. Naturally, there is no remedy to fashion if a minority group is not actually prevented from electing candidates of choice. Contrary to the voters’ framing of the issue, the problem was not that their experts collapsed the second and third Gingles prongs. The problem was that their experts entirely failed to address whether the white majority was actually voting as a bloc to defeat minority-preferred candidates. It was not error to find this was a fatal flaw in the experts’ analysis. And it was not error to treat Mr. Sanderoff’s report as the final straw, because the report revealed why the flaw was there—minority-preferred candidates had won every one of the plaintiffs’ exemplar races. -22- In sum, it was insufficient for Dr. Atkeson to simply nod to the desired conclusion by claiming racially polarized voting showed Latinos needed the ability to elect candidates of their choice without asserting the existence of a necessary premise: that the white majority was actually voting as a bloc to defeat the minority’s preferred candidates. Because the voters never even attempted to assert that necessary premise, there was no Gingles-related legal error. 12 We turn next to the voters’ assertion that the district court erred in finding their one-person-one-vote claim lacked merit. At the outset, both parties treat a district court case summarily affirmed by the Supreme Court, Larios v. Cox, 300 F. Supp. 2d 1320 (N.D. Ga. 2004), summarily aff’d, 542 U.S. 947 (2004), as if it were binding law. Of course, summary affirmances have limited precedential value. See Plowman v. Massad, 61 F.3d 796, 799 n.1 (10th Cir. 1995) (noting that “the precedential effect of a summary affirmance extends no further than the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions” (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 784 n.5 12 The voters also attack the court’s Gingles conclusion on the grounds that the court erroneously based its decision on the fact that “the challenged map resulted in five of the [city’s] nine districts being majority-minority.” 1st Cx-App Br. at 42. That reads too much into the order. To be sure, the court juxtaposed that observation about the number of majority-minority districts with the claim that the plan disadvantaged minority voters. But this was merely a general observation about the factual context of the case, not a reason for rejecting the Gingles claim. It is wrong to assert, as the voters do, that the court found the Gingles claim meritless “because several majority-minority districts were present.” Id. at 43 (emphasis added). That conclusion flowed from the failure of their experts to even attempt to satisfy Gingles’s third prong. -23- (1983)). Thus, the particularities of Larios’s holding that certain Georgia reapportionment plans violated one-person-one-vote principles, see Larios, 300 F. Supp. 2d at 1357–58, have little to say to our inquiry in this case. The question is not whether that district court’s reasoning could support a one-person-one-vote claim here, but whether the court erred in determining such a claim was untenable under governing precedent. It is difficult to discern the contours of the voters’ position under relevant law, particularly when they focus single-mindedly on the “merit [of their claims] under Larios,” 1st Cx-App. Br. at 40. Read most charitably, they appear to be claiming they made a meritorious one-person-one-vote claim attacking the constitutionality of voter-population deviations of plus or minus 5% in Albuquerque’s plan. 13 But their opening brief identifies no Tenth Circuit or Supreme Court cases showing the district court necessarily erred in finding their claim, so construed, lacked merit. 14 In fact, the extent of their analysis is that the 13 The Mayor denies the population deviation was even that high. Because we conclude the voters waived this argument, we do not reach that point. 14 Although we hold the argument waived on the basis of an insufficient opening brief on appeal, we perhaps could have held it was forfeited below because it was not made there—at least, not in the form it takes now. The voters certainly made no such argument in their filings opposing sanctions. And, at the hearing, their argument was again based on nothing but Larios and appeared to be that Albuquerque needed to justify any deviation above zero. See, e.g., App. 453 (asking Mayor’s expert whether “the Supreme Court case” [sic] of “Cox v. Larios” “mandat[ed] that deviation needs to be taken down to zero unless you can articulate why you could not do that”). Of course, the Supreme Court’s summary (continued...) -24- constitutionality of such deviations was a question “left open by Larios.” 1st CxApp. Br. at 41. Again, it is irrelevant whether the Northern District of Georgia opined on that point. The question is whether such an attack could be or was grounded in law we must follow. The law with which the voters must grapple to show their claim was colorable is well established. An “apportionment plan with a maximum population deviation [from ideal district size] under 10% falls within” the “category of minor deviations” that are “insufficient to make out a prima facie case of invidious discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment so as to require justification by the State.” Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 161 (1993); see also White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755, 764 (1973) (observing “relatively minor population deviations” under 10% and noting plaintiffs were thus unable to establish a violation “from population variations alone”). The upshot is that such minor population deviations are “presumed to be constitutionally valid”—i.e., 14 (...continued) affirmance in Larios “mandated” no universal principles, and the cases squarely reject the proposition that Albuquerque needed to justify any deviation above zero. See Ala. Black Legis. Caucus v. Alabama, 135 S. Ct. 1257, 1263 (2015) (noting a state plan that attempted to avoid deviating from the ideal “by more than 1%” pursued “a more rigorous deviation standard than our precedents have found necessary under the Constitution”); see also Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 161 (1993); White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755, 764 (1973). Moreover, the voters only touched on this point in questions to the Mayor’s expert; we detect no clear one-person-one-vote arguments in their actual oral argument. To now argue their claim was meritorious because it attacked the constitutionality of 5% deviations may be a stretch. Because we conclude the point was in any event waived in the opening brief, we need not decide this question. -25- more than deviation is needed in such cases. League of Women Voters v. City of Chi., 757 F.3d 722, 725 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 688 (2014). The voters never address these cases or identify any statements by this court or the Supreme Court contradicting these principles. More importantly, they identify no facts or law supporting an argument that the presumption was rebutted (or even rebuttable) on the facts of this case. Nor did they below, which is a significant omission in light of the assertion in Mr. Sanderoff’s report that all districts were within 5% of ideal district size. Finally, as the Supreme Court recently reiterated, a 5% deviation is generally permissible in these cases. Ala. Legis. Black Caucus v. Alabama, 135 S. Ct. 1257, 1263 (2015). A bare statement that someone could have made an argument is not enough. “[C]ursory statements, without supporting analysis and case law, fail to constitute the kind of briefing that is necessary to avoid application of the forfeiture doctrine.” Bronson v. Swensen, 500 F.3d 1099, 1105 (10th Cir. 2007); Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 679 (10th Cir. 1998) (“Arguments inadequately briefed in the opening brief are waived . . . .”). Because the voters identify no grounds on which we could rest a conclusion that the district court’s decision departed from governing law, we consider this argument waived. Underlying all these arguments is the voters’ claim that, if they had not chosen to seek dismissal without prejudice, they may have been able to supplement their expert reports or depose Mr. Sanderoff at a later date. Their -26- point seems to be this could have allowed them to build a counterargument to his assertions about the merit of their claims. But what they could have done is largely beside the point, given their failure, even after realizing sanctions were a possibility, to combat those assertions in any convincing way. 15 Mr. Sanderoff’s report purported to show fatal flaws in the case in June 2013. The question here is whether, when the court considered imposing sanctions in August 2014, it had any reason to doubt those flaws existed. If anything, the voters’ failure to take further steps they now highlight as available to them might cut in favor of the court’s ultimate finding that the case became meritless on June 25, 2013. After all, Mr. Sanderoff’s report claimed to identify holes in the voters’ theory; declining to take an opportunity to combat the report could support a negative inference about the quality of that theory. In short, nothing in the record or in the briefing convinces us the court rested its decision on any legal error.