Opinion ID: 4510976
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Valenti v. Rockefeller

Text: On June 5, 1968, U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Pursuant to thenapplicable New York law, the vacancy created by Senator Kennedy’s assassination occurred too close to that year’s Senate primaries to let the people of New York fill the vacancy by election in November 1968. 292 F. Supp. at 853. Instead, the law permitted the vacant seat to go unfilled by popular election until November 1970—an interval of 29 months. See id. Multiple plaintiffs challenged New York’s Senate vacancy statute and moved for an injunction ordering New York to hold a vacancy election in November 1968— i.e., five months from when the vacancy occurred. Id. In Valenti, a divided three-judge district court 37 dismissed the complaints. Id. 37 At the time of Valenti, Congress required that any case seeking an injunction against a state officer to prevent enforcement of an allegedly unconstitutional state statute be heard by a special three-judge district court. 28 U.S.C. § 2281 (1964) (repealed 1976). One member of the specially constituted court had to be a circuit judge. Id. § 2284(1). The decision of the three-judge court was directly appealable to the Supreme Court. Id. § 1253. See generally 17A Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Vikram David Amar, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4234 (3d ed., Aug. 2019 update) (tracing history of the three-judge district court from Congress’s reaction to Ex Parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), TEDARDS V. DUCEY 43 All three judges on the panel agreed that the final words of the proviso (“as the legislature may direct”) grants “some reasonable degree of discretion” to state legislatures to determine the timing of a Senate vacancy election. Id. at 856; id. at 884 (Frankel, J., dissenting). They also all agreed that the word “temporary” could not “faithfully be read to allow appointments for anything approaching the full six years in the case of a vacancy occurring early in the term.” Id. at 881. They nevertheless disagreed regarding the outer boundaries of the State’s discretion, as well as regarding what evidence is relevant to answer that question. Writing for the majority, Second Circuit Chief Judge Lumbard 38 divided the relevant inquiry into two parts: (1) whether the Seventeenth Amendment permitted New York to skip the upcoming election—i.e., November 1968—and (2) whether the Seventeenth Amendment permitted New York to skip the next odd-year election—i.e., November 1969. See id. at 855 (majority opinion). He answered both questions in the affirmative. As to the first, he emphasized the State’s interest in holding primary elections, which he implied outweighed the people’s interest in a prompt special election. Id.; see also id. at 861–62 (emphasizing the virtues of primary elections). As to the second, he focused on the probative value of state statutes enacted shortly after the Seventeenth Amendment’s ratification, as we discussed above. Id. at 856–59. He also posited three “substantial state interests” as justifying a generous interpretation of the discretion the Amendment grants to state legislatures: to the Supreme Court’s frustration with the practice peaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to the “virtual abolition” of the practice in 1976). 38 Chief Judge Lumbard was joined by Chief District Judge Henderson of the Western District of New York. 44 TEDARDS V. DUCEY (a) capitalizing on maximum voter interest and turnout during even-year elections; (b) making it easier for Senate candidates to finance their campaigns; and (c) avoiding the inconvenience and expense associated with Senate elections in back-to-back years. Id. at 859–60. 39 39