Opinion ID: 2546657
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Federal Equal Protection Claims

Text: A law that is race-neutral on its face nonetheless violates the Federal Equal Protection Clause if as applied it has a disparate impact on a racial group, and if that disparate impact can be traced to a discriminatory purpose. [28] The plaintiffs conceded below and concede on appeal that the statutes and regulations governing the allocation of certified and uncertified police are racially neutral. [29] Therefore, given their concession of the laws' facial neutrality, to prevail on their federal equal protection claim, plaintiffs had to show both that (1) as applied, the statutes and regulations controlling the allocation of law enforcement services in Alaska disproportionately and negatively impact Alaska Natives in their receipt of law enforcement services, and that (2) this disproportionate impact stems from an intent to discriminate against Alaska Natives in the allocation of law enforcement services. Absent a discriminatory purpose, a law that is race-neutral on its face does not violate the Federal Equal Protection Clause, even if the impact is disparate. [30] Our inquiry here focuses on the second element, the requirement that a claimant establish discriminatory purpose or intent. We first address the plaintiffs' claim that the current police allocation system is traceable to a prior de jure discriminatory system. In some cases, neutral policies traceable to a prior de jure discriminatory system can, in essence, serve as a proxy for discriminatory intent attributable to the challenged policies (on the theory that the past system has not been sufficiently dismantled). [31] We conclude below that the superior court did not err in holding that the present system is not traceable to a prior de jure discriminatory system of law enforcement. Plaintiffs additionally argue that the evidence presented at the summary judgment stage and at trial established a discriminatory purpose or intent attributable to the present system. Because we conclude that plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a discriminatory purpose and therefore cannot succeed on their federal equal protection claim, we affirm the superior court's dismissal of this claim.
Invoking United States v. Fordice , [32] plaintiffs contend that the state's present system of allocating law enforcement services is traceable to a prior de jure discriminatory system. [33] The parties refer to this as plaintiffs' Fordice claim. Fordice offers significant litigation benefits to a plaintiff who shows that present policies are traceable to a prior de jure system, because it relieves the plaintiff of having to prove that a discriminatory purpose can be attributed to the defendant's actions. [34] After trial, the superior court found that the State of Alaska, when creating its law enforcement system after statehood, did not adopt an allegedly de jure discriminatory pre-statehood law enforcement system (i.e., the former Indian Police program operated by the federal government or any other pre-statehood program). The court also found that the state did not establish its own de jure discriminatory system. The court therefore rejected plaintiffs' equal protection theory that the state's law enforcement system is traceable to a prior de jure discriminatory system.
In Fordice, the United States Supreme Court considered whether Mississippi had satisfied its obligation under Brown v. Board of Education [35] to dismantle de jure segregation in its public university system. [36] Mississippi acknowledged that its laws formerly mandated a segregated, dual educational system, but argued that it had reached full compliance with the law and had eliminated its prior de jure system. [37] The Court determined that merely dismantling a de jure segregated admissions policy was insufficient to eliminate a prior de jure segregated dual educational system. [38] The Court explained: [A] State does not discharge its constitutional obligations until it eradicates policies and practices traceable to its prior de jure system that continue to foster segregation. Thus we have consistently asked whether existing racial identifiability is attributable to the State ... and examined a wide range of factors to determine whether the State has perpetuated its formerly de jure segregation in any facet of its institutional system. [39] Fordice does not require a showing of present intent to discriminate if a claimant can show that the current system is traceable to a prior de jure system. [40] Given the difficulty of proving discriminatory intent, [41] this benefit may be important in a given case. As the Court noted, if challenged policies are not rooted in the prior dual system, the question becomes whether the fact of racial separation establishes a new violation of the Fourteenth Amendment under traditional principles. [42]
In weighing the state's argument that Fordice does not apply to this case, we first consider whether it matters that there was a genuine factual dispute about whether there was a de jure race-based system of law enforcement in Alaska before statehood. It was undisputed in Fordice that Mississippi previously had officially operated a racially segregated university system. The dispute in Fordice was whether Mississippi had dismantled its prior system. But here there was no prior determination that law enforcement in the decades before Alaska statehood was de jure race-based, [43] and the evidence is not so one-sided that we must hold as a matter of law that the federal government or the Territory of Alaska operated de jure race-based law enforcement programs in Alaska in the years before statehood. The plaintiffs contend on appeal that evidence of a race-based dual system of law enforcement is undisputed. To the contrary, we think the evidence is in dispute and that the plaintiffs overstate their case. The burden-shifting discussed in Fordice does not apply if the predecessor program was not de jure discriminatory. There is a second impediment to applying Fordice here. The State of Alaska did not operate the pre-statehood programs to which plaintiffs would trace the origins of the state's present system. Plaintiffs have not persuaded us that pre-statehood programs conducted by the federal or territorial governments should be treated as though the State of Alaska operated them. These are distinct governmental entities. The text of Fordice repeatedly refers to the State of Mississippi's prior system, [44] implying that tracing requires that the present government have purposefully discriminated in the past. This would be a logical requirement, because de jure discrimination requires an intent to discriminate. [45] The analytical benefit Fordice confers makes sense in context of a state program challenged on the theory it is traceable to the state's prior, intentionally discriminatory program. In effect, Fordice shifts the burden to the state to prove that the discriminatory intent it previously held no longer exists. But placing that burden on a government is unwarranted if it was a different government that previously harbored the discriminatory intent. [46] We do not read Fordice to reach so far. Another Supreme Court decision implies that this burden-shifting is justified by the state's ability to explain that its actions were not motivated by segregative intent. [47] This rationale would not apply to intentions previously motivating a different government. There is a third problem with applying Fordice here. Fordice concerned a state's educational system. As one court has noted, Fordice has not been applied outside the context of education. [48] We cannot say whether the Supreme Court would distinguish between educational programs and law enforcement services per se. But we perceive legally significant differences between programs that are ineluctably shaped by the physical realities of transportation, time, distance, and weather, and programs that can be readily and subtly molded by political choice hiding discriminatory intentions. The Court in Fordice seemed to acknowledge that student attendance could be affected by many factors other than state policies; the Court seemed to distinguish between race-neutral factors and factors that might still be affected by the state's policy choices. [49] It also required that policies traceable to the de jure system must be reformed to the extent practicable and consistent with sound educational practices. [50] The majority opinion noted that if traceable policies are without sound educational justification and can be practicably eliminated, the state has not proved that it dismantled its prior system. [51] These passages remind us that factors that are inherently race-neutral are distinguishable from factors more easily influenced by policy. We think that decisions to post Alaska State Troopers in places that are on the road system or in places that are transportation hubs are materially different in character from those made by Mississippi in operating its post-secondary education system. We conclude that the Fordice traceability analysis does not apply here, and that a violation of federal equal protection can only be shown under traditional principles. [52] Because the trooper allocation statutes and regulations are facially race-neutral, these traditional principles dictate that, in order to succeed on that claim, plaintiffs must show a government intent to discriminate. [53]
Even though Fordice does not apply, evidence of pre-statehood practices and the origins of the state's present system remains relevant to equal protection analysis of plaintiffs' third cause of action (claiming racial discrimination) under traditional principles. [54] Intent to discriminate may be proved by circumstantial evidence [55] and historical background ... is one evidentiary source in determining the existence of discriminatory purpose, particularly if it reveals a series of official actions taken for invidious purposes. [56] The superior court allowed plaintiffs to proceed to trial with their state law claim that the state intentionally used race in designing its own system of law enforcement. After trial, the superior court ruled against plaintiffs on this claim, ultimately finding that plaintiffs had not established that in creating the VPSO program, or in creating any predecessors to that program, the State established a system of law enforcement in which a person's race or a community's racial composition were determinative factors in the type of law enforcement services to be provided. For purposes of our analysis here, we assume that before Alaska became a state, law enforcement services provided in Alaska by the federal government were race-based. The superior court found that when it was in effect, the Indian Police program operated by the federal government before statehood was a race-based system of law enforcement. The court seems to have found that the program ended in 1907, but that equivalent federal programs may have continued into the 1930s. The court, however, citing the federal government's trust responsibility to Indians, made no finding that the federal race-based programs constituted illegal discrimination. The court did find that there was no evidence that a post-Indian Police and pre-statehood U.S. Marshals program was explicitly race-based and also found that plaintiffs had not proved their claim that the state adopted the pre-statehood Indian Police program following statehood. We do not need to decide whether the federal programs were also programs of the Territory of Alaska, because the ultimate questions are whether the State of Alaska intentionally created, and is presently operating, a discriminatory system. As the superior court observed mid-trial, the evidence on these questions was circumstantial. Much of the trial court evidence at the core of the plaintiffs' claims of an intentionally discriminatory system of law enforcement related to whether the state's current VPSO and VPO programs are traceable to a pre-statehood system. Plaintiffs regard programs such as the VPSO program as state-sponsored substitutes for law enforcement by full-fledged police officers, and interpret evidence about the creation of these programs as revealing an intention to discriminate against Alaska Natives and residents of remote communities. They argued below that the Supreme Court's use of words such as traceable and derived in Fordice indicates that Fordice does not necessarily requir[e] ... an absolute lineup of causality from earlier programs to later ones. [57] They then argued that a single model of a segregated system for providing law enforcement services has existed in Alaska since the 1800s. They distinguished the VPSO program from a mere desire to hire Alaska Natives as state troopers. They argued that the state is creating entirely separate programs to provide what are basically the same government services and constructing those separate programs in racial terms which was the model that had been set out with the Indian police. The state asserts on appeal that these programs (1) do not discriminate against Alaska Natives; (2) increase the quality of law enforcement and other public safety measures in the villages; and (3) supplement law enforcement provided by full-fledged police officers. After prompting from the superior court, the plaintiffs conceded at trial that there were no documents where [the state] specifically said ... we had this Indian police model a few decades ago, why don't we replicate it. The plaintiffs argued at trial that the VPSO program was traceable to the Indian Police program because of what they called numerous similarities between the programs. They emphasized that in both programs, non-Native superiors directed the Native law enforcement officers, there was a regional hub system, and the officers had limited authority. The plaintiffs argued that law enforcement in Alaska has been tinkered with over time, but that it's basically the identical system. In response to the superior court's questions about any evidence of the link between the Indian police and the marshals and the state programs that were developed after statehood, counsel for the plaintiffs responded that all we have ... on that is circumstantial evidence. The evidence shows that there are many differences, as well as similarities, between the Indian Police and the VPSOs. The Indian Police were clothed, paid and guided by military and territorial authorities and the VPSOs are clothed and guided by the Alaska State Troopers. The Indian Police wore and the VPSOs wear unique, government-provided uniforms. The Indian Police were paid from different funding sources within the federal government, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Treasury Department. The VPSOs are paid with state funds that pass through Native regional nonprofit corporations. There was evidence the duties of the Indian Police were defined by the territorial governor. The VPSOs are guided by the troopers in law enforcement matters, and by the nonprofit corporations in all other matters. The Indian Police were exclusively composed of Alaska Native officers. There is no ethnicity requirement to become a VPSO, and there are non-Native VPSOs. [58] The subjects of law enforcement by the Indian Police were exclusively Alaska Natives. There is no racial or ethnic jurisdictional restriction on VPSOs, [59] although almost all VPSOs are stationed in places that have a population that is majority-Native. The Indian Police provided only law enforcement. VPSOs are trained in and provide, among other services, law enforcement, search and rescue, emergency medical treatment, fire safety, and water and boating safety. Based on this evidence, the superior court found in its oral findings at the end of plaintiffs' case-in-chief and again in its written findings after trial that the VPSO program was not traceable to the pre-statehood Indian Police program. The superior court emphasized the considerably broader duties VPSOs have as compared to the duties of the Indian Police. It noted that while membership in the Indian Police was limited to Alaska Natives, the VPSO program has no ethnic or racial requirement for entry. It also explained that some VPSOs are stationed in places where the majority of the population is non-Native, while Indian Police could only legally serve in predominantly Native communities. The court found that the establishment of the VPSO program was based on the advice of knowledgeable people in the field of law enforcement and... was not an effort by the State of Alaska to resurrect an old model that had been in place from the late 1800s to early 1900. The record convinces us that the superior court did not clearly err in finding that the state did not adopt the federal government's pre-statehood de jure race-based Indian Police program. Credible evidence supports the superior court's findings. We also conclude that the superior court did not err in rejecting plaintiffs' claim that the present system is traceable to post-statehood race-based antecedents. Plaintiffs contend that the superior court altogether failed to address this issue. Although the court's written decision did not expressly find that the present system was not traceable to an earlier state system, it expressly rejected the factual underpinnings for plaintiffs' claim of traceability. Having noted the traceability claim and then made its findings, the superior court at least implicitly addressed the issue. We therefore discern no analytical error on the superior court's part. And because we concluded above that Fordice does not apply to this case, the traceability issue has no special importance. To establish a discriminatory purpose in this case, plaintiffs had to demonstrate that the State of Alaska was motivated by discriminatory intent in creating a race-based system. Plaintiffs could not rely on intent attributable to federal or territorial officials. The traceability issue was therefore subsumed in plaintiffs' efforts to prove that the state was motivated by an intention to discriminate. The superior court considered the evidence potentially probative of that claim, and discussed much of it in detail in explaining why it was ruling against the plaintiffs. Because the superior court's findings are not clearly erroneous, we conclude that the historical evidence does not prove the existence of a discriminatory intent on the state's part, especially since no series of official actions taken for invidious purposes has been revealed. [60]
In granting summary judgment to the state on the federal equal protection claim asserted in plaintiffs' third cause of action, the superior court concluded that the plaintiffs have not offered evidence that any disparate impact of the admittedly facially-neutral standards for allocating certified police officers arises from an actual present intent to discriminate against Alaska Natives. Plaintiffs argue on appeal that they submitted abundant, uncontradicted evidence proving precisely to the contrary. They contend that, given the uncontradicted record and undisputed facts, we should rule as a matter of law for the plaintiffs on this claim. The state denies any intent to discriminate against Alaska Natives in allocating law enforcement services. It contends that the plaintiffs conceded more than once that state officials bore no discriminatory intent and were operating with the best of intentions. To be entitled to summary judgment, a movant must demonstrate that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. [61] Plaintiffs' contention that the evidence supporting this claim is undisputed or uncontradicted is unwarranted. Most of the evidence they rely on was also offered at trial to support their state law claim that the state intentionally discriminates against Alaska Natives in allocating law enforcement services. Plaintiffs primarily rely on what they say is evidence of past discriminatory intent and the adoption or establishment of a system of allocating law enforcement services that discriminates based on race. But as the superior court observed, the contentions of past discrimination and the adoption or establishment of a discriminatory system form the basis for the plaintiffs' second cause of actiontheir Fordice -based claim that the state intentionally adopted or established a prior de jure race-based system for allocating law enforcement services and continues to operate that allegedly race-based dual system. Plaintiffs proceeded to trial on that cause of action, and lost, so it cannot be said that the evidence of historical discriminatory intent is undisputed. Plaintiffs' claim necessarily rests on the theory that the state relied on the availability of VPOs and VPSOs in deciding where to station troopers. They assume that if there were no VPOs or VPSOs, the state would allocate trooper services more favorably to Alaska Native villages. But if the allocation of trooper services is not discriminatory in the first place, the Equal Protection Clause would not entitle plaintiffs to a more favorable allocation of trooper services. There was evidence at trial that in allocating trooper services, the state did not rely on the availability of VPOs or VPSOs to alter trooper assignments. The superior court found that the VPO and VPSO programs were supplements to, rather than substitutes for, trooper services. Likewise, plaintiffs' contention that there is a dual system of law enforcement assumes that the state treats VPOs and VPSOs as alternatives to troopers. But credible evidence to the contrary supports the trial court's post-trial findings that those programs supplement the troopers and are not meant to be substitutes for trooper services. Plaintiffs' contentions ultimately also turn on evidence that the response times of troopers to incidents in Native villages, most of which are not accessible to the troopers by road from their hub posts, are greater than in locations on the road system. But those differences would not be legally significant for equal protection purposes unless the villages are similarly situated to on-road communities. The superior court's post-trial decision found that they are not. We therefore reject plaintiffs' contention that the evidence was so compelling that they were entitled to judgment as a matter of law on this federal claim. We recognize that when summary judgment was granted to the state on this claim, some evidence potentially supported the dismissed claim. Glenn Godfrey, then Director of the Division of Alaska State Troopers, stated in an affidavit that decisions about trooper location are not and have never been made because of the racial, ethnic or cultural make-up of the community. But he also explained that trooper allocation decisions are based on the need for the position, the funding available to the division, the availability of other law enforcement services, the geographic location and transportation and communication services in communities, and the ability of positions to be mobile and flexible so as to provide assistance to other areas of the state if needed. (Emphasis added.) The emphasized reference could arguably be read in isolation, at least at the summary judgment stage, to imply that VPSOs were treated as providing substitute law enforcement services in Native villages and that the state took VPSO availability into account when it allocated trooper law enforcement services. The frailty of the probative value of this isolated reference would normally render it insufficient to create a genuine factual dispute, but given the extreme difficulty of proving discriminatory intent [62] it would arguably be sufficient in this case. Nonetheless, the superior court's rejection of the identical state racial discrimination claim after trial makes it unnecessary to decide whether it was error to grant summary judgment to the state on the federal claim asserted in the third cause of action. The Alaska Constitution's guarantee of equal protection is at least as protective as the Federal Constitution's corresponding guarantee. [63] The superior court's rejection of plaintiffs' state claim after a trial on the merits establishes the harmlessness of any possible error in granting summary judgment to the state on the identical federal claim. [64] Plaintiffs do not contend that they might have offered any additional evidence had the federal claim gone to trial, or that a different standard would have permitted them to succeed on their federal claim at trial even though they did not prevail on their state claim. Granting summary judgment on that claim therefore did not prejudice plaintiffs. [65]
Plaintiffs also contend that because they established a prima facie case of racial discrimination, it was error not to impose the burden of persuasion on the state. [66] They rely on two United States Supreme Court school segregation decisions to support their contention that the superior court should have put the burden on the state to justify its conduct. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the Court explained that where it is possible to identify a white school or a Negro school simply by reference to the racial composition of teachers and staff, the quality of school buildings and equipment, or the organization of sports activities, a prima facie case of violation of substantive constitutional rights under the Equal Protection Clause is shown. [67] In Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, the Court identified this quotation from Swann as defining a history of segregation. [68] The Court explained in Keyes that once a plaintiff has made out a prima facie case of a violation of substantive constitutional rights, the burden shifts to the state to justify its conduct. [69] To satisfy that burden, the Court said that it is not enough... that the school authorities rely upon some allegedly logical, racially neutral explanation for their actions. Their burden is to adduce proof sufficient to support a finding that segregative intent was not among the factors that motivated their actions. [70] Plaintiffs rely on Keyes's statement that a finding of intentionally segregative school board actions in a meaningful portion of a school system ... creates a presumption that other segregated schools within the system are not adventitious. [71] The plaintiffs argue that they made out a prima facie showing of a violation of substantive constitutional rights because they demonstrated a history of segregation in the provision of law enforcement services in Alaska, and because today it is still easy to distinguish those law enforcement programs intended for Native communities from those intended for non-Native communities. They argue that the vast majority of VPSOs are Native [72] and that troopers have better equipment, more training, and greater authority than VPSOs. The state responds by arguing that under Keyes, the burden-shifting only occurs if the government has engaged in intentional segregation. [73] It contends that the State of Alaska has not intentionally discriminated against Alaska Natives in providing law enforcement services. The state also argues that Keyes does not apply to the present fact scenario: To compare the state's allocation of law enforcement resources to a `practice of concentrating Negroes in certain schools' is not only misplaced, it is ludicrous. [74] Plaintiffs are incorrect in assuming that they made out a prima facie case of discrimination based on race. For the reasons we discussed above in Parts III.B.2 and 3, any pre-statehood discriminatory intentions motivating the federal government in implementing the old Indian Police program or other pre-statehood federal programs are not to be attributed to the State of Alaska. And given the facial neutrality of the state laws and policies that govern the activity that is at the core of this casethe allocation of trooper servicesplaintiffs did not make out a prima facie case of racial discrimination by the state. We therefore conclude that the burden-shifting discussed in Keyes does not apply. The superior court did not err by failing to shift the burden to the state.
Plaintiffs also contend that the superior court committed legal error by adopting the state's three-part test for determining whether law enforcement was racially based. [75] But we do not read the court's decision as adopting a three-part test; the cited passage of the court's post-trial findings simply discusses evidence that supports the superior court's ultimate conclusion that the state did not create a race-based system of law enforcement. The court was there permissibly distinguishing the VPSO program from the pre-statehood federal programs on which plaintiffs relied in attempting to prove their de jure claim. Plaintiffs also argue that it was error for the superior court in Paragraph 111 of its post-trial decision to require plaintiffs to show that race was a determinative factor for the state's action. The superior court, addressing the VPSO program, there concluded: But Plaintiffs have not established that in creating the VPSO program, or in creating any predecessors to that program, the State established a system of law enforcement in which a person's race or a community's racial composition were determinative factors in the type of law enforcement services to be provided. (Emphasis added.) Citing Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., [76] the plaintiffs argue that they only needed to prove that a discriminatory purpose was a motivating factor, not a determinative factor. The state responds that the plaintiffs did not prove that race was even a motivating factor in the state's development of its law enforcement programs. The Supreme Court explained in Personnel Administrator v. Feeney that even though race does not have to be the determinative factor in a governmental decision for a court to find discriminatory intent, the government must have selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at least in part `because of,' not merely `in spite of,' its adverse effects upon an identifiable group. [77] We conclude that although it would have been error to apply the determinative factor standard to the ultimate questionwhether the allocation of law enforcement services by the troopers was racially motivatedany possible error here was harmless because plaintiffs failed to prove intent under the correct standard. That VPSO services were mainly available in off-road communities that were predominantly Alaska Native does not establish that the allocation of trooper services was racially motivated. It simply reflects demographic reality in Alaska, as do the comments of the creators of the VPO and VPSO programs. Recognition by thoughtful state officials that Alaska Natives are the dominant demographic group residing in rural Alaska, and would be most of the recipients of the proposed supplemental law enforcement services, does not prove that race was a motivation for their decisions. Nor does it prove that they sought to develop a dual law enforcement system, much less that they wished to provide separate and substitute law enforcement services in off-road communities. Instead, the evidence permits a logical conclusion that the state developed its system of rural law enforcement based on financial and geographical constraints, and an evaluation of crime rates in those locations. Likewise, we are unpersuaded by plaintiffs' assertion that the superior court erred in assuming that the plaintiffs were required to show that state officials acted on the basis of hostility or racial disfavor toward Alaska Natives in order to show intentional racial discrimination. They base this argument on their contention that uncontradicted evidence shows that the state intentionally operates separate policing programs for Native villages. That Native villages are the primary beneficiaries of the VPO and VPSO programs does not compel a conclusion that the state intends to discriminate against Native villages; it only establishes that villages with those programs are provided services that other communities do not receive. The real question here is whether the state's allocation of law enforcement services by APSC-certified police officers was motivated by a discriminatory purpose. As to that question, the evidence produced at trial does not establish that the superior court clearly erred in finding that it was not.