Opinion ID: 200707
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Majority Requirement

Text: The first Gingles precondition requires that the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district. 478 U.S. at 50. Some courts have read this literally to mean that unless plaintiffs can show that they can constitute an absolute majority in a single district -- that is, more than fifty percent -- then there is no possible § 2 -17- claim.11 See Valdespino v. Alamo Heights Indep. Sch. Dist., 168 F.3d 848, 852-53 (5th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1114 (2000); Perez v. Pasadena Indep. Sch. Dist., 165 F.3d 368, 371-73 (5th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1114 (2000); see also Negron v. City of Miami Beach, 113 F.3d 1563, 1571 (11th Cir. 1997); Parker v. Ohio, 263 F. Supp. 2d 1100, 1104-05 (S.D. Ohio 2003). That approach has been criticized as a talismanic requirement, divorced from any underlying functional reasons. Pildes, supra, at 1555. If that approach were followed here, plaintiffs' complaint would fail to meet the first precondition. We reject the conclusion that no § 2 cause of action is ever stated, regardless of the nature of the claim, unless plaintiffs can show that a minority group would be a literal majority in a single district. The approach is inconsistent with the Supreme Court's own descriptions of the functions served by the first Gingles precondition. It is also inconsistent with the variety of political realities the VRA was meant to address; a demographic fact of life in some areas of the country is that no single racial group constitutes an absolute majority. And finally, it contravenes the plain text of § 2, which requires courts to consider the totality of the circumstances. 11 On defendants' theory, a discrete, geographically compact racial group (here, African-Americans) is not entitled to avail itself of § 2 of the VRA until it is large enough to constitute a numerical majority in any given district. -18- Requiring the protected class to show that it is an absolute majority ignores the reality that the class could elect its preferred candidate without such numbers. Thus, a discussion of whether the protected class forms a majority is not necessarily helpful in determining whether an electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions, Gingles, 478 U.S. at 47, to impair the ability of the class to vote. The plaintiffs here have alleged that AfricanAmerican voters formed a politically cohesive group that was able, with the assistance of crossover voting, to elect the candidate of its preference in a district that was less than fifty percent African-American and that, in a properly drawn district, they could continue to do so. In the context of this case, that pleading suffices to satisfy the interests identified by the Supreme Court for the first Gingles precondition. That precondition should not be read without regard to its function: to determine whether the ability of minority voters to elect representatives of their choice is impeded. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 48. As the Court has noted, the Gingles factors cannot be applied mechanically and without regard to the nature of the claim. Voinovich, 507 U.S. at 158.12 Gingles 12 Consonant with its holding that the Gingles preconditions are in some form applicable to single-member districts, the Supreme Court has consistently avoided applying the first precondition to challenges to such districts. See De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1009 (assuming the first precondition is satisfied); Voinovich, 507 U.S. -19- itself, in reviewing a multi-member district, noted that the function of the first precondition was to assure that there was a causal relationship between the creation of the district lines and the harm to the plaintiffs; if the minority group's candidate could not prevail even in a single district, then the multimember form cannot be responsible for minority voters' inability to elect its candidates. 478 U.S. at 50 (emphasis removed). Similarly, when discussing majority bloc voting in the context of the third precondition, Gingles defined it as that which is sufficient usually to defeat the combined strength of minority support plus white crossover votes. Id. at 56 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Jenkins v. Red Clay Consol. Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 4 F.3d 1103, 1123 (3d Cir. 1993) ([T]he Gingles [third precondition] standard presupposes the existence of crossover voting.). Growe reinforced this functional analysis, noting that the 'geographically compact majority' and 'minority political cohesion' showings are needed to establish that the minority has the potential to elect a representative of its own choice in some single-member district. 507 U.S. at 40. Such support for a functional approach leaves room to include claims in which an electoral majority is formed only with crossover support. This functional approach also better accounts for various political realities. In electoral schemes in which representatives at 158 (same); Growe, 507 U.S. at 41 (same). -20- can usually be elected with less than a majority of the vote, Gingles should not be read to require that the minority group nevertheless be able to form a literal majority in a reconfigured district. Rhode Island law specifically provides that candidates in both primary and general elections for state office may be elected with a plurality of the vote. See R.I. Const. art. IV, § 2 (general elections); R.I. Gen. Laws § 17-15-29 (2002) (primary elections). In such cases, constituting a majority would not be necessary for minorities to elect a representative of their choice. 42 U.S.C. § 1973(b); see Romero v. Pomona, 883 F.2d 1418, 1424 n.7 (9th Cir. 1989), overruled on other grounds, 929 F.2d 1358 (9th Cir. 1990).13 To the extent that courts have read Gingles to elevate the ability to create a district with a majority-black electorate into a threshold requirement for establishing liability in all vote dilution litigation, they have improperly applied one particular theory of liability to other distinct types of vote dilution. P.S. Karlan, Maps and Misreadings: The Role of Geographic Compactness in Racial Vote Dilution Litigation, 24 Harv.