Opinion ID: 764830
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: 3 In August of 1988, plaintiffs Dorothy Goosby and Samuel Prioleau brought a class action alleging that the at-large voting method adopted for the election of members to the Town Board violated their rights under the First, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1973. The district court certified a class that included [a]ll present and/or potentially eligible Black voters residing in the Town of Hempstead. 2 The plaintiffs alleged that the at-large method diluted and submerged their voting strength into the white majority, thereby effectively ensuring that they would not be fairly represented on the Town Board. 4 Following discovery, the Town Board moved for summary judgment, arguing that plaintiffs could not demonstrate legally significant white majority bloc voting, an essential precondition for a successful section 2 claim under Thornburgh v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 50-51, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986). The Town Board argued that, because Republican Party affiliation was the determinant of electoral success in Town-wide elections, the bloc voting that plaintiffs had demonstrated was along partisan, not racial, lines. The majority bloc that consistently defeated the typically Democratic candidates of choice of the black population was therefore not a white majority bloc but simply a Republican one. The district court denied the motion for summary judgment after concluding that the resolution of this issue depended on material issues of fact to be determined at trial. 5 In July and August of 1996, the district court conducted a bench trial at which it heard testimony from fact and expert witnesses produced by each side and received in evidence documents produced by each side. In February of 1997, the district court entered comprehensive Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in an opinion that first analyzed whether the at-large election method for Town Board members violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act under the framework of Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50-51. 6 The district court found that the plaintiffs had satisfied the first two Gingles preconditions, that the minority group [is] sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a hypothetical single-member district, and that black voters in the Town are politically cohesive. Goosby v. Town Bd. of the Town of Hempstead, 956 F.Supp. 326, 348, 350 (E.D.N.Y.1997) (Goosby I ) (citing Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50). 7 In addressing the third Gingles precondition, the district court determined that there was legally significant white bloc voting such that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the minority-preferred candidate. Id. at 350 (citing Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50-51). Relying on our holding in NAACP, Inc. v. City of Niagara Falls, NY, 65 F.3d 1002, 1019 (2d Cir.1995), the district court noted that there had been, in almost every election, a most preferred candidate among black voters. See Goosby I, 956 F.Supp. at 351. This most preferred candidate always lost as a result of white voters voting for another candidate. See id. Having found, through a review of statistical evidence, that there was a persistent pattern of racially polarized voting, the district court concluded that this [wa]s sufficient to satisfy the third Gingles precondition. Id. In so doing, the district court implicitly rejected the Town Board's contention that the strong correlation between race and partisan-based voting precluded it from finding legally significant white bloc voting unless it first found that partisan politics was a proxy for racial animus in the Town. The district court instead addressed the evidence of partisanship under the totality of the circumstances analysis. See id. at 353-55. 8 The district court then noted that the satisfaction of the Gingles preconditions was not in itself sufficient to establish a violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. See id. at 351. Accordingly, it proceeded to evaluate whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the at-large method of electing Town Board members impair[ed] the ability of black voters to participate equally in the political process and elect candidates of their choice. Id. at 351. As a guide to this inquiry, the district court used the factors outlined in the Senate Judiciary Committee Report accompanying the passage of the 1982 Amendment to section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (the Senate Report). 9 The district court proceeded to address and make factual findings regarding the history of discrimination in the Town and other factors concerning the voting power of black voters in the Town. It reviewed the record to make findings addressing electoral mechanisms that enhance vote dilution, the dearth of black candidates elected to the Town Board, the Board's lack of responsiveness to the concerns of the black communities, the inaccessibility to blacks of the Republican Party slating process, evidence of subtle racial appeals in campaigns for Town Board and the justifications offered for retaining the at-large system. See id. at 337-48. 10 The district court then addressed and rejected the Town Board's contentions that partisan affiliation, not race, best explains the divergent voting patterns among black and white voters in the Town. Id. at 353. It rejected the Town Board's argument that the correlation between race and partisanship created a presumption that partisanship was the controlling factor and the further argument that plaintiffs must establish that racial bias infected the voting community to rebut this presumption. See id. Instead, the district court found that the correlation between race and partisanship was not dispositive but simply among the many factors to be considered under the totality of the circumstances analysis. Id. In light of all the surrounding circumstances, the district court found that the divergent voting patterns were better explained by race than by partisanship. See id. at 355. 11 The district court concluded that the at-large system employed for Town Board elections operated to invidiously exclude blacks from political life in violation of Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act of 1965]. Id. at 356. The court then ordered the Town to submit a remedial plan that divides the Town into six single-member districts. Id. 12 In May of 1997, the Town Board submitted two redistricting proposals. The Town Board's favored plan was a two-district system, with one single-member district encompassing the majority of the Town's black population and approximately one-sixth of the Town's total population, and a second five-member district including the remaining five-sixths of the Town's population. The Town Board's alternative plan consisted of six single-member districts, one of which was the same majority black district advanced under the first plan. 13 The district court determined that the two-district plan violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it was a race-based plan that was not narrowly tailored to remedy the section 2 violation. See Goosby v. Town Bd. of the Town of Hempstead, 981 F.Supp. 751, 761 (E.D.N.Y.1997) (Goosby II ). The court found that the six-district plan, however, was not predominantly motivated by race and that even if it were, it was narrowly tailored to remedy the section 2 violation. See id. at 761-62. The district court ordered that the six-district plan be implemented by the Town Board but stayed the implementation pending appeal. 3 See id. at 763. 14 The Town Board now appeals, arguing that the district court erred in finding legally significant white bloc voting as opposed to merely Republican Party bloc voting and in its determination that the proposed two-district plan was unconstitutional.