Court Opinion

ID: 9427288
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:20.038313+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:05.942333
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
I agree with the majority’s decision not to reach the Voting Rights Act question, since it was not presented to either of the courts below. I also agree with the analysis of our past decisions found in Part II of Mr. Justice White’s opinion. I cannot agree, however, that the actions of the Dallas City Council are distinguishable from those of the local governing body in East Carroll Parish School Bd. v. Marshall, 424 U. S. 636 (1976). I therefore conclude that the plan ordered by the District Court here must be evaluated in accordance with the federal common law of remedies applicable to judicially devised reapportionment plans.
I
In East Carroll Parish School Bd. v. Marshall, supra, suit against the parish (county) was initially brought by a white resident who claimed that population disparities among the wards of the parish unconstitutionally denied him an equal vote in elections for members of the school board and the police jury, the governing body of the parish. Following a *551finding of unconstitutionality, the District Court adopted a plan submitted by the police jury, which called for at-large elections of both bodies. Two years later (after the 1970 census), in response to the court’s direction, the at-large plan was resubmitted by the police jury. Respondent Marshall then intervened, arguing that the at-large elections would dilute the Negro vote in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The District Court again accepted the police jury plan, but the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that multimember districts were unconstitutional.
Although we did not reach the constitutional ground relied on by the Court of Appeals, we sustained its judgment.. We concluded that the District Court had abused its equitable discretion in not requiring the division of the parish into single-member wards:
“We have frequently reaffirmed the rule that when United States district courts are put to the task of fashioning reapportionment plans to supplant concededly invalid state legislation, single-member districts are to be preferred absent unusual circumstances.” 424 U. S., at 639.
It is plain from the foregoing that we treated the plan submitted by the local legislative body in East Carroll as a judicially devised plan, to which the federal common law of remedies developed in reapportionment cases was applicable. It is equally plain that we did not treat the police jury’s submission as a “legislatively enacted” plan, which would only have had to meet the strictures of the Constitution and would not necessarily have been subject to evaluation under the more stringent standards applicable to court-devised plans. See Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S. 407, 414-415 (1977). Indeed, in rejecting the argument of the United States (appearing as amicus curiae) that the East Carroll plan was subject to the preclearance procedure of § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we expressly noted that the police jury “did not have the authority to reapportion itself,” and that the plan, though sub*552mitted by the police jury, was a “court-ordered pla[n] resulting from equitable jurisdiction over the adversary proceedings.” 424 U. S., at 638-639, n. 6.
There is no meaningful distinction between the facts here and the facts in East Carroll. Like the police jury in East Carroll, the City Council of Dallas did not act pursuant to any state enabling legislation governing the procedures for reapportioning itself when it first proposed the eight/three plan to the District Court in January 1975. Nor did it act pursuant to any state-derived authority when it “enacted” the plan following the District Court’s first approval of it in March 1975. Under the terms of its Charter, the Dallas City Council could reapportion itself only by a popular referendum. See Tex. Const., Art. XI, § 5; Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 1170 (Yernon Supp. 1978). The Council unquestionably failed to comply with the existing state procedures for enacting a reapportionment plan; indeed, the District Court itself noted that, were the Dallas City Council not responding to a judicial finding of unconstitutionality, it would have been acting unlawfully in unilaterally reapportioning itself. 399 F. Supp. 782, 800 (ND Tex. 1975).
That this plan was not devised by the City Council in the usual course of its legislative responsibilities is further evidenced by the fact that the Council told a group of Mexican-American citizens, who wished to present for the Council’s deliberations an alternative, single-member district plan, that they were in the “wrong forum” and should go to federal court. App. 43-44. It seems clear that the eight/three plan was proposed less as a matter of legislative judgment than as a response by a party litigant to the court’s invitation to aid in devising a plan. Indeed, the District Court itself appeared at times to regard the eight/three plan as a court-devised plan in which at-large voting had to be justified by special and unique circumstances. See ante, at 543 (opinion of White, J.).
*553It is suggested that the City Council here, unlike the police jury in East Carroll, purported to reapportion itself when it first submitted the eight/three plan. See ante, at 545 (opinion of White, J.). But that simply is not the case. This plan was initially proposed not in the form of a formal, binding enactment but merely as an expression of the Council’s “intention.” App. 188. The Council did not even bother to go through the formality of enacting a supposedly binding ordinance until after the District Court, following a full hearing, indicated that it approved of the plan as a remedy for the constitutional violations; the procedures followed prior to the time when the District Court ordered implementation of the eight/three plan, moreover, were insufficient under state law validly to change the structure of the Council.
While our past decisions have held that a legislatively enacted reapportionment plan is the preferred response to a judicial finding of unconstitutional apportionment, I do not believe that these cases contemplated that a legislature could meet this responsibility — and thereby avoid the requirements applicable to court-devised plans — by making a submission not in accordance with valid state procedures governing legislative enactments.1 If the plan submitted in East Carroll was properly regarded as a judicially devised plan, *554then the plan before us today must also be so regarded, and I see no reason to depart from the clear implications of this unanimous decision of the Court rendered only two Terms ago. I therefore conclude that the Court of Appeals properly evaluated this plan under the standards of the federal common law, which has for years recognized that multimember districts and at-large voting are presumptively disfavored.
II
Even if this plan were properly to be viewed as a “legislatively enacted” plan, however, the majority’s apparent assumption that it represents a proper remedy would nonetheless be troubling. Where the very nature of the underlying violation is dilution of the voting power of a racial minority resulting from the effects of at-large voting in a particular political community, I believe that it is inappropriate either for the local legislative body or a court to respond with more of the same.
Although we have refrained from holding that multi-member districts are unconstitutional per se, the presumption in favor of single-member districts as a matter of federal remedial law is a strong one. See, e, g., Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690 (1971); Connor v. Williams, 404 U. S. 549, 551 (1972); Chapman v. Meier, 420 U. S. 1, 16-19 (1975). We have repeatedly explained this preference by virtue of the fact that multimember districts “tend to submerge electoral minorities and overrepresent electoral majorities.” Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S., at 415; accord, Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124, 158-159 (1971). See also Chapman v. Meier, supra, at 16.
In the instant case, it is essentially undisputed that the use of a multimember district (the city of Dallas) for the at-large election of all City Council members had “submerged” an electoral minority, the Negro voters of Dallas. In this respect the case is unlike East Carroll, where the original electoral scheme was invalidated solely on the ground of mal-*555apportionment and where the “racial dilution” challenge was raised only in objection to the proposed remedy. Multi-member districts, which are disfavored as court-devised remedies because of their “tendency” or potential to create racial dilution, should a fortiori be disfavored when they are proposed to cure a proved use of a “multi-member . . . scheme ... to minimize or cancel out the voting strength of racial . . . elements of the voting population.” Fortson v. Dorsey, 379 U. S. 433, 439 (1965).2
Based on respondents’ proof of a diluting effect on Negro voting strength in Dallas — and of the long history of de jure discrimination contributing to it — the District Court held the Dallas scheme to be unconstitutional. Although the Council did not challenge the finding that the at-large election of all its members was unconstitutional, the plan it submitted to the District Court replicated the offending feature of its original scheme by providing for the at-large election of three Council members. To put the burden on respondents to prove that the submission, insofar as it perpetuates at-large voting for Council members, is as unconstitutional as the original plan seems contrary to logic and common sense. I cannot agree that either the Constitution or the remedial principles of equity require such a result.
For both of these reasons, I believe that the Court of Appeals correctly held that the use of at-large voting for City Council members in the city of Dallas should not have been approved as part of the remedy in this case by the District Court. I therefore dissent.

I do not agree with my Brother Powell that Burns v. Richardson, 384 II. S. 73 (1966), stands for the proposition that any legislative submission whatsoever should be treated as a “legislative plan.” In Burns, the very mechanism by which changes in apportionment could be made under state law had been found by the District Court to be designed to freeze existing unconstitutional apportionments and had thus been held unconstitutional in its own right. 238 F. Supp. 468, 472 (Haw. 1965). Here, by contrast, there was a lawful mechanism available for modifying the apportionment under the Dallas City Charter: the drafting of a proposal by the Council and its submission to the voters of the city at a popular referendum. If this process could not be completed in time for the next election, then the District Court would be justified in devising a temporary, court-ordered plan. See ante, at 540 (opinion of White, J.). See also Connor v. Williams, 404 U. S. 549, 552, and n. 4 (1972).

 In White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755, 765-770 (1973), this Court affirmed a District Court order directing that an unconstitutional multi-member district be reapportioned into single-member districts designated by the court. The District Court had found the multimember district to be unconstitutional because of its dilutive effect on Negro voting strength, and had ordered implementation of its remedy without awaiting a legislative response to its finding of unconstitutionality. See Graves v. Barnes, 343 F. Supp. 704 (WD Tex. 1972) (three-judge court).