Opinion ID: 200707
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ability to Influence and Crossover Voting

Text: The district court characterized plaintiffs' claim as alternately an ability to influence claim and an ability to elect claim. The Gingles Court, when fashioning the three preconditions to a redistricting challenge to a multimember district, expressly reserved the question of whether § 2 permitted claims by a minority group alleging that the use of a multimember district impairs its ability to influence elections, and whether the three preconditions would apply unabated to such a claim. 478 U.S. at 46 n.12 (emphasis in original). The same question of the meaning of an ability to elect as opposed to an ability to influence arises in challenges to single member districts. See De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1008-09; Voinovich, 507 U.S. at 154. Since Gingles, there has been much confusion over the -11- definition of an influence claim under the VRA. Most often, influence districts have been defined as ones in which a minority group has enough political heft to exert significant influence on the choice of candidate though not enough to determine that choice. Barnett v. City of Chicago, 141 F.3d 699, 703 (7th Cir. 1998) (reserving question of whether such a claim is cognizable); see Cousin v. Sundquist, 145 F.3d 818, 828-29 (6th Cir. 1998) (refusing to recognize such a claim under the VRA); McNeil v. Legislative Apportionment Comm'n, 828 A.2d 840, 852-53 (N.J. 2003) (recognizing influence dilution claims under the VRA). This court has also used the influence district terminology in this sense. Vecinos de Barrio Uno v. City of Holyoke, 72 F.3d 973, 990-91 (1st Cir. 1995). The confusion stems from the intersection of this type of influence claim and another type, in which a minority group constituting less than fifty percent of the electorate can elect a candidate of its choice with the help of crossover votes from voters in the majority group. See R.H. Pildes, Is Voting Rights Law Now at War with Itself? Social Science and Voting Rights in the 2000s, 80 N.C. L. Rev. 1517, 1539-40 & n.60 (2002) (referring to this latter type of district as a coalitional district); Note, The Future of Majority-Minority Districts in Light of Declining Racially Polarized Voting, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 2208, 2209-10 & n.13 (2003). We will refer to this second type of influence claim as a -12- crossover district.7 The Supreme Court has not had the opportunity to address this distinction;8 the Court in Voinovich used the term influence district to describe a crossover district -- one in which minorities could, despite the inability to form a majority, elect their candidate of choice nonetheless if they are numerous enough and their candidate attracts sufficient cross-over votes. 507 U.S. at 154.9 Plaintiffs, for their part, forswear any claim under the ability to influence rubric, choosing to stand or fall entirely on an ability to elect claim. However, they do so only as far as the 7 We use crossover in a specialized sense with regard to racial blocs. The term is also used in a different sense when members of one political party cross over to vote in the other party's primary. See Easley v. Cromartie, 532 U.S. 234, 245 (2001). 8 The recent Supreme Court decision in Georgia v. Ashcroft, 123 S.Ct. 2498 (2003), considered influence districts and crossover districts in the § 5 context, but did not resolve the relationship between the two. 9 Crossover districts where plaintiffs allege an ability to elect also may be confused with a third type of claim, a minority coalition claim, in which two separate minority groups allege that a district could be formed in which they could join forces to elect a representative. See De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1020 (describing such a VRA claim); Concerned Citizens v. Hardee County Bd., 906 F.2d 524, 526-27 (11th Cir. 1990) (indicating that minority coalition claims meet the first Gingles precondition); Brewer v. Ham, 876 F.2d 448, 453 (5th Cir. 1989) (same). But see Nixon v. Kent County, 76 F.3d 1381, 1392 (6th Cir. 1996) (en banc) (rejecting a minority coalition claim). We take no position on that issue. Plaintiffs do not allege that they and another minority group form a minority coalition and that such a coalition may qualify as a class under § 2. Rather, this suit appears to posit that the interests of African-American voters have been pitted against the interests of Hispanic voters. -13- term influence district describes one where a minority group is unable to elect a candidate of its choice even with crossover support. They use the term influence district in the complaint to describe what we label a crossover district, in which AfricanAmerican voters have an ability to elect with crossover support. We consider only this type of influence claim, and not the more nebulous variety described in Barnett and disavowed by plaintiffs. The Supreme Court has expressly held open the question of whether the Gingles preconditions should apply to influence claims. See De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1009; Voinovich, 507 U.S. at 154; Gingles, 478 U.S. at 46 n.12. We read the language of these cases, especially Gingles and Voinovich, to profess a willingness to consider a crossover district claim such as the one plaintiffs plead. The Gingles language setting aside the question of an influence claim did not differentiate between crossover district claims and claims in which plaintiffs profess only an ability to affect, not determine, electoral outcomes. But the Court has not flatly refused to consider a crossover district despite the opportunity to do so. See Voinovich, 507 U.S. at 154. The Supreme Court's recent opinion in Georgia v. Ashcroft, 123 S.Ct. 2498 (2003), also supports our conclusion that crossover districts should be considered in the § 2 context. -14- Georgia interpreted § 5 of the VRA.10 The Court has repeatedly warned that § 2 and § 5 combat different evils and . . . impose very different duties upon the States. Reno v. Bossier Parish Sch. Bd., 520 U.S. 471, 476 (1997). Despite the differences between § 2 and § 5 analysis, the Court's treatment of influence and crossover districts in Georgia is highly instructive. Georgia held that when assessing retrogression, courts must consider not only majority-minority districts but also the existence of influence districts, including crossover districts. 123 S.Ct. at 2512. The state's plan created two additional districts with a minority population of between thirty and fifty percent, and two districts with a population of between twenty-five and thirty percent. These districts, the Court found, were crucial to determining the overall effect of the new redistricting plan. Id. at 2515. Indeed, the Court was unanimous that crossover districts should be considered in the § 5 analysis; the dissent objected only to the use of those influence districts in which it was not clear that minority voters would have an ability to elect even with crossover support. See id. at 2513, 2514; id. at 2518-19 (Souter, J., dissenting). If crossover districts are important 10 Under § 5, the Attorney General of the United States must preclear a covered jurisdiction's standard, practice, or procedure. 42 U.S.C. § 1973c. Preclearance depends on whether the change would lead to a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise. Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130, 141 (1976). -15- enough to minority voters to be considered when assessing a redistricting plan's retrogression, it would be an odd result if the same voters could not bring a § 2 claim when such a crossover district is eliminated by redistricting. Given these Supreme Court precedents, we believe that whatever the status of other influence claims, at least crossover district claims are cognizable under § 2 of the VRA. We decline to hold, as a matter of law, that they are not. This conclusion is consistent with our decision in Vecinos de Barrio Uno, supra, where this court held that an influence district that was twenty-eight percent Hispanic should be considered in the determination of whether the minority population's voting strength had been diluted. 72 F.3d at 990-91 ([T]he voting strength of a minority group is not necessarily limited to districts in which its members constitute a majority of the voting age population, but also extends to every district in which its members are sufficiently numerous to have a significant impact at the ballot box most of the time.). Unlike the present case, the influence district in Vecinos de Barrio Uno was used by the defendant city as evidence that the minority population retained political power. Moreover, the city was not alleging that the minority group could elect its own candidate with crossover support, but only that it was large enough to wield influence over the outcome. Despite these factual differences, this court's -16- recognition that influence districts may be used to show the existence of the political power of minority groups reinforces the decision to recognize, at least in theory, a suit complaining that a crossover district has been unjustly eliminated. Though Gingles did not apply the preconditions to influence claims, however they are defined, some preconditions must apply in order to link the complained-of voting practice with the harm the plaintiffs allege. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 48-51; see Vecinos, 72 F.3d at 979 n.2 ([The first] precondition will have to be reconfigured to the extent that the courts eventually validate so-called influence dilution claims.). For the purposes of this discussion, we assume that plaintiffs' claim must satisfy the second and third Gingles preconditions, and that some form of the first precondition will also apply.