Opinion ID: 754764
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the gingles

Text: PRE-CONDITIONS 12 To meet their burden of production in an alleged Section 2 violation, the plaintiffs must satisfy three pre-conditions, enunciated by the Supreme Court in Gingles. Those conditions are: 13 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 .... the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive .... [and 3] the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate. 14 Id. at 50-51, 106 S.Ct. 2752. Both the second and third Gingles pre-conditions thus require a court to consider the voting behavior of different races. However, the inquiry in the second pre-condition differs from that involved in the third: the former asks merely whether voters of the same race tend to vote alike, and the latter evaluates whether a bloc-voting majority can routinely outvote the minority, thereby impair[ing] the ability of a protected class to elect candidates of its choice. Johnson v. DeGrandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1007, 114 S.Ct. 2647, 129 L.Ed.2d 775 (1994) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). 15 The state concedes, and uncontroverted evidence at trial showed, that blacks in Hamilton County vote sufficiently cohesively to satisfy the second Gingles pre-condition. The district court's finding to this effect is not clearly erroneous. However, we do find clear error in the district court's analysis of and conclusion concerning the third pre-condition, the extent of racial bloc voting. Since we conclude that the plaintiffs failed to meet the third pre-condition, we need not conduct a detailed inquiry into the first factor, the geographic compactness of blacks in Hamilton County, for a Section 2 claim cannot proceed unless all three Gingles pre-conditions are satisfied. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 158, 113 S.Ct. 1149, 122 L.Ed.2d 500 (1993) (disposing of the plaintiffs' Section 2 claim without analyzing the first Gingles pre-condition, since the Court found that the plaintiffs had failed to meet the third pre-condition). See generally Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50, 106 S.Ct. 2752 (explaining that the circumstances contemplated by the three pre-conditions must necessarily exist for multimember districts to operate to impair minority voters' ability to elect members of their choice). We will review the district court's factual findings concerning racial bloc voting for clear error, and its legal conclusion that the third pre-condition has been met de novo. Cousin, 46 F.3d at 574; Gingles, 478 U.S. at 79, 106 S.Ct. 2752. 16 The third Gingles pre-condition requires a Section 2 plaintiff to show that the white majority votes in a manner usually to defeat the black minority's preferred candidate. 478 U.S. at 51, 106 S.Ct. 2752. Both parties in this case presented expert testimony concerning the existence and extent of racial bloc voting in Hamilton County. The district court relied heavily on the testimony of the plaintiffs' expert, Dr. Cole, see Cousin, 904 F.Supp. at 691-99 (quoting Dr. Cole at length), and on tabular data from Chattanooga City elections prepared for another case, see id. at 700-04 (reproducing Appendices A, B, and C from Brown v. Board of Comm'rs of the City of Chattanooga, 722 F.Supp. 380, 400-04 (E.D.Tenn.1989) (evaluating an unrelated Section 2 challenge to Chattanooga's practice of electing City Commissioners at-large)), in holding that the plaintiffs had met the third Gingles pre-condition. We hold that the district court erred in its reliance on both these bases and in the legal conclusions it drew from this data. 17 In his analysis of the issue of racial bloc voting, Dr. Cole examined elections pitting a white candidate against a black candidate. He considered black/white contests for judicial positions most relevant to this litigation, and he found five such contests: four elections for Chattanooga city judgeships between 1969 and 1991, and the 1980 Tennessee Supreme Court election. Because of the dearth of especially relevant contests, Cole also considered black/white contests for other elected positions, of which he found 29 examples between 1966 and 1993. Those additional contests included Democratic Presidential primaries; Democratic primaries for Hamilton County Council, Registrar, Public Defender, Juvenile Court Clerk, Quarterly County Court, and the Tennessee State House of Representatives; general elections for Hamilton County Trustee, Public Defender, Justice of the Peace, Constable, Quarterly County Court, and Tennessee State House of Representatives; and general elections for Chattanooga Mayor, City Council and School Board. For each election, Dr. Cole calculated the percentage of whites voting for the white candidate and the percentage of blacks voting for the black candidate, a figure said to represent racial cohesion in that election. Dr. Cole then averaged the cohesion figures, concluding that, for the five black/white judicial contests, the average black cohesion was 76% and the average white cohesion 80%; and for the 29 other black/white contests, the average black cohesion was 80% and the average white cohesion 88%. Dr. Cole used these averages in connection with black/white voter turnout information, determining that, in order to succeed in a Hamilton County election, a black candidate would need a number of white crossover votes exceeding the 20% average crossover suggested by his white cohesion figure. Thus, Dr. Cole concluded, a black candidate would usually lose a countywide election in Hamilton County. In addition, Dr. Cole extrapolated these figures to predict results in hypothetical elections. For example, he testified that Walter F. Williams, a black candidate who defeated a white opponent to win election to a city judgeship in 1991, would not have won the election had it been held on a countywide basis. 18 The methodology of the defense expert, Dr. Taebel, differed significantly from that employed by his counterpart. Dr. Taebel considered elections presenting voters with a racial choice as well as elections involving only white candidates. Dr. Taebel chose his group of elections according to: 1) their recency, under which criterion he limited his inquiry to elections taking place in the last ten years; 2) their relevance, by which he limited himself to elections that were countywide and partisan, as are elections for the Hamilton County judgeships at issue here; and 3) their contestedness, by which he eliminated elections in which the losing candidate received less than 15% of the vote. Using these criteria, Dr. Taebel identified 32 elections between 1982 and 1992, of which 12 involved offices requiring the winner to be a lawyer. These lawyer-qualified offices included the Tennessee Supreme Court; Hamilton County Circuit, Criminal, Chancery, General Sessions, and Juvenile Courts; Hamilton County District Attorney General; and Hamilton County Public Defender. The other 20 elections, termed exogenous elections by Dr. Taebel, involved offices such as Hamilton County Sheriff, County Executive, and Public Service Commissioner; Governor of Tennessee; and United States Senator and Representative. 19 Dr. Taebel tabulated the percentage of white and black votes received by each candidate in these 32 elections, a calculation which enabled him to identify the minority's preferred candidate in each. Dr. Taebel's analysis indicated that the minority's preferred candidate prevailed in seven of the 12 lawyer-qualified elections and in 16 of the 20 exogenous elections. Dr. Taebel's figures also showed that in four of the minority-preferred candidate's seven victories in the lawyer-qualified elections, and in nine of the minority-preferred candidate's 16 victories in the exogenous elections, that candidate defeated the preferred candidate of the white majority. Furthermore, those numbers also indicated that in three of the seven lawyer-qualified elections, and in seven of the 16 exogenous elections, won by the minority's preferred candidate, that candidate was also the preferred candidate of white voters. Given these conclusions, Dr. Taebel opined that the white majority did not regularly vote in such a way as to deprive black voters in Hamilton County of the opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. 20 We conclude that the district court's slavish adoption of Dr. Cole's analysis to support a finding that the plaintiffs met the third Gingles pre-condition was error. We reach this conclusion not merely because we disagree with Dr. Cole's methodology, but also because we find Dr. Taebel's study more relevant, and because several of Dr. Cole's data belie his conclusions. While Dr. Cole testified that, in his opinion, elections pitting two white candidates against each other offered little information for a racial bloc voting analysis, we, like Dr. Taebel, agree with the Eleventh Circuit that such elections do offer relevant information in this inquiry: 21 [W]e do not foreclose the consideration of electoral races involving only white candidates where the record indicates that one of the candidates was strongly preferred by black voters.... Where black voters have a genuine candidate of choice in an election involving only white candidates, then the results will be relevant to the question of whether racial bloc voting enables the white majority usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate. 22 Nipper, 39 F.3d at 1540 (footnote omitted). See also DeGrandy, 512 U.S. at 1020, 114 S.Ct. 2647 (recognizing that minority voters' candidate of choice may not always share their race, but will share common political ground even if such a candidate does not represent perfection to every minority voter). Dr. Cole's limiting his analysis to black/white elections thus focuses his inquiry too narrowly. The proper inquiry is not whether white candidates do or do not usually defeat black candidates, but whether minority-preferred candidates, whatever their race, usually lose. A close look at Dr. Cole's data confirms that, even in the universe of elections he analyzed, this result does not usually occur. Black candidates won two of Dr. Cole's five black/white judicial elections, an especially impressive success rate when one considers that Timberlake, the losing black candidate in two of the three elections won by whites, was not qualified to hold the office since he was not a lawyer. In addition, blacks won 9 of Dr. Cole's 29 non-judicial black/white elections. In four of those elections--the 1974 Democratic Primary for Tennessee House District 28, the 1984 Democratic Presidential Primary, the 1990 runoff election for City Council District 7, and the 1990 general election for School Board District 7--the black candidate prevailed despite unanimous or near-unanimous white cohesion. 23 Moreover, the data from certain of Dr. Cole's elections reflect significant levels of white support for black candidates. For example, George Brown, the losing candidate in the 1980 election for the Tennessee Supreme Court, won 36% of the Hamilton County precincts with a voting age population that was 90% or more white. Similarly, City Judge Walter Williams won 25% of the precincts with more than 90% white voting age population in his 1991 election. Strong black candidates also occasionally attracted significant numbers of white crossover votes. As early as 1969, Bennie Harris had 31% white crossover support in his election to the position of City Judge. And Ardena Garth, the Hamilton County Public Defender, enjoyed 48% white crossover support in her 1990 election. 24 We reiterate that we point to these examples of black candidates' success only to show that Dr. Cole's conclusion--that black candidates in Hamilton County will usually lose for lack of sufficient white crossover support--is not borne out even by his own data. By indicating instances where black candidates have enjoyed white crossover support, we do not mean to suggest that we believe, or even that it has been shown, that black candidates are necessarily the preferred candidates of black voters. Rather, Gingles teaches that the success of minority-preferred candidates is the standard of evaluation for purposes of the third pre-condition. 478 U.S. at 51, 106 S.Ct. 2752. But cf. Clarke v. City of Cincinnati, 40 F.3d 807, 812 (6th Cir.1994) (holding that a candidate's race can be relevant to a [Section] 2 inquiry). Mindful of the Gingles standard, we find it significant, for example, that in three of Dr. Cole's 29 elections--the 1966 general election for Justice of the Peace, the 1968 general election for Hamilton County Trustee, and the 1972 Democratic Primary for Tennessee House District 28--the winning white candidate was also the preferred candidate of blacks. This standard also underlies our holding that the district court improperly ignored Dr. Taebel's statistics, which accurately reflected the potentiality that the minority's preferred candidate might be a white person. See Johnson, 512 U.S. at 1020, 114 S.Ct. 2647. 25 The district court also based its holding that the plaintiffs had met the third Gingles pre-condition on tabular data in Appendices A, B, and C of the opinion in the Brown case. See Cousin, 904 F.Supp. at 700-04 (quoting Brown, 722 F.Supp. at 400-404). In Brown, the plaintiffs successfully challenged Chattanooga's practice of electing City Commission members from the city at-large. The factual circumstances of Brown thus differ significantly from the instant case: Brown involved citywide, not countywide elections; the elected body at issue was legislative, not judicial; and the elections studied were nonpartisan, not partisan. See 722 F.Supp. at 382. These differences counsel us to review extremely carefully any conclusions reached in the Brown case. However, since the Brown Appendices formed at least a partial basis for the court's finding regarding the third pre-condition, we will review them for any light they will shed on our analysis. 26 These tables collected data from quadrennial Chattanooga City Commission elections from 1971 to 1987 (Appendix A), Chattanooga City judge contests from 1969 to 1987 (Appendix B), and other elections and referenda from 1970 to 1988 (Appendix C); separated the percentages of the white and black vote for each candidate; and designated each election as Racially Polarized or Not Racially Polarized. See id. The Brown court found the majority of the elections in the Appendices Racially Polarized. To the extent that the district court here relied on this designation in reaching its conclusion regarding the third Gingles pre-condition in this case, it committed clear error. The designation given the elections by the Brown court is relevant to this litigation, if at all, only in an analysis of the second Gingles pre-condition--the extent of political cohesion--a factor that is not in dispute. Viewing the Brown data through the proper perspective for an analysis of the third pre-condition, we find no basis for a finding that the white majority usually votes in a manner that denies victory to the minority's preferred candidate. In 15 of the 31 City Commission elections, and in five of the eight City Judge contests, the candidate garnering the largest percentage of the black vote also won the election. Moreover, the position supported by a majority of black voters in the 1978 referendum on the repeal of Tennessee's constitutional ban on interracial marriage, the 1978 referendum on the elected school board, and the 1984 referendum on the Metro Charter prevailed in each election. In short, the district court erred when it found the Brown data supported its finding that the plaintiffs here met the third Gingles pre-condition. 27 We find considerable methodological deficiency in Dr. Cole's analysis, and we also believe that neither Dr. Cole's statistics nor the election data from Brown support the district court's position. Furthermore, we believe Dr. Taebel's analysis shows that minority-preferred candidates can and do win countywide elections in Hamilton County. We therefore hold that the plaintiffs have failed to meet the third Gingles pre-condition, and accordingly we REVERSE the district court's holding to the contrary. 28 Because the third pre-condition is not satisfied, the plaintiffs' vote dilution claim in this case must fail. Since the claim has not passed even the initial hurdles, the plaintiffs are clearly not entitled to any remedy at all. We could, therefore, stop our inquiry, reverse the judgment, and vacate the district court's order at this point. However, mindful of the potentiality that there may be future challenges to the conduct of other lawyer-qualified elections in Hamilton County, we find it proper, and perhaps necessary, to express our views concerning the two alternative remedies proposed in this case: single-member districting, as the plaintiffs' proposed, and cumulative voting, as the district court ultimately ordered. See Milwaukee Branch, 116 F.3d at 1199 (continuing its analysis of the alleged Section 2 violation under similar circumstances). 29 The plaintiffs submitted three plans for dividing Hamilton County into single-member districts corresponding to the number of judgeships on a particular court: a proposed four district plan for the Circuit Court, a three district plan for the Criminal and General Sessions Courts, and a two district plan for the Chancery Court. The four district plan reflected a maximum deviation in population between the districts of 4.74%, and included one district where the black voting age population constituted a 60% majority. The three district plan had a maximum deviation in population between the districts of 10.98%, and achieved one district with a bare 50.3% majority black voting age population. Under the two district plan, blacks made up an influence district of 34% in one of the two districts. The districts in all three plans are contiguous and do not appear irregularly drawn; in addition, the districting plans were achieved without dividing any existing precinct. Cousin, 904 F.Supp. at 688-89. 30 Even if we had held plaintiffs' vote dilution claim valid, we would not have affirmed a remedy such as they proposed in this case because it is at odds with the important state interest in linkage. Proper adherence to the principle of linkage ensures that a state court judge serves the entire jurisdiction from which he or she is elected, and that the entire electorate which will be subject to that judge's jurisdiction has the opportunity to hold him or her accountable at the polls. Single-member districts, as several courts have noted, eliminate the identity between the electoral and jurisdictional bases of its judges, thereby violating the state's significant linkage interest. Milwaukee Branch, 116 F.3d at 1201; Nipper, 39 F.3d at 1542-46; LULAC, 999 F.2d at 868-76. This linkage interest is also important because it lies at the heart of philosophical decisions about the role of judging in our system of government, a concern eloquently expressed by the Fifth Circuit in LULAC: 31 The decision to make jurisdiction and electoral bases coterminous is more than a decision about how to elect state judges. It is a decision of what constitutes a state court judge. Such a decision is as much a decision about the structure of the judicial office as the office's explicit qualifications such as bar membership or the age of judges. The collective voice of generations by their unswerving adherence to the principle of linkage through times of extraordinary growth and change speaks to us with power. Tradition, of course, does not make right of wrong, but we must be cautious when asked to embrace a new revelation that right has so long been wrong. There is no evidence that linkage was created and consistently maintained to stifle minority votes. Tradition speaks to us about its defining role--imparting its deep running sense that this is what judging is about. 32 LULAC, 999 F.2d at 872. In addition to such traditional concerns, the LULAC court correctly noted that maintaining linkage and shunning single-member districting actually favors minorities who may be concerned that their particular interests are not represented on the bench: 33 the subdistricting remedy sought by plaintiffs provides most judges with the same opportunity to ignore minority voters' interests without fear of political reprisal they would possess if elections were in fact dominated by racial bloc voting. 34