Opinion ID: 500653
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The City's Responsiveness to the Racial Animus of its Citizens

Text: 243 Finally, the City argues that it is entitled to judgment in its favor on the housing discrimination claim because its housing decisions only responded to the concerns of its citizens, and race was not found to be the citizens' dominant concern. We reject this argument on factual, procedural, and doctrinal grounds. 244 First, we note that the City's factual premise--that City officials themselves displayed no race-related concerns but merely sought to follow the wishes of their constituents--is contradicted by the district court's findings and by the record. Although the City argues that the district court foundthat officials ... were entirely well-meaning public servants acting in accordance with their perception of what was feasible in the political and socio-economic circumstances of Yonkers and in the best interests of that community, 245 and argues that [t]hus, the Court below expressly found that the public officials themselves lacked any racial animus in any of the housing decisions reviewed by the Court, (City brief on appeal at 34, quoting 624 F.Supp. at 1289 (emphasis and ellipsis in City's brief)), the City's view of the facts and the findings is untenable, for it is plainly contradicted by the district court's well documented opinion. To begin with, the quoted passage, which appears in a brief introductory portion of the court's opinion, is preceded by the word [m]any; the district court stated that [m]any officials were entirely well meaning, not that all officials were well meaning. Further, the rest of the opinion makes clear that by well-meaning and in the best interests of the community, the district court was giving recognition to the view of certain officials that racially influenced opposition to subsidized housing in East Yonkers [w]as a 'fact of life,'  624 F.Supp. at 1316, and their position that they had made conscious decisions to concentrate on  'politically feasible'  sites, id. at 1313, i.e., sites that could be approved without incurring race-based opposition. Most importantly, although the court found that the City's actions consistently responded to the racial concerns of white community members, it did not find that City leaders had no racial concerns of their own. To the contrary, it found that numerous City officials not only responded to, but ... 'led the fight against subsidized housing in East Yonkers.'  624 F.Supp. at 1373. 246 The record amply supports the finding that many City officials were leaders, not mere puppets, of their constituencies. Thus, on several occasions, the mayor or councilmen exhorted their constituents to action. For example, a councilman whose ward was near the School 4 area sent letters to all of his constituents, urging them to support the sale of the property for luxury housing and defeat the wishes of the NAACP for low-income housing. Similarly, with regard to another site proposed to HUD in 1980, then-mayor Gerald Loehr sent a mass mailing to residents of the area, taking the position that the low-income housing would place an unacceptable burden on the neighborhood and urging the residents to respond. Nor did the City confine its segregative actions to the simple disapproval of housing sites whose proposal provoked white residents' opposition. The actions of Martinelli in packing the Board with opponents of busing in order, in his words, to preserve neighborhood stability, the refusal of the Council to approve use of Section 8 Certificates by families, and the Council's eventual order to MHA not even to apply for Section 8 Certificates lest members of the minority community ... seek and probably find units on the east side of the city, provided further confirmation for the finding that in the fight to preserve segregation in housing, the Council was not just a reactive body. 247 Second, even if we were to accept the City's legal premise--that the City could not be held liable for the racially segregative impact of its decisions made in response to the concerns of the citizenry unless race were found to be the citizens' dominant concern--we would not order the entry of judgment in favor of the City. The district court did not find that race was not the protesting citizens' dominant concern in their opposition to low-income housing. It found that race was a significant factor. Neither this finding nor the finding that race was not the sole factor is inconsistent with a hypothesis that race was their dominant concern; and since a finding that race was the dominant factor would not have been clearly erroneous, the best the City could gain on this appeal, assuming our acceptance of its factual and legal premises, would be a remand for the district court to make additional findings. 248 Finally, we reject the City's doctrinal contention that elected officials may lawfully act with the purpose of achieving or preserving racial segregation in response to the urgings of their constituents so long as race is only a significant, but not a dominant, factor in the constituents' motivation. Even assuming, contrary to the findings and record in the present case, that the actions of the municipal officials are only responsive rather than leading the fight against desegregation, we conclude that the Equal Protection Clause does not permit such actions where racial animus is a significant factor in the community position to which the city is responding. See, e.g., Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 433, 104 S.Ct. 1879-82, 80 L.Ed.2d 421 (1984); Smith v. Town of Clarkton, 682 F.2d 1055, 1063-66 (4th Cir.1982); Dailey v. City of Lawton, 425 F.2d 1037, 1039 (10th Cir.1970); United States v. City of Birmingham, 538 F.Supp. 819 (E.D.Mich.1982) (City of Birmingham ), aff'd as modified, 727 F.2d 560 (6th Cir.1984); cf. City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 448, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 3259, 87 L.Ed.2d 313 (1985) (Cleburne Living Center ); Lucas v. Colorado General Assembly, 377 U.S. 713, 736-37, 84 S.Ct. 1459, 1473-74, 12 L.Ed.2d 632 (1964). 249 The Supreme Court has long held, in a variety of circumstances, that a governmental body may not escape liability under the Equal Protection Clause merely because its discriminatory action was undertaken in response to the desires of a majority of its citizens. In Palmore v. Sidoti, the Court overturned a state court judgment that divested a natural mother of the custody of her infant child because of her remarriage to a person of a different race. The Court noted that community biases might subject the child to undesirable stresses that could be avoided if the child lived with parents of her own race, but it ruled that the state, although having a substantial interest in the welfare of the child, could not lawfully remove the child from the custody of her natural mother in order to cater to the racial biases of its constituents. Noting that this was by no means the first occasion on which it had struck down a law that responded to popular racial prejudice, and pointing to its invalidation of laws in areas such as housing in Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 81, 38 S.Ct. 16, 20, 62 L.Ed. 149 (1917), the Court stated as follows: Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect. 'Public officials sworn to uphold the Constitution may not avoid a constitutional duty by bowing to the hypothetical effects of private racial prejudice that they assume to be both widely and deeply held.'  466 U.S. at 433, 104 S.Ct. at 1882 (quoting Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217, 260-61, 91 S.Ct. 1940, 1962-63, 29 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971) (White, J., dissenting)). 250 In Lucas v. Colorado General Assembly, the Court invalidated a discriminatory legislative apportionment plan that had been expressly approved by the electorate, stating that [a] citizen's constitutional rights can hardly be infringed simply because a majority of the people choose that [they] be. 377 U.S. at 736-37, 84 S.Ct. at 1473-74 (footnote omitted). In Cleburne Living Center, the Court held that a city requirement that a permit be obtained for use of a dwelling as a home for mentally retarded persons, where no permit requirement was imposed with respect to similar types of uses for such dwellings, violated the Equal Protection Clause in light of the city's inability to articulate a legitimate governmental purpose to which the permit requirement was rationally related. The Court rejected the notion that the city was entitled to adopt such a requirement in response to the prejudices of residents of the neighborhood in which the home was to be located: 251 It is plain that the electorate as a whole, whether by referendum or otherwise, could not order city action violative of the Equal Protection Clause, ... and the city may not avoid the strictures of that Clause by deferring to the wishes or objections of some fraction of the body politic. Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect. 252 473 U.S. at 448, 105 S.Ct. at 3259 (citation omitted) (quoting Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. at 433, 104 S.Ct. at 1882). 253 The circuit courts have applied these principles in the context of challenges to segregation in both schools and housing, ruling that discriminatory action is not lawful simply because it was taken in response to the racially motivated opposition of a segment of the community. In City of Birmingham, for example, the district court ruled that a city was liable for its obstruction of a racially integrated housing project even though six of the seven members of the decision-making body in fact favored the project, and that body's impedance of the project was simply responsive to the racial animus of a majority of its virtually all-white community: 254 The government need not prove that the [decision-making body] itself intended to discriminate on the basis of race in order to establish that the City acted with a racially discriminatory intent. In order to demonstrate a city's racially discriminatory intent, it is sufficient to show that the decision-making body acted for the sole purpose of effectuating the desires of private citizens, that racial considerations were a motivating factor behind those desires, and that members of the decision-making body were aware of the motivations of the private citizen[s]. United States v. City of Blackjack, Missouri, 508 F.2d [at 1185 n. 3]. Any other rule of law would permit a legislative body to place its official stamp of approval on private racial discrimination. 255 538 F.Supp. at 828. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment that the actions of the decision-maker had been racially motivated, quoting the lower court's findings that unlawful racial motivation was properly inferred from, among other things,  'the views expressed by a significant number of opponents of [the low-income housing project] (uttered both on the public record and within the hearing of those who testified at trial),'  and a decision-making body  'that knowingly pursued policies that appeased those who expressed these bigoted views.'  727 F.2d at 564 (quoting 538 F.Supp. at 826). 256 In Smith v. Town of Clarkton, a town was found liable under the Equal Protection Clause and the Fair Housing Act for withdrawing from a joint plan to construct low-income housing, where its withdrawal was a response to town residents' opposition that was motivated in significant part by racial considerations. 682 F.2d at 1063 (citing district court's findings of fact). Though there was no evidence that the town officials themselves had a history of racially discriminatory acts or that in their individual capacities they were racially motivated, the circuit court upheld the imposition of liability, stating that [i]t is not necessary, in proving a violation of the equal protection clause, to show that the challenged actions rested solely on a racially-discriminatory intent in order to demonstrate that the involved officials acted with an intent to illegally discriminate, id. at 1066 (emphasis in original), and concluding that there could be no doubt that the defendants knew that a significant portion of the public opposition was racially inspired, and their public acts were a direct response to that opposition, id. 257 Other circuits have reached the same conclusion. See Dailey v. City of Lawton, 425 F.2d at 1039 (holding city liable for refusing zoning change to permit minority housing project in white area because of the opposition to the project by the residents of the white area); Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, 436 F.2d 306, 307-08, 313 (7th Cir.1970) (holding city council's delay in submission to HUD of low-income housing sites proposed for predominantly white neighborhoods not justifiable by the fact that it was responsive to political considerations and community hostility), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 922, 91 S.Ct. 1378, 28 L.Ed.2d 661 (1971); Resident Advisory Board v. Rizzo, 564 F.2d 126, 144 (3d Cir.1977) (inferring improper racial motivation from city's sudden shift in ... position from passive acceptance [of low-income housing project] to active opposition, in the face of protests by demonstrators manifesting racial bias) (footnote omitted), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 908, 98 S.Ct. 1457, 55 L.Ed.2d 499 (1978); Hoots v. Pennsylvania, 672 F.2d 1107, 1115 (3d Cir.) (holding that  '[s]chool authorities may not, consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment, maintain segregated schools or permit educational choices contributing to the development and growth of segregated schools because of community sentiment or the wishes of a majority of voters '  (quoting district court opinion in Hoots reported at 359 F.Supp. 807, 822 (W.D.Pa.1973) (emphasis in Third Circuit opinion)), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 824, 103 S.Ct. 55, 74 L.Ed.2d 60 (1982). 258 We do not read these cases to imply, as the City would have us do, that if invidious discrimination is a significant factor in the community position but is not the dominant factor, the municipality is permitted to cater to that prejudice with impunity. Just as many concerns inform a given legislative decision, making it difficult to pinpoint a single or dominant factor that motivates a legislative body, it may be equally difficult to isolate as dominant a motive shared by a given segment of the populace at large. It is sufficient to sustain a racial discrimination claim if it has been found, and there is evidence to support the finding, that racial animus was a significant factor in the position taken by the persons to whose position the official decision-maker is knowingly responsive. Given the district court's finding, which is unimpeachable on the basis of the present record, that racial animus was a significant factor motivating those white residents who opposed the location of low-income housing in their predominantly white neighborhoods, the City may properly be held liable for the segregative effects of a decision to cater to this will of the people. 259