Court Opinion

ID: 9472355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:57:55.844233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:53.487139
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The district court made extensive findings of fact based on the parties’ eight volumes of evidentiary stipulations and additional testimonial evidence. This evidence demonstrates that DuPage County, located in the midst of one of the nation’s most diverse population centers, remains by design rather than by accident a sanctuary for the white and the affluent. The majority, however, has brushed aside the entire factual basis of this lawsuit. It has ignored the findings of the district court that policies of economic and racial discrimination in housing and practices of exclusionary zoning have fenced the poor and the non-white out of DuPage County. In fact, these policies and practices seem to have been so notorious that apparently no real estate developer has challenged them in unincorporated DuPage. The majority has eagerly seized upon this fact as the basis of its overly strict construction of the standing requirement to deny the plaintiffs access to the courts.
In addition, the majority opinion ignores the analysis of standing provided by the recent Supreme Court decision in Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 102 S.Ct. 1114, 71 L.Ed.2d 214 (1982). Havens Realty explicitly holds that an organization has standing to sue in its own right when the organization’s purposes and *818activities are frustrated by the defendants’ allegedly discriminatory practices. The majority’s interpretation of standing, on the other hand, serves to reward and protect those who are so successful in pursuing discriminatory and exclusionary policies as to chill the interest of commercial developers while presumably leaving vulnerable those whose success is less dramatic. As a result, the poor and the non-white are fenced not only out of DuPage County but also out of the federal courts.
I
The majority has summarily rejected, without conducting a sufficient review of the evidence, the district court’s findings, which firmly support standing here. The district court found that the defendants’ conduct and statements were the cause in fact of personal and specific injury to the plaintiffs. Judge Will based his conclusion that the plaintiffs had established the requisite case or controversy on his finding that
the evidence, direct and circumstantial, establishes that DuPage County and its responsible officials have knowingly engaged in a housing policy which is intended to and effectively has excluded plaintiffs and members of the plaintiff class from becoming residents of the County so that the County continues to have one of the highest per capita incomes in the United States and, at the same time, remains almost entirely white.
HOPE, Inc. v. The County of DuPage, No. 71 C 587, slip op. at 92-93 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 1, 1981) ["HOPE"]. This court is not confronted with the need to assume the truth of the plaintiffs’ factual allegations in order to determine whether the plaintiffs have standing.1 Rather, the plaintiffs have successfully proven in district court the facts on which their right to standing is based.2 A mere glance at the suggestive socio-economic context of this case casts the greatest doubt upon the premises underlying the majority’s analysis. A cursory look at the unfolding demographic data substantiates the existence and effect of the discriminatory practices and policies which were identified by the district court.3
Between 1950 and 1970, the population of DuPage County grew from 150,052 to 485,-181, and in 1970 there were 1,276 black persons residing in DuPage County households, representing an almost invisible 0.26% of the total household population of *819the County. HOPE, slip op. at 24-25.4 A 1973 DuPage County Regional Planning Commission report noted that the County’s miniscule percentage of blacks was “surprising” because of its close proximity to Chicago with its large black population. DuPage County, among the other rapidly growing counties of the Chicago metropolitan area, was uniquely the recipient of white persons migrating from Chicago. In fact, the Commission report indicated that between 1960 and 1970 migration accounted for 70.9% of the total population increase in DuPage County and that “[t]he County is in a prime location for receiving migrations from Chicago.” HOPE, slip op. at 26.
At the same.time, DuPage is, measured by per capita income, the fourth richest county in the United States. In 1970 of all the counties in the United States, DuPage had the lowest percentage of its population living at or below the poverty level, and it had the lowest percentage of inexpensive housing, both owner-occupied and rental, of any county in the eight-county Chicago metropolitan area. Between 1964 and 1970, jobs in the County exploded from 56,973 to 108,819. HOPE, slip op. at 27. However, 30.2% of those working in Du-Page in 1970 lived outside the County, the highest proportion of any of the six Illinois counties in the Chicago metropolitan area. In 1970 a substantial number of Chicago residents commuted daily to DuPage County to work. Five times as many blacks worked in DuPage County as lived there. HOPE, slip op. at 29.5
In 1942, the DuPage County Board created the DuPage County Housing Authority, the primary purpose of which was to encourage adequate housing for low-income occupants. Since 1942, the Housing Authority has not constructed any multiple-family housing projects in DuPage County. Had it done so, such projects would, of course, have been available to applicants of all races who met the maximum income qualifications. The district court found that the Housing Authority “enjoys the distinction of having done less for fewer people over a longer period of time than any other such authority.” HOPE, slip op. at 69.
The primary premise of the majority opinion is that “low-and moderate-cost housing is not and has not been profitable or economically feasible in [unincorporated] DuPage County,” slip op., supra, at 23, and that “the economics of the area housing market” are to blame for the lack of low-cost housing. Petition for Rehearing at 7. The majority thus indulges in its own entirely unwarranted fact-finding, in clear contradiction to the district court’s findings, without any support or explanation beyond the citation of unspecified “evidence in the stipulated materials.” Slip op., supra, at 23.
In fact, the evidence demonstrates that unincorporated DuPage County offers a potentially broad and diverse market for real estate development and that, absent some restraining factor such as the defendants’ discriminatory and exclusionary practices, the housing market would have been much more economically and racially diverse. DuPage County is, after all, a large suburban county — primarily residential but increasingly characterized by manufacturing, retail trade and service uses as well as marked by the remnants of agriculture. Approximately 209 square miles of the County are unincorporated, and 40% of the County’s total 338 square miles are subject to the County’s developmental control. Between 1967 and 1972 over 50% of all new *820housing units in the unincorporated areas were multi-family units.
The majority’s conclusion that DuPage’s racial and economic exclusiveness was merely the product of unbiased economic forces ignores the reality that, when the present case was filed in 1971, DuPage County already had a nearly completed large subsidized housing development, Mayslake Village, in an unincorporated area. These 433 subsidized units were for the elderly — thus not serving as a magnet for families with low income moving from other sections of the Chicago metropolitan area. Even more significantly perhaps, during the course of the district court proceedings in this suit and apparently as a result of pressure generated by it, the County approved rehabilitation of a number of existing housing units for low- and moderate-income individuals and construction of some federally subsidized units also in unincorporated areas. These units, however, are still primarily intended for the elderly. HOPE, slip op. at 69, 96; Stipulation of Evidence, Vol. VII at 2064-65, ¶ 1288. The very existence of such housing strongly suggests an economic demand for, and developers’ willingness to provide, other subsidized developments had these not been so firmly squelched by such powerful restraining factors as the policies of the County Board.
In fact, the defendants indicated their lack of confidence in the impartial forces of “the market” to keep out low-cost housing by requiring developers to represent at zoning proceedings that they would build only expensive housing units. In 84% of all applications for a zoning variance or special use permit submitted between June 1973 and April 1976 involving ten or more units, the price of the units was stated. The district court found that
the rental or sales prices were frequently discussed at Zoning Board hearings almost always in terms of the kinds of residents who could afford to pay them, whether they would be “high class,” “compatible” with existing residents, “very desirable” people, “a very fine group of people,” “in a fairly good economic strata,” etc. It is clear that applicants assured Zoning Board members in any way they could that tenants or owners in the units for which they were seeking a variation or special use permit would be well-to-do and similar or compatible with the existing residents who make DuPage County the fourth richest in the United States ans almost entirely white.
HOPE, slip op. at 80. Again suggesting that economic factors alone would not exclude low-cost housing, defendants’ experts testified that, “[fjrom the vantage point of a builder-developer, new housing construction is essentially the same in DuPage County as elsewhere in Illinois and the United States.” Stipulation of Evidence, Vol. VII at 2230, 2297, 11111562, 1660.
The majority asserts that the economics of DuPage County prevent individuals of low or moderate income from living in the unincorporated areas because such services as public transportation, convenient shopping and school opportunities are not found in rural areas. Slip op., supra, at n. 4. Aside from its failure to substantiate this conclusion with facts, the majority’s statement seems to ignore the logic that services required for rich and poor alike develop within a neighborhood or area after the need for such services arises. Schools, transportation and shopping centers do not exist in a population vacuum. If subsidized housing were permitted, appropriate services would follow soon thereafter.
The effective economic reality of the Du-Page County housing market is not to be found in any additional expense attaching to low-cost housing per se. Rather, the burden on a prospective developer, who had first purchased a site, developed plans and sought a zoning variance, would result from the inevitable denial of the variance, the cost in time and money of contesting that denial in protracted court litigation and the developer’s presumed loss of the good will of DuPage County authorities.
The majority opinion also relies heavily upon the Supreme Court’s statement in *821Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975), that the inability of those plaintiffs to find housing in Penfield, a suburb of Rochester, New York, was not the result of the defendants’ conduct but rather was a “consequence of the economics of the area housing market.” Warth, 422 U.S. at 506, 95 S.Ct. at 2209. Penfield and DuPage County are so different, however, as to make the application of the Warth statement to the DuPage facts wholly inappropriate. Penfield occupies only 36 square miles, and only 0.3% of the land available for residential construction was allocated to multi-family structures. In contrast, there are 209 square miles in unincorporated DuPage County and 50% of the new housing constructed there between 1967 and 1972 was multi-family units. Finally, there was subsidized housing for the elderly in DuPage County before 1971 and subsidized low- and moderate-income housing, primarily for the elderly, was built later during the pendency of this lawsuit. These projects were presumably acceptable to the defendants because they were not magnets for the non-white and for young families with children. But their very existence, which had no parallel in Warth, makes any application of Warth’s economic rationale unjustifiable.
II
In turning to examine specifically the application of the standing requirement to this case, I note most importantly that the organization, HOPE, stands on far firmer ground, with respect to the existence of a case or controversy, than did its counterpart in Warth. HOPE, Inc. is an Illinois not-for-profit corporation whose purposes are described in its Articles of Incorporation as:
To promote social situations which foster the health and welfare of the poor and underprivileged and in furtherance of this purpose, the corporation shall have the power to acquire improved residential property in order to make the same available for use as dwelling places for those families or individuals unable to obtain adequate housing due to financial hardship.
HOPE, slip op. at 36. As Judge Grant noted in the panel opinion in this case, HOPE’S explicit corporate purpose is to promote and to find adequate housing for individuals with low and moderate incomes. 717 F.2d 1061, 1073-74 (7th Cir.1983). HOPE refers families to the relatively few federally subsidized units in DuPage County and; until 1975, it provided the only low rent housing available in DuPage. HOPE, slip op. at 37-38. HOPE thus has standing in its own right and can allege injury to itself because its very corporate purpose of finding housing for low- and moderate-income individuals is directly frustrated by the defendants’ policies. As stipulated by the parties, “HOPE is successful in finding the needed housing in only a very small percentage of cases, for the housing simply does not exist in DuPage County.” Stipulation of Evidence, Vol. IV at 1347, 11821.
In Warth, on the other hand, the organizational plaintiff Metro-Act had, as its relatively diffuse purpose, “to alert ordinary citizens to problems of social concern; ... to inquire into the reasons for the critical housing shortage for low and moderate income persons in the Rochester area and to urge action on the part of citizens to alleviate the general housing shortage for low and moderate income persons.” 422 U.S. at 494, 95 S.Ct. at 2203. Unlike HOPE’S specific purpose and activity of seeking out low- and moderate-cost housing in DuPage County for its clients, Metro-Act had no such similarly focused purpose of its own — in Penfield or elsewhere for that matter — to support standing, nor did it undertake to find such housing for its clients. In fact, the Supreme Court never even discussed Metro-Act’s claim to standing as an organization in its own right.
The Court did, however, in Havens Realty, supra, analyze an organization’s standing to sue in its own right. In that case, the organization HOME alleged that the defendants’ steering practices had frustrated its efforts to find housing and to refer those whom.it counseled to equal access *822housing. In concluding that HOME had alleged adequate injury in fact to establish standing, the Court stated:
If, as broadly alleged, petitioners’ steering practices have perceptibly impaired HOME’S ability to provide counseling and referral services for low- and moderate-income homeseekers, there can be no question that the organization has suffered injury in fact. Such concrete and demonstrable injury to the organization’s activities — with the consequent drain on the organization’s resources— constitutes far more than simply a setback to the organization’s abstract social interests____
455 U.S. at 379, 102 S.Ct. at 1124. Further, the Court reiterated, citing Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 97 S.Ct. 555, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977), that the fact that HOME’S alleged injury was to its noneconomic, but specific, interest in encouraging open housing did not affect the nature of the injury suffered or deprive the organization of standing. Id. at 379 n. 20, 102 S.Ct. at 1124 n. 20.
The weakness of the majority’s position is revealed by its unconvincing attempt to distinguish Havens Realty. The majority undertakes this distinction only by pointing out that HOME had alleged specific instances of racial steering, while HOPE was unable to allege a denial of a specific zoning permit. The ability to allege or prove specific instances of discrimination, however, goes only to the plaintiffs’ ability to establish the merits of their case and not to a determination whether they have standing to bring the action. Nor is denial of a zoning permit by any means the only possible evidence of discrimination.
In the case before us, HOPE has alleged and, to the satisfaction of the district court, proven that the defendants intentionally attempted to exclude low- and moderate-income persons from residing in DuPage County. Planning for People Coalition v. DuPage County, Illinois, 70 F.R.D. 38, 47 (N.D.Ill.1976). HOPE’S reason for being is thus directly thwarted by the defendants’ illegal conduct. The district court detailed several instances of specific and particularized discriminatory activity which resulted in maintaining the DuPage County barriers against the poor and the non-white. The Havens Realty Court made it clear that even broad allegations of practices which impair an organization’s “ability to provide counseling and referral services for low- and moderate-income homeseekers” are enough to confer standing upon the organization seeking relief. 455 U.S. at 379, 102 S.Ct. at 1124.
The majority opinion also conflicts with the recent Seventh Circuit precedent of People Organized for Welfare and Employment Rights (P.O.W.E.R.) v. Thompson, 727 F.2d 167 (7th Cir.1984), which applied Havens Realty to P.O.W.E.R., an organization whose purpose was to improve conditions of the poor and unemployed by attempting to facilitate voter registration activities, which were actually conducted by others. This court said that, if P.O.W.E.R. had itself been attempting to register new voters, then anyone who had prevented it from conducting such registration would have caused injury in fact to P.O.W.E.R. “The injury brought about by a violation of law must, to support a federal court action, ... affect one’s possessions or bodily integrity or freedom of action ____” 727 F.2d at 171 (emphasis added). The very circumstances upon which this court relied in distinguishing P.O.W.E.R. from Havens Realty serve equally to distinguish HOPE both from P.O.W.E.R. and from Metro-Act in Warth and to establish the close parallel between HOPE and HOME in Havens Realty. HOPE itself actively seeks adequate housing for its low- and moderate-income clients, and HOPE’S purposes have been frustrated by the defendants’ actions. This circumstance demonstrates that it has suffered injury in fact and has standing to sue in its own right.
The fact is that HOPE is also much more analogous to the Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation, the developer-plaintiff which was granted standing to sue in Village of Arlington Heights v. Metrópoli*823tan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 97 S.Ct. 555, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977), than to Metro-Act in Warth. HOPE has, at times, renovated housing for low- and moderate-income individuals, but, even more importantly, it actively seeks housing for its clients. That is its very reason for being. It is an action agency confronting the very evil sought to be corrected by this lawsuit. The case for standing could hardly be clearer.
It is also clear that the individual plaintiffs, as well as HOPE in its representational capacity, have standing. HOPE’S low- and moderate-income directors actually sought housing in DuPage County, while each of the ten individual plaintiffs here, prior to the time of filing this lawsuit, had contacted HOPE for assistance in finding adequate housing in DuPage County. Through HOPE, five of the individual plaintiffs have found acceptable housing, while the others were, as of the date of the district court opinion of October 1, 1981, still seeking adequate housing. All the plaintiffs, except one, are or were residents of DuPage County. Some of the plaintiffs lived in the Chicago metropolitan area outside of DuPage County but worked in Du-Page and so sought housing which would be nearer their place of employment. The individual plaintiffs represent a cross-section of incomes which would qualify them for federal housing assistance. HOPE, slip op. at 2; Plaintiffs-appellees’ brief at 4-5. The individual plaintiffs have thus demonstrated particularized needs for adequate housing which could have been satisfied if the defendants had not barred suitable housing from the County. Instead, Du-Page County allowed some subsidized housing for elderly individuals but not for those with younger families.
In Warth, on the other hand, some of the individual plaintiffs were persons of low or moderate income living in the Rochester area; none of these had ever lived in Pen-field. These plaintiffs alleged that the challenged Penfield zoning ordinance increased the cost of housing there and thus precluded them from living in Penfield as they wished. But the Supreme Court noted, in denying those plaintiffs standing, that they had failed to establish that they would be able to afford the type of housing which would be constructed even if the zoning ordinance were changed. 422 U.S. at 506 and n. 16, 95 S.Ct. at 1123 and n. 16. In the case before us, however, the plaintiffs explicitly alleged and the district court found that they would qualify for the low- and moderate-income federally subsidized housing which they seek.
Certain other plaintiffs in Warth, who were taxpayers of the City of Rochester, alleged only that their Rochester taxes had been increased because of Penfield’s exclusionary practices — certainly a remote claim based on an conjectural chain of causation having no counterpart in the present case. In addition, Metro-Act had attempted to claim standing in its representational capacity because some of its members who lived in Penfield had been denied their associational right to live in an integrated community. The Supreme Court equated this claim with an attempt to raise putative rights of third parties and thus considered that the claim violated the prudential considerations implicated in a standing determination.
In rejecting the plaintiffs’ claim to standing here, the majority relies heavily upon the alleged lack in the casé before us of a specific project for low- or moderate-income residents in which the plaintiffs intended to live and which was thwarted by the defendants’ policies. The lack of a specific project, however, merely bespeaks the force and persuasiveness of the County’s discriminatory policy. As Judge Will found, the County’s unbending determination to exclude the poor from within its borders was too well understood by developers to induce even the most quixotic to attempt a lowrincome project there. “If [a specific project were required to establish standing], the more effective the implementation of a discriminatory policy, the less opportunity there would be to challenge it.” HOPE, slip op. at 95.
The majority here pays mere lip-service to the Supréme Court’s directive in Warth that its holding there does not mean
*824that the plaintiff who challenges a zoning ordinance or zoning practices must have a present contractual interest in a particular project. A particularized personal interest may be shown in various ways, which we need not undertake to identify in the abstract.
422 U.S. at 508 n. 18, 95 S.Ct. at 1123 n. 18. Instead, the majority transforms the Warth holding into an absolute requirement that the focus of a suit must be on a particular project. The majority also relies on Arlington Heights to establish the point that a specific project is required as the basis for standing. One of the plaintiffs in Arlington Heights, the Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation (“MHDC”), had indeed developed a specific project and was granted standing. According to the majority, therefore, the fact that no developer or builder had apparently proposed such a project to the DuPage County Zoning Board should serve as a bar to this and any other such litigation.
The facts of Arlington Heights, the only apposite Supreme Court.case in which a. plaintiff-developer had developed a project, are, however, somewhat unusual and merit consideration. In that case members of a religious order,, which owned 80 acres of land, decided to devote a portion of that land to low- and moderate-income housing. They sought out a nonprofit developer, MHDC, to develop plans for a suitable project, and they agreed to a 99-year lease with an accompanying sale agreement contingent upon MHDC’s securing zoning clearance and federal housing assistance. The Supreme Court held that for two reasons MHDC had standing to sue the township after zoning clearance was denied. First, MHDC had a particularized pecuniary interest in the project because of the funds which it had expended in developing the plans and conducting the studies for its zoning petition (even though it had not been required to pay the purchase price because of the contingent nature of the sale). Second, the Supreme Court emphasized that MHDC’s concern need not be based solely on its pecuniary interests.
It has long been clear that economic injury is not the only kind of injury that can support a plaintiff’s standing. MHDC is a nonprofit corporation. Its interest in building Lincoln Green stems not from a desire for economic gain, but rather from an, interest in making suitable low-cost housing available in areas where such housing is scarce. This is not mere abstract concern about a problem of general interest.
429 U.S. at 262-63, 97 S.Ct. at 562 (citations omitted). MHDC’s noneconomic concerns are quite similar to those of HOPE.
It is unrealistic to expect that a commercial developer would be willing to take the sorts of financial and other risks which MHDC took in order to establish integrated housing in Arlington Heights. Faced with what appears to be a strongly held and consistently adverse attitude, a developer will look elsewhere rather than accept the burdens not only of developing plans for a project which will probably never be approved but also of the inevitable and interminable lawsuit and of the intimidating loss of official goodwill. In Arlington Heights, not only was the developer a nonprofit corporation seeking the integration of housing, but the land owner had also disclaimed the usual commercial profit motive and had the explicit purpose of fostering low- and moderate-income housing. To require in other circumstances of exclusionary zoning practices that commercial developers step forward with a specific project as did MHDC in Arlington Heights is to close the door effectively on most future challenges. The economic reality of DuPage County is that commercial developers would have to accept the additional expense and risk of “buying” a lawsuit to establish their right to build low- and moderate-income housing in the County. In addition, they would presumably incur the not insignificant hostility of officialdom in DuPage. It is not to be expected that an altruistic developer will now step forward to undertake the thankless task of securing admission to DuPage County of the poor and the non-white, nor should we have to wait for one to do so.
*825Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, the district court in Warth had held that the plaintiffs lacked standing. Here, of course, the finder of fact arrived at the crucial conclusion that the plaintiffs in the instant case had suffered injury in fact and have met the prudential tests. Contrary to the majority’s depiction, the district court in the present case did not find standing based exclusively on the plaintiffs’ allegation of a conspiracy between the County and developers. Rather, the district court specifically found that the individual plaintiffs had established standing by alleging “facts indicating an intentional effort by the County to exclude low and moderate income persons from the County and thereby preclude blacks and other minorities from residing in DuPage County in' any substantial numbers....” Planning for People Coalition v. DuPage County, Illinois, 70 F.R.D. 38, 47 (N.D.Ill.1976). This determination of fact by the district court should be evaluated under the “clearly erroneous” standard of review. However, the majority has applied no such standard but has mistakenly concluded that these plaintiffs lack the requisite standing, despite the principles laid down in Warth, Arlington Heights and Havens Realty.
It is particularly unfortunate that the plaintiffs here have been denied their day in court on the merits since exclusionary practices in housing affect in a sometimes fundamental way equal opportunities in other areas of life. The courts of the Northern District of Illinois and this court have in recent years addressed racial discrimination in, for example, education, voting and employment in the Chicago area. It is frequently difficult, however, to address these other sorts of discrimination effectively in situations where housing may be segregated by race. Without coming to grips with housing, it is difficult to come to grips with anything else.
For example, in Rybicki v. State Board of Elections of Illinois, 574 F.Supp. 1147 (N.D.Ill.1983), the three-judge court addressed charges of racial segregation and infringement of associational rights by the drawing of state legislative districts which allegedly followed racial housing boundaries on the south and west sides of Chicago. To the extent a problem may have existed, it was a function of the starkly segregated housing of blacks in the City of Chicago. The same observation could also obviously be made about school segregation. See, e.g., Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974) (invalidating interdistrict remedy for school segregation which required bridging of boundary lines between city and suburban school districts); Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973) (respondent school board argued that racial or ethnic concentrations in the schools were result of residential patterns and not of purposeful segregative policies).
Exclusionary housing and zoning practices are surely not unique to DuPage County. But the federal courts must have the will and the determination to confront such practices wherever they arise. To erect an unnecessary and unjustifiable “standing” barrier here is to abdicate dangerously our responsibility to stand against racial and economic discrimination in all its forms.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

. In many cases involving standing issues, the district court had dismissed the suit for lack of standing and the plaintiffs never had the opportunity to establish the truth of their allegations. See, e.g., Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975).

. Under Rule 52(a), Fed.R.Civ.P., a finding of fact by a district court cannot be set aside on appeal unless that finding is clearly erroneous. As the Supreme Court has noted, this rule
recognizes and rests upon the unique opportunity afforded the trial court judge to evaluate the credibility of witnesses and to weigh the evidence. Because of the deference due the trial judge, unless an appellate court is left with the "definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed,” it must accept the trial court’s findings.
Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, Inc., 456 U.S. 844, 855, 102 S.Ct. 2182, 2188, 72 L.Ed.2d 606 (1982) (quoting United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 542, 92 L.Ed. 746 (1948)) (citations and footnote omitted). See also Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 287, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 1789, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982). This same standard applies, at least in this circuit, when the district court’s findings are based largely, but not exclusively, on stipulations of evidence, as was the case here. City of Mishawaka, Indiana v. American Electric Power Co., 616 F.2d 976, 979-80 (7th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 49 U.S. 1096, 101 S.Ct. 892, 66 L.Ed.2d 824 (1981).

. Statistical demonstrations have an important role in the proof of various kinds of discrimination, including discrimination in employment and jury selection. “Statistics showing racial or ethnic imbalance are probative in a case such as this one only because such imbalance is often a telltale sign of purposeful discrimination." International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 339-40 n. 20, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 1856 n. 20, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1977). The statistics of DuPage County are also probative of the policies and practices of the County and support the inferences drawn by the district court. The majority, in contrast, has failed to address, let alone refute in any way, the logical inferences suggested by these data.

. An immaterial variance from these figures appears in the 1970 Census Report. According to that report, DuPage County had a total population of 491,882, of which 1,652 or 0.34% were black. Stipulation of Evidence, Vol. I at 259, 1194, H(7).

. Many of these same patterns continued in the decade of the 1970’s. In 1980, DuPage had a population of 658,835, an increase of 35% over the 1970 figure, with the black population constituting 1.17% of the total population. DuPage had the highest median gross rent ($322), the highest per capita income and the highest median family income in Illinois. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, County and City Data Book: 1983, 130-57.