Court Opinion

ID: 9462252
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:36:20.030053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:29.846235
License: Public Domain

*615BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting):
I remain convinced by the arguments advanced in the majority opinion of the division that first heard this appeal.1 The Ripon Society has provided us on rehearing with ample factual data to support the tentative conclusions in Part I of the division’s opinion that the so-called “victory bonus” results in a very substantial deviation from the one-person-one-vote norm.2 While I» adhere to previously stated views, several statements in the various opinions rendered by members of this court deserve critical comment; the purpose of this dissenting opinion is to offer such comment in defense of the majority opinion of the division.
I. Standing
The rather incredible assertion is made that the Ripon Society may lack standing to prosecute this case. Not only has this assertion been implicitly rejected by the Supreme Court in reapportionment opinions — in ruling on the merits of claims of malapportionment brought by groups of citizens3 — but the Court has expressly held that an organization may assert the rights of its members.4 This court has an equally lengthy and consistent line of authority in support of the same proposition.5 Magically this precedent is waived aside with the stated argument that no evidence is adduced to show the members of the Ripon Society are not capable of enforcing their own rights. No such inquiry is necessary or has ever been required to support the limited jus tertii standing of an organization in favor of its members. The issue of associational standing is far removed from the normal difficulties of jus tertii standing because the association is the class of injured parties, as in a class action. The reams and reams of administrative appeals brought by groups of citizens in support of the rights of members is further proof of the extreme oddity of the court’s suggestion. There is not one whit of doctrinal sup*616port for a holding that the Ripon Society lacks standing.
II. State Action
The logic of our holding of state action in Georgia and Bode is unimpaired by the reasoning of the various opinions in this court or recent state action opinions in the Supreme Court. . There is a clear “nexus” between state action in the process of selection of delegates6 (and in the process of adopting the narrowing function performed by the selected delegates) and malapportionment of the delegates: malapportionment inheres in the nature of selection and in the ultimate choice by those selected as all seem to admit. Why else would the party malapportion? Of course, there is no state or federal law which requires the malápportionment but neither was there any state law requiring racial discrimination in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161 (1948). But in both cases the state affirmatively adopts the discrimination by otherwise “neutral” actions. And, of course, the Court in Jackson explicitly cited previous holdings of state action in regard to party primaries as independent and distinct from its holding in regard to public utilities.7
The baffling suggestion is advanced that Cousins v. Wigoda, 419 U.S. 477, 95 S.Ct. 541, 42 L.Ed.2d 595 (1975) somehow bears on this issue. But Cousins holds only that a state may not interfere with the associational rights of national political parties, not that a state is prohibited from assisting such parties in the selection of delegates or adopting the party’s performance of a narrowing function. In fact, the Court has recently held that a state has a compelling state interest in enforcing this narrowing process.8 Furthermore, all this says nothing about the power of the federal government to regulate political parties, an issue left expressly open in Cousins. Feeble indeed is the argument that the state must have plenary power over an organization, no matter how much the state adopts the organization’s functions, in order for the organization to constitute state action. Compare Reitman v. Mulkey, 387 U.S. 369, 87 S.Ct. 1627, 18 L.Ed.2d 830 (1967).
Nor may previous Supreme Court findings of state action be distinguished as involving racial discrimination for which a lesser quantity of state action is required. First, none of the cases expressly relied on this fact. Second, the Supreme Court refused to make the racial discrimination distinction in Moose Lodge and relied on the Moose Lodge “nexus” argument as the primary ground for decision in Jackson. Third, *617these cases were as much “right to vote” cases as they were racial discrimination cases and as such’ formed part of the express doctrinal basis for Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964). The subject matter of Reynolds and the present litigation is territorial discrimination against the right to vote of certain citizens. Reynolds teaches that such discrimination is forbidden by the same constitutional structure that forbids racial discrimination against the right to vote of certain citizens.9
III. Justiciability
The majority opinion of the division, following Georgia and Bode, held that Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962) resolved the justiciability issue as a threshold matter and that further consideration of policies of justiciability must be integrated into a determination of the merits of the plaintiffs’ claim. The majority on rehearing appears to adopt this approach. However, some members of the court suggest this analysis is mistaken both because the one-person-one-vote rule is not applicable to political parties (and hence cannot be a judicially manageable standard as it was in Baker) and because the constituency of a national political party cannot be judicially defined. Neither argument withstands analysis.
First, the minority is simply wrong in asserting that a national political convention is a “nongovernmental” body to which the one-person-one-vote rule is not applicable. Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 83 S.Ct. 801, 9 L.Ed.2d 821 (1963)—involving a party primary—and Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814, 89 S.Ct. 1493, 23 L.Ed.2d 1 (1969) — involving malapportionment of the signature requirements on nominating petitions — are conclusive authority that the one-person-one-vote principle applies to the nominating activities of political parties. Indeed, it would boggle the mind to hold that the Kansas City Junior College District performed “governmental” functions while the national convention of a major political party does not.10 Prevailing doctrine does not require such an absurdity.
As the division majority clearly holds,11 the proper definition of a party’s constituency is nonjusticiable. What is justiciable is the following: once a party defines a constituency for itself, courts will require that the party not malapportion the members of that constituency so as to deprive some constituents of their right to vote.12
*618IV. The Merits
The approach of the majority on rehearing to the merits of the case is to “balance” the one-person-one-vote principle against the legitimate interests of national political parties, interests which are entitled to First Amendment recognition if not unqualified acceptance.13 The method itself is not necessarily objectionable, but the reasoning by which the one-person-one-vote principle is trivialized and by which interests of the party are extended beyond their appropriate sphere surely is contrary to precedent.
The majority’s central argument is that the national parties are so undemocratic already that enforcement of the right to an equal vote for all party constituents makes little sense. Why is not an opposite conclusion equally plausible and indeed convincing? The structure of state legislatures and for that matter the Congress may well be undemocratic in particulars, for example the committee structure, the caucus, the system of patronage distribution. But surely it does not follow that malapportionment of legislative districts is thereby sanctioned. The whole purpose of reapportionment is to give all voters an equal place at the democratic starting line. What thereafter occurs is but the natural workings of the democratic process in which temporary majorities make necessary political decisions. The whole drift of reapportionment — the one-person-one-vote principle — is to prevent these temporary majorities ' from entrenching themselves in a manner that prevents the natural working of the democratic process in- the future. Reapportionment derives its immense constitutional legitimacy from its prevention of this entrenchment.
This is the main error of the court’s way: it assumes that decisions of a temporary majority in the organization of the party and the use of the party’s political power are no different from entrenchment of the temporary majority in the very process of political choice. The court then leaps to the improbable conclusion that malapportionment of political parties either does not violate the one-person-one-vote principle or is outside the one-person-one-vote principle. But as is argued as persuasively as I know how in the majority opinion for the division,14 an equal position at the democratic starting line preventing entrenchment of temporary majorities is distinct from the necessary actions of temporary majorities resulting from the operation of the political process. Moreover, equality at the starting line is just as important, if not more important, in the convention context than in the general election context, since for the great mass of voters their choice has already been determined by the convention’s decision.15
*619The justifications, if they may be so named, the court offers in support of the malapportionment of the Republican convention are the sort easily made and quickly forgotten. The justifications are adequately disposed of in the division opinion.16 It is enough to add here that the party itself seems to admit quite openly that the purpose of the victory bonus and its consequent malapportionment is not, as the majority on rehearing would have it, as some sort of “reward” or as a measure of “probable success” in capturing a state’s electoral college votes. Rather, the purpose is an ideological compromise designed to apportion power within the party by means of a territorial discrimination. The “reward” and “prediction of future success” rationales are completely subsidiary to this overriding purpose. This should be obvious at least from the fact that these rationales simply cannot explain the “uniform” victory bonus and do not convincingly explain the failure to include the results of more than one presidential election in determining the need for a reward or the probability of future success.
Generally the court seems to assume that if a malapportionment might be helpful in winning elections or aid in the organization or solidarity of the party, it is permissible. But this reasoning destroys the one-person-one-vote principle. All malapportionment may have some legitimate objective — in winning elections or in ensuring party national solidarity. The one-person-one-vote principle does not deny the existence of these legitimate objectives, but holds that stretching them to permit malapportionm.nt undercuts the legitimacy of a democratic political order and hence is an overbroad application of a legitimate state aim. The court by denying this result here is simply holding that the one-person-one-vote principle is not applicable to political parties, without directly arguing the point, under the guise of “balancing.” 17 This is true, since there is no malapportionment conceivable, including overt racial discrimination, which could not be justified on similar grounds.
Of course, the court intimates it would not tolerate overt racial discrimination (although it approves here a territorial discrimination which has largely the same effect). But why? Surely in some areas it would be rational indeed, unfortunately so, to exclude blacks or other minorities to ensure party victory or solidarity. If the court were to reach a different result in such a case, then it will be pure ipse dixit. And, after all, Reynolds v. Sims expressly extended the proscription of denial of the right to vote on the basis of racial discrimination to proscription of denial based on territorial discrimination.
Stripped of its rational exterior, I read the majority opinion on rehearing as telling us something of this sort:
The reapportionment decisions were intensely controversial and involved a radical extension of judicial power. We will not extend those decisions nor the philosophy of judicial power they embody even if logically compelled, absent either more public demand than we can perceive or clear guidance from the Supreme Court. We simply do not believe the principle of one-person-one-vote is sufficiently important to overcome these concerns of institutional competence and popular approval, which have always lain on the horizon of the reapportionment decisions and which counsel studied conservation of the power of judicial review.
This sort of judicial statesmanship is not so much wrong as insensitive to the principles of legitimacy that underlie a democratic state and to the horrendous anomalies that this decision produces — e. g., that the Kansas City junior college district must be properly apportioned while the national convention of a major political party is not. The principle of *620legitimacy is this, repeated again and again in support of controversial but necessary public decisions: if you disagree with present public policy, run for office or vote to throw the rascals out. Go through the legitimate processes of democratic government — the “system”— and popular change will follow. But the court tells us this is naive ideology, fit for high school textbooks perhaps, but surely not as a constitutional command in the “real world.” There “democracy” means the power of incumbency and the power obtained by controlling the process of political choice. Democracy, in short, means only what the politicians say it means. I do not believe that the Constitution harbors any such cynical view.18

. Since the division’s opinion issued, one additional court has applied the one-person-one-vote principle to political parties, Redfearn v. Delaware Republican State Comm., 393 F.Supp. 372 (D.Del.1975) (reaffirming its earlier decision and rejecting the alternative of invalidating state laws which adopted party decisions). On the other hand, the intervening decision in Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 44 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975) would compel the denial of attorneys’ fees as requested by plaintiff-appellant.

. In their brief on rehearing the Ripon Society has applied the 1976 Republican formula to both the 1972 and 1968-71 election results, and has calculated (1) deviations from the mean Republican vote per delegate, and (2) deviations from the mean population per delegate. For the 1972 election, its figures show the average deviation from the mean in both categories (1) and (2) to be 29.3%. For the 1968-71 elections, the average deviation in category (1) would be 36.7% and in category (2) 32.3%. These figures can usefully be compared to the average deviation from the mean population per Electoral College vote which, based on the 1970 census, is 22.2%.
More damningly, the Ripon brief shows that the uniform bonuses disserve both the goal of one Republican one vote, and the goal of one person one vote. Applied to the 1968-71 elections, the 1976 formula without uniform bonuses would produce an average deviation in category (1) of 32.1% (4.6% less than the average deviation with the uniform bonuses) and in category (2) of 25.8% (3.5% less). The Ripon brief does not isolate the effect of the proportional bonuses.

. E. g. Maryland Comm. for Fair Representation v. Tawes, 377 U.S. 656, 84 S.Ct. 1429, 12 L.Ed.2d 595 (1964).

. Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 739, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972). See also Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 91 S.Ct. 814, 28 L.Ed.2d 136 (1971).

. See National Automatic Laundry & Cleaning Council v. Shultz, 143 U.S.App.D.C. 274, 443 F.2d 689, 693-94 (1971) and cases cited. There are literally hundreds of administrative appeals largely involving communications and environmental policy in which standing for citizens’ groups on behalf of their members is accepted as a matter of course. E. g. Citizens Comm. to Save WEFM v. FCC, 165 U.S.App.D.C. 185, 506 F.2d 246 (1974); Wilderness Soc’y v. Morton, 161 U.S.App.D.C. 446, 495 F.2d 1026 (1974), rev’d on other grounds, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Soc’y, 421 U.S. 240, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 44 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975).

. Generally state law determines how delegates to national conventions are to be selected; when selection must occur; who is eligible to run for delegate; and who is eligible to vote. State law also fixes the obligations of delegates once selected. Delegate selection and Presidential preference primaries are state funded and state-run. And the nominees chosen by the delegates to major party conventions are universally afforded automatic ballot access. See generally Congressional Research Service, Nomination and Election of the President and Vice President of the United States 72-173 (1972); Developments in the Law— Elections, 88 Harv.L.Rev. 1111, 1121, 1151-1217 (1975).
The minority on rehearing makes the startling assertion that it does not follow from the fact that state selection of delegates constitutes state action that the actions of the delegates so selected in the national convention constitute state action. This heroic concept would mean that organizations such as the New York port authority are not state action since they are not an organization of any local government and since the “mere fact” that they are formed by two constituent state governments is not sufficient to find state action. This absurdity was decisively rejected in Howard University v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, 166 U.S.App.D.C. 260, 510 F.2d 213 (1975) and authorities cited.

. Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U.S. 345, 352, 95 S.Ct. 449, 42 L.Ed.2d 378 (1974). The minority offers the suggestion that state action is not present merely because the state somehow “benefits” a private organization, a comment which is uncontroversial enough. Its relevance to the issue at hand, however, is questionable.

. Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 94 S.Ct. 1274, 39 L.Ed.2d 714 (1974).

. The minority on rehearing attempt to defuse the fairly obvious state action rationale presented by federal financing of most major party activities on the national level by referencing recent decisions holding that “mere receipt” of state funds does not constitute state action. But here we have more than that — we have complete and exclusive federal financing of the convention and partially exclusive financing of the contested elections of delegates (the matching funds system for presidential elections and a concomitant spending limit). It certainly stretches the imagination to declare that this sort of funding is analogous to federal and state grants to private universities. To return to the example of the New York port authority, the minority would hold that there is no state action “merely” because the states of New York and New Jersey finance the operation of the entity through fare setting arrangements. Such a potential holding does not commend itself to us.

. See Hadley v. Junior College Dist., 397 U.S. 50, 90 S.Ct. 791, 25 L.Ed.2d 45 (1970).

. Majority opinion, supra, 173 U.S.App.D.C. at - n. 47, 525 F.2d at 583 n. 47, 173 U.S. App.D.C.-at n. 58, 525 F.2d 585 at n. 58.

. The minority on rehearing fails to distinguish between the two lines of “right to vote” cases, one line represented by Reynolds v. Sims and the other by Kramer v. Union Free School Dist. No. 15, 395 U.S. 621, 89 S.Ct. 1886, 23 L.Ed.2d 583 (1969). Kramer concerns constitutional limits on the definition of a constituency for a particular governmental entity; Reynolds largely concerns what follows after a definition of constituency is reached, i. e., may the constituency be malapportioned. Salyer v. Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage Dist., 410 U.S. 719, 93 S.Ct. 1224, 35 L.Ed.2d 659 (1973) was a holding based on the Kramer principles and only very tangentially on the Reynolds principles. Of course, the two principles are *618closely interwoven and it may be unprofitable to distinguish them in any other context than national conventions of major parties. But the point of the distinction is important: it does not follow from the fact that a constituency of a state organization does not encompass all eligible or registered voters that malapportionment of the constituency that does exist is constitutionally appropriate.

. See the discussion on 173 U.S.App.D.C.-, ---, 525 F.2d 574, 581-582, the majority opinion of the division. The court in its discussion of the First Amendment interests of the party apparently fails to recall that it is assuming for purposes of decision that the convention is state action. While this fact does not eliminate First Amendment concerns, as the majority opinion of the division clearly holds, it does place consideration of those claims in a vastly different light — instead of the rights of the association being paramount, the rights of the members of the association become paramount and if distinct from the interests of the association, should prevail.

. See 173 U.S.App.D.C.---, 525 F.2d at 577-580, supra.

. The majority on rehearing asserts that Bode, by accepting the electoral college as a deviation from strict one-person-one-vote standards, is a tacit admission that the one-person-one-vote is either not applicable or applicable in only a meaningless pale version. This assertion is contradicted by the express holding in Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 526, 11 L.Ed.2d 481 (1964) that the constitutional requirement of one representative from each state in the House — creating a malapportionment of sorts — does not justify any further malapportionment.

. See 173 U.S.App.D.C.---, 525 F.2d at 580-582, supra.

. On this “balancing” of the party’s First Amendment interests and of the one-person-one-vote principle, see note 13 supra.

. Perhaps the ultimate irony of the court’s dpinion is that it renders largely meaningless much of what we recently said in Buckley v. Valeo, 519 F.2d 821 (1975). In Buckley this court, again sitting en banc, upheld the major provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended by the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974. The lynchpin of that decision, in my view, was our recognition of the compelling governmental interest in equalizing the influence of all voters. As we stated:
It would be strange indeed if, by extrapolation outward from the basic rights of individuals, the wealthy few could claim a constitutional guarantee to a stronger political voice than the unwealthy many because they are able to give and spend more money, and because the amounts they give and spend cannot be limited.
Id. at 841. I find it equally strange that the court now finds that the right to associate freely enables the powerful few to claim a stronger voice than the unpowerful many. I cannot understand why an interest which only yesterday we termed compelling is today afforded so little weight in the scheme of constitutional values.