Court Opinion

ID: 9479963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:33:55.26226+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:23.774529
License: Public Domain

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
with whom WISDOM, JOHNSON and JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting:
The issue before us is whether a party to a civil jury trial who has established a prima facie case that the opposing party is exercising his peremptory challenges to discriminate on the basis of race is entitled by the Constitution to require the challenger to express a reason for exercising the challenges other than racial bias and thus to explain why allowing the challenged jurors to be excused would not constitute a denial of equal protection of the laws. It is not, as the majority assumes, whether “striking a venireman in a civil case because you fear that he may tend to favor your opponent over you ... demeans him [or] calls in question the fairness of the civil justice system.” 1 It is not whether a litigant’s exercise of peremptory challenges can be questioned because his lawyer likes or doesn’t like the face of a prospective juror, trusts or distrusts fat people or skinny people, favors or disfavors intellectuals, prefers or disdains outdoor types.2 It is about assuring equal protection of the laws in the face of evidence that the peremptory challenge has been used to deny that constitutional right.
Peremptory challenges were authorized and may be exercised for nearly any reason at all, or for none, for irrational as well as rational reasons. Such challenges are a vital part of trial by jury.3 They are not, however, guaranteed any role by the Constitution,4 and are fully subject to its dictates. Batson v. Kentucky5 holds that if, in a criminal case, a prima facie showing is made that the prosecutor is exercising peremptory challenges because of the race of the challenged juror, the defendant may require the court to call on the prosecutor for an explanation so that the court may determine whether the challenges reflect the prejudice that the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to extirpate. Nothing in the words or purpose of the equal protection clause restricts its application to criminal prosecutions. Accordingly, I would extend Batson to civil cases, and I respectfully dissent from the majority’s refusal to do so.
I.
Batson does not permit a probe of the motive for every peremptory challenge. The defendant must first show that he is a member of a cognizable racial group and that the prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges to remove members of his race from the venire. Second, the defendant may rely on the indisputable fact that “peremptory challenges constitute a jury selection practice that permits ‘those to discriminate who are of a mind to discriminate.’ ”6 The defendant must next show that these facts and any other relevant circumstances “raise an inference that the prosecutor used that practice to exclude the veniremen from the petit jury on account of their race.”7 In deciding whether the defendant has made the requisite show*228ing, the trial court should consider all relevant circumstances. The Court expressed “confidence that trial judges, experienced in supervising voir dire, will be able to decide if the circumstances concerning the prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges creates a prima facie case of discrimination against black jurors.”8
“Once the defendant makes a prima facie showing, the burden shifts to the State to come forward with a neutral explanation for challenging black jurors.”9 Although prosecutors may not rebut the defendant’s ease by merely claiming discrimination, alleging good faith, or stating the discriminatory judgment that black jurors would be more partial to the defendant because of his race, the explanation need not “rise to the level justifying exercise of a challenge for cause.” 10 After receiving the State’s explanation, the trial court “will have the duty to determine if the defendant has established purposeful discrimination.” 11
Every lawyer who has ever tried a case to a jury knows that peremptory challenges are in practice exercised for reasons that may range from suspicion that an individual venireperson may not favor one’s cause to adherence to an idiosyncratic, irrational rule.12 Federal courts are not inexperienced in evaluating action that is repro-bated only if done for a specific reason but is permitted even if done for some other reason, however unfair, or for no reason at all. Thus we decide whether a state employee who has no property right in employment and is otherwise terminable at will has been discharged in retaliation for her exercise of First Amendment rights;13 whether a private employee who is otherwise subject to discharge without cause has been fired in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act;14 and in general whether an unconstitutional or illegal purpose was a substantial factor in causing an otherwise valid action.15
The Batson test is demanding, requiring three specific steps of proof by the defendant before the challenger need utter a word and then permitting the challenger to explain if he wishes. The Supreme Court was careful to select a system of proof that steered between unfairly encouraging mer-itless claims and imposing a “crippling burden of proof,”16 one that courts had experienced and ably managed in a number of equal protection contexts.17 The burden of proof of discrimination rests on the party who claims that he has been denied equal protection. Application of Batson to civil cases would not lead courts into a jury-selection morass, but would authorize a simple process readily administered by trial judges.18
II.
The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids “any State ... [to] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” 19 Plainly that clause applies to action by the government, including, by extension under the Fifth Amendment,20 the federal government, and does not forbid private acts, absent Congressional invocation of the au*229thority granted by Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
A.
Accordingly, the conduct allegedly causing the deprivation of a constitutional right must be “fairly attributable to the state.” 21 To determine whether a deprivation is thus fairly attributable to the government, the Supreme Court in Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., Inc., set forth a two-part test.
First, the deprivation must be caused by the exercise of some right or privilege created by the State or by a rule of conduct imposed by the state [sic] or by a person for whom the State is responsible.22
The majority concedes, as does the defendant-appellee, that this test was met. Lu-gar continues:
Second, the party charged with the deprivation must be a person who may fairly be said to be a state actor. This may be because he is a state official, because he has acted together with or has obtained significant aid from state officials, or because his conduct is otherwise chargeable to the State. Without a limit such as this, private parties could face constitutional litigation whenever they seek to rely on some state rule governing their interactions with the community surrounding them.23
Explaining the Court’s earlier decision in Flagg Brothers, Inc. v. Brooks,24 the Lu-gar opinion illustrates the application of this second principle. Action by a private party pursuant to a statute “without something more ” is not sufficient to justify a characterization of that party as a “state actor.” But the “ ‘something more’ ... might vary with the circumstances of the case.” 25 The Court referred to its own use in other cases of a number of different factors or tests in different contexts, referring to the “public function” test, the “state compulsion” test, the “nexus” test, and a “joint action” test.26 The Court then reserved the question whether those tests are actually different in operation or are simply different ways of “characterizing the necessarily fact-bound inquiry that confronts the Court in such a situation,”27 clearly recognizing that in either event the inquiry into the “something more” required for state action must be based on the specific facts and entire context of a given case. Concluding its summary of the law of state action for the purposes of the equal protection clause, the Court cited with approval the teaching of Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority28 that “[o]nly by sifting facts and weighing circumstances can the nonobvious involvement of the State in private conduct be attributed its true significance.”29
Lugar itself is instructive, although the Court limited the extent of its holding30 and considered the underlying commercial dispute as forming a private core to the conduct at issue.31 A private creditor had alleged in an ex parte petition its belief that a debtor was disposing of or might dispose of his property in order to defeat his creditors. Acting on that petition, a clerk of the state court issued a writ of attachment that was then executed by the County Sheriff, effectively sequestering the debtor’s property although it was left in his possession. The Court held that the creditor’s joint participation with state officials was sufficient to characterize the creditor as a state actor for the purposes of *230the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court of Appeals having erred in “requiring] something more than invoking the aid of state officials to take advantage of state-created attachment procedures.”32
In Burton, acknowledged by Lugar as addressing the second state-actor inquiry,33 the Court considered the refusal of the operator-lessee of a restaurant located in a building owned by the state of Delaware to serve a black man. The restaurant’s lease required that the space be used for the service of food and/or alcohol and constrained the lessee to abide by all applicable laws, but no state law or official commanded, authorized, or encouraged the lessee’s discrimination. The Court found that the lessee was a state actor, as Delaware had “not only made itself a party to the refusal of service, but ha[d] elected to place its power, property and prestige behind the admitted discrimination,” thereby denying any characterization of the conduct as purely private.34 The likeness to the exercise of racially discriminatory peremptory challenges in the marbled halls of the nation’s courts need not be stressed.
Reitman v. Mullcey35 considered what would initially appear to be a more extreme form of state authorization: a California statute that protected the absolute discretion of state property owners to refuse to sell, lease, or rent such property to any persons he might choose. The Court abid-ed by the California Supreme Court’s appraisal that the statute was intended to “authorize” private racial discrimination in the housing market.36 No such intent can be ascribed to the origin of the statutory right to peremptory challenges. Nevertheless, if not constrained by Batson, the rules governing peremptory strikes vest absolute discretion in the parties. The state thereby guarantees the effect of an objection to seating an otherwise eligible juror by allowing no other to object in turn.
Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s warning in Burton that “to fashion and apply a precise formula for recognition of state responsibility under the Equal Protection Clause is an ‘impossible task’ which ‘This Court has never attempted,’ ”37 the majority considers today’s decision to be bound by some controlling precept in the Court’s previous decisions. If true, the controlling decisions are uncited. Blum v. Yaretsky38 described itself as “obviously different from those cases in which the defendant is a private party and the question is whether his conduct has sufficiently received the imprimatur of the State so as to make it ‘state’ action for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.”39 Moreover, the action taken failed on the first Lugar element, here conceded, there being no suggestion that the nursing home’s decisions “were influenced in any degree by the State’s obligation to adjust benefits in conformity with changes in the cost of medically necessary care.”40 Evans v. Ab-ney, 41 also cited by the majority, did not decide a state action question at all, but found that the state had exhibited no racially discriminatory motivation in nullifying a racially discriminatory trust and thereby removing from public use a park that under the trust could be enjoyed only by whites.42
B.
Our “necessarily fact-bound inquiry”43 cannot be accomplished by attempting to *231cast a single state actor of undisputed stature. The majority considers and rejects in turn the candidacies of the trial judge and the private defendant’s trial attorney. It rejects “[t]he merely ministerial function exercised by the judge in simply permitting the venire members cut by counsel to depart [as] an action so minimal in nature that one of less significance can scarcely be imagined.”44 As for the defense counsel, the majority reasons that if Polk County v. Dodson45 decided that a public defender was not a state actor, surely a private defender cannot be.
That a public defender does not, merely by virtue of his employment relationship with the state, act throughout the trial under color of state law, does not mean that the litigant or his lawyer may not, in a specific instance during trial, become a state actor. The rationale of Polk County was that “[e]xcept for the source of [the counsel’s] payment,” the relationship between the indigent defendant and the public defender was “identical to that existing between any other lawyer and client.”46 The public defender is entitled to professional independence and the same freedom of professional judgment as a privately retained lawyer.47 It does not follow, as the majority assumes, that the public defender or a privately retained lawyer is never a state actor. Indeed, Polk County never considered the issue of state action;48 to the extent that state action would have been lacking, as the Lugar Court suggested, it was because the “respondent failed to challenge any rule of conduct or decision for which the State was responsible,”49 a near-verbatim recitation of Lugar’s first, here conceded, element.50
Examination of Polk County suggests instead the importance of considering the challenged conduct in depth, taking into account all its actors in the context in which they act, and avoiding conclusions driven by the characterization of particular players. The exercise of peremptory challenges is not an isolated event but part of an extensive statutory process applicable alike to civil and criminal cases triable by jury. “It is the policy of the United States,” Congress has declared, “that all litigants in Federal courts entitled to trial by jury shall have the right to grand and petit juries selected at random from a fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes. It is further the policy of the United States that all citizens shall have the opportunity to be considered for service ....” 51 To that end, “[n]o citizen shall be excluded from service as a grand or petit juror in the district courts of the United States or in the Court of International Trade on account of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or economic status.” 52
Such provisions are not merely hortatory, but represent part of an active federal scheme to eliminate the discrimination that plagued the key-man system. In order to avoid discrimination in the selection of jury venires each district court must have a plan for random jury selection.53 Congress has prescribed in some detail the contents of the plan,54 the preparation of a master juror wheel and the completion of juror qualification forms,55 the determination of the *232qualifications for jury service,56 and the method of selecting and summoning jury panels.57 When the case is set for trial, potential jurors are summoned by a federal officer, the Clerk of the United States District Court, to report to the United States courthouse. They are paid a per diem fixed by statute for their service, whether selected for a jury or not, becoming at least in some sense public servants charged with important responsibilities.58 At an appropriate time they are questioned in voir dire by a federal judge and, depending on local practice, by counsel, concerning their qualifications to sit as a juror.
The number of peremptory challenges is determined in the main by statute. In civil cases, each party is provided by statute with three peremptory challenges,59 while in criminal cases the number varies with the charge: if the offense is capital, 20 per side; if punishable by imprisonment for more than one year, six for the government and 10 for the defendant; and if the offense is punishable less severely, three per side.60 Nevertheless, the trial judge may affect every aspect of the exercise of peremptory challenges. Most plainly, the judge has broad discretion in determining the appropriate number and allocation of peremptory challenges in all multiparty cases,61 and may even limit ten criminal codefendants to a total of ten peremptory challenges.62
Less directly, courts determine the impact of any given number of peremptory strikes. Local court rules control the number of jurors eventually impanelled in civil cases,63 thereby governing the relative effectiveness of peremptory challenges in determining the composition of the jury. Individual judges control the conduct of voir dire and the information that may be discovered about the venire,64 thus affecting the exercise of both peremptory challenges and challenges for cause. Of course, by virtue of the trial judge’s broad discretion over the exercise of challenges for cause,65 he may determine the number of jurors who remain eligible for the exercise of peremptory strikes,66 the court’s own strikes,67 or for eventual impaneling; the Supreme Court has acknowledged that a state may go so far as to require that parties use their peremptory challenges to cure erroneous refusals by the trial court to excuse potential jurors for cause.68
The majority’s view of the court’s “purely ministerial role” in supervising peremptory challenges is perhaps most strikingly belied in the trial judge’s broad discretion to determine the manner in which peremptory challenges are exercised: he may decide which side exercises the last chal*233lenge,69 may require simultaneous exercise of challenges by the prosecution and defense,70 and may even require that one party exercise her challenges first, thereby allowing the other party to then act with full knowledge of her opponent’s choices.71
Peremptory challenges are not self-executing but are effected by the action of the judge who excuses the prospective juror. The court, and hence, “the State[,] is not merely an observer of the discrimination, but a significant participant.... The only thing the State does not do is make the decision to discriminate. Everything else is done or supplied by the State,”72 a New York state judge has observed. By presiding over jury selection in his official, governmental capacity, a judge is intimately involved in the process that Tocqueville termed America’s “greatest advantage” in “rub[bing] off th[e] private selfishness which is the rust of society.”73 By carrying out his duties in a way that permits peremptory challenges based on race, the rust of the judge’s approval of discrimination rubs off onto society, corroding the national character by giving private prejudice the imprimatur of state approval. Thus the private litigant employing peremptory challenges on the basis of race has “acted together with or obtained significant aid from state officials”74 in a manner sufficient to meet the second part of the Lugar test. “A state should not be permitted to delegate the power to determine the composition of official tribunals and then disclaim responsibility for the predictably discriminatory way in which this authority is exercised.”75 On its face, it is discriminatory state action for the government itself to establish and maintain a system of jury selection that authorizes blatant racial discrimination by litigants using the courts set up by, paid for, and operated by the government.
III.
There are manifest differences between a criminal prosecution and a civil action and the degree of governmental involvement in each. In a criminal prosecution, the government, state or federal, initiates the proceeding against an unwilling defendant. The government prosecutes, and the full weight of the state’s panoply of personnel and resources is brought to bear against the accused. In a civil matter to which the state is not a party, the plaintiff initiates the proceeding and private parties are matched against each other.
Neither the equal protection clause nor the rationale of the Batson case, however, is limited to the state’s involvement in criminal prosecutions. The principle of equal protection applies to governmental action in civil as well as criminal matters,76 federal as well as state77 While the Supreme Court in Batson considered only a defendant in a criminal case, its guiding precept was that a “ ‘State’s purposeful or deliberate denial to Negroes on account of race of participation as jurors in the administration of justice violates the Equal Protection Clause.’ ”78 Referring to its contemporary appraisal of the Fourteenth Amendment in Strauder v. West Virginia,79 the Court endorsed the explanation that “the central concern of the recently ratified Fourteenth *234Amendment was to put an end to governmental discrimination on account of race.”80
A.
The fundaments upon which Batson rests discourage any suggestion that its development is rooted solely on the criminal context. Strauder determined that a black defendant had been denied the equal protection of West Virginia’s laws when he was criminally convicted by a jury from which members of his race had been purposefully excluded. The exclusion of blacks from the jury was not the result of circumstances peculiar to his trial, his prosecutors, or the nature of his offense, but followed from a West Virginia statute limiting eligibility for service on all grand and petit juries to white males.81 The Court observed that the words of the Fourteenth Amendment:
contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity, or right, most valuable to the colored race, — the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored, — exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy, and discriminations which are steps towards reducing them to the condition of a subject race.82
It found the racial discrimination required by West Virginia to contradict “[t]he very idea of a jury,” 83 obstructed the operation of an amendment designed "to strike down all possible legal discriminations” against blacks,84 and held that such a law must yield to the federal statute permitting removal of civil suits and criminal prosecutions against persons denied their civil rights.85
The Swain Court surveyed the exercise of the Alabama struek-jury system in both the civil and criminal contexts, comparing it to the use of the peremptory challenge in the same aspects of other state systems.86 After rejecting the argument that the Constitution “require[d] an examination of the prosecutor's reasons for the exercise of his challenges in any given case,”87 the Court considered Swain’s broader claim that “there has never been a Negro on a petit jury in either a civil or criminal case in Talladega County” and that in criminal cases prosecutors had used their peremptory strikes to prevent blacks on the jury venire from sitting on the petit jury.88 The Court concluded that although such a systematic practice would present a prima fa-cie case under the Fourteenth Amendment,89 Swain had failed to adequately allege the prosecutor’s culpability in the complete absence of any blacks from the county’s petit jurors, in part because he had failed to account for the participation of defense counsel in the result.90
Swain’s ambit was necessarily confined to the patterns and practices of prosecutors, and its standard of proof could not easily be extended to contemplate the constitutionally violative use of peremptory challenges by less frequent participants in the jury system, such as defense attorneys or counsel for civil plaintiffs. At the same time, it contemplated the inspection and discouragement of discriminatory practices in both civil and criminal employments of *235the jury venire.91 Batson, by establishing a standard of proof that allows case-by-case inspection of the use of peremptory challenges, simultaneously commands full adoption of the promise of equal protection in every use of the venire. The universality of Batson was evident not only in its invocation of the equal protection clause, but also in its reliance, echoing Swain, on systems of proof founded primarily in the civil context.92
The judgment in Batson is but a continuation of the effort the Supreme Court began almost a century ago to eradicate the vice of racial discrimination in jury selection, extending the principles it had applied in Strauder and in Swain. As Batson spoke of Strauder, “[tjhat decision laid the foundation for the Court’s unceasing efforts to eradicate racial discrimination in the procedures used to select the venire from which individual jurors are drawn.”93 While the history of peremptory challenges may have begun before the Battle of Hastings, the federal governmental interest in eradicating racial discrimination began only after Appomatox, and the salutary effect of the equal protection clause did not end with Batson in 1986. As Holland v. Illinois-94 most recently emphasized, the Fourteenth Amendment contains an “intransigent prohibition of racial discrimination” applicable to all aspects of the jury system.95 We must not now retreat.
B.
The only other circuits confronting the question of Batson’s application to civil cases have held that it applies with equal force in that context.96 The Eleventh Circuit, in Fludd v. Dykes,97 held that “the policies underlying the Supreme Court’s decision in Batson are equally applicable in the civil context,” explaining that the wrong done to an individual litigant’s constitutional rights and the minimal burden imposed by Batson were no different in the civil setting.98 Reaching the same result the Eighth Circuit in Reynolds v. City of Little Rock,99 noted that “the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not contain any latent distinction between criminal and civil legal process,” 100 and that “[t]he more natural reading of Batson is that its rule of non-discrimination applies ... without distinguishing criminal and civil legal proceedings.”101
The concerns undergirding the Batson holding that “[exclusion of black citizens from service as jurors constitutes a primary example of the evil the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to cure” 102 apply to civil no less than criminal proceedings. The Batson opinion itself provides the explanation: “Racial discrimination in selection of jurors harms not only the accused whose life or liberty they are summoned to try,” 103 and, we add, the private litigant whose dispute they are called to adjudicate, but also insults the challenged venireperson. “Competence to serve as a juror ultimately depends on an assessment of individual qualifications and ability impartially to consider evidence presented at *236a trial. A person’s race simply ‘is unrelated to his fitness as a juror’.... The harm from discriminatory jury selection, indeed, extends beyond that inflicted on the defendant and the excluded juror to touch the entire community. Selection procedures that purposefully exclude black persons from juries undermine public confidence in the fairness of our system of justice.” 104
Peremptory challenges occupy as important a position in the trial of civil cases as they do in criminal cases, and denying the application of Batson in the civil setting would erect an unconstitutionally adventitious division on the operations of jury trial procedure. The same member of the community called for jury service who would enjoy protection against racial discrimination if she were assigned to a criminal venire would be subject to the exercise of a blatantly discriminatory strike if she is first asked to fulfill her duty as a civil venireperson.105 The same Assistant United States Attorney or State District Attorney forbidden by Batson from infringing on the rights of a criminal defendant or a venire member called to try him would infringe on the apparently contentless rights of civil defendant and a civil venire member.106
Racial prejudice has no more place in the federal courtroom on the days the court is conducting a civil trial than it does on the days when the same judge, seated at the same bench, in the same courtroom, before the same American flag, is conducting a criminal trial.107 As the Supreme Court remarked in a related context,
It is irony amounting to grave injustice that in one part of a single building, erected and maintained with public funds by an agency of the State to serve a public purpose, all persons have equal rights, while in another portion, also serving the public, a Negro is a second-class citizen, offensive because of his race ...108
For the majority, however, there remains something ineffably different about civil proceedings, a difference apparently material to the racially discriminatory exercise of peremptory strikes; “fundamentally, the entire purpose of a criminal prosecution is to enforce the purposes of the state, whereas the state has no purpose at all in civil litigation beyond preempting the use of private force to settle disputes — a purpose that is as well served, if the parties consent, by an arbitration to which the state is no party.” 109 Leaving aside for the moment those civil cases to which the government is a party,110 and differentiating the issue of state action, the majority’s assessment ignores the myriad ways in which the state and society evince a genuinely civil, civic, and non-privatistic interest in civil litigation. The Seventh Amendment preserves the right of trial by jury in suits at common law in which the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars, thus interposing the civil jury as an important constraint on the power of government.111 Such civil jury cases are administered by the government and conscript citizens to serve as jurors; last year federal district courts tried more civil jury cases than criminal jury cases.112 Nor does the nominal *237identification of the parties do justice to the nature of the dispute: The United States, for example, not infrequently participates in civil suits as an amicus curiae,113 and private persons are authorized by Congress to act on behalf of themselves and the United States as “private attorneys general” and qui tarn plaintiffs.114 Congress has also authorized private claimants to seek redress for injuries otherwise compen-sable in common law to promote the public interests embodied in statutes such as the Clayton Antitrust Act115 and Title YII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.116 In federal courts, at least, the only major category of cases in which federal governmental interest is minor is diversity, and in those the Constitution itself requires that the federal judiciary provide a forum that is not only neutral but equally protective of individual rights.117
C.
Although the majority finds “no occasion to consider the situation presented where the state appears as a civil litigant,”118 such an occasion will necessarily disturb its intended limitation of Batson to the criminal context. When government is a litigant, it becomes clear that “[t]he distinction that is crucial for application of equal-protection principles is that between governmental actors and private actors.”119 Pursuing the criminal-civil distinction under such circumstances would seemingly license the state’s discriminatory exercise of peremptory challenges in a manner “[ Related to the outcome of the particular [civil] case on trial” 120 if it chose to seek civil sanctions rather than criminal against a particular defendant. The Fourteenth Amendment (and, for that matter, the Eighth) does not admit of such a subtle understanding of civil rights. Once such a case is considered, the criminal-civil distinction collapses, leaving only the examination of state involvement in those cases to which the government is not a party, such as the present one. The “slippery slope” that concerns the majority,121 whether the product of Batson’s extension to other protected groups or its extension to civil jury trials, must simply be considered a necessary product of the scope of the equal protection clause, and cannot be used to suggest a limit to its dictates or a retreat from the logic of Batson.
IV.
The use of peremptory challenges solely on the basis of racial animus, that is, as a device to bar a citizen from trial by a jury of all of his peers, save those of a certain race, cannot be justified by its history, ancient or modern, or by its utility to lawyers in attempting to win lawsuits. Racial prejudice was sanctioned by both the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The enactment of the equal protection clause marked the beginning of a new era, an era in which it was to be hoped that the color of a person’s skin would not affect his legal rights.
The requirement of state action is in large part intended to “require the courts to respect the limits of their own power as directed against state governments and private interests.”122 “The petit jury,” in turn, “has occupied a central position in our system of justice by safeguarding a person accused of crime against the arbitrary exercise of power by prosecutor or judge.” 123 *238Edmonson’s invocation of his constitutional rights compels us to acknowledge the scope of judicial culpability in administering the racially discriminatory exercise of peremptory strikes against what remains, at least if unblemished, a cherished bulwark against every misuse of authority. We must take another step toward the goal of eradicating racial prejudice by eliminating the shameful practice of permitting a federal statute to be employed in a trial in a federal courtroom as a weapon of discrimination. I regret that the majority cannot yet see that to permit a person to be rejected from a jury solely because of the color of his skin rejects the promise upon which this nation’s independence was based and the guarantee that the Fourteenth Amendment provides: that all persons are created equal. In God’s sight. In human right. And in regard to service on a federal jury.

. Majority at 219 (emphasis added).

. Alschuler, The Supreme Court and the Jury: Voir Dire, Peremptory Challenges, and the Review of Jury Verdicts, 56 U.Chi.L.Rev. 153, 200-01, 210-11 (1989).

. See Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 212-20, 85 S.Ct. 824, 831-35, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965).

. See Stilson v. United States, 250 U.S, 583, 586, 40 S.Ct. 28-30, 63 L.Ed. 1154 (1919); see also Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 91, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 1720, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986) (citing Stilson ); Swain, 380 U.S. at 219, 85 S.Ct. at 835, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965) (same); Holland v. Illinois, — U.S. -, -, 110 S.Ct. 803, 806-10, 107 L.Ed.2d 905 (1990) (same).

. 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986).

. 476 U.S. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723 (quoting Avery v. Georgia, 345 U.S. 559, 562, 73 S.Ct. 891, 892, 97 L.Ed. 1244 (1953)).

. 476 U.S. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723.

. 476 U.S. at 97, 106 S.Ct. at 1723.

. Ibid.

. 476 U.S. at 97-98, 106 S.Ct. at 1723-24.

. 476 U.S. at 98, 106 S.Ct. at 1724.

. See, e.g., United States v. Romero-Reyna, 889 F.2d 559 (5th Cir.1989) (The "P" rule).

. See, e.g., Perry v. Sinderman, 408 U.S. 593, 596-98, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 2697-98, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972).

. 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq; see, e.g., Trans World Airlines v. Thurston, 469 U.S. 111, 124, 105 S.Ct. 613, 623, 83 L.Ed.2d 523 (1985).

. See, e.g., Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 239-45, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 2047-50, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976).

. 476 U.S. at 92, 106 S.Ct. at 1721 (citations omitted).

. 476 U.S. at 93-98, 106 S.Ct. at 1721-24.

. Cf. Thomas v. Moore, 866 F.2d 803, 805 (5th Cir.1989).

. U.S. Const, art. XIV § 1.

. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 74 S.Ct. 693, 98 L.Ed. 884 (1954).

. Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., Inc., 457 U.S. 922, 937, 102 S.Ct. 2744, 2753, 73 L.Ed.2d 482.

. 457 U.S. at 937, 102 S.Ct. at 2753.

. 457 U.S. at 937, 102 S.Ct. at 2754.

. 436 U.S. 149, 98 S.Ct. 1729, 56 L.Ed.2d 185 (1978).

. 457 U.S. at 937, 102 S.Ct. at 2754.

. 457 U.S. at 937, 102 S.Ct. at 2754-55.

. Ibid.

. 365 U.S. 715, 81 S.Ct. 856, 6 L.Ed.2d 45 (1961).

. 457 U.S. at 939, 102 S.Ct. at 2755 (quoting Burton, 365 U.S. at 722, 81 S.Ct. at 860).

. 457 U.S. at 939 n. 21, 102 S.Ct. at 2755 n. 21.

. See, e.g., 457 U.S. at 941-42, 102 S.Ct. at 2756.

. Ibid.

. 457 U.S. at 938 n. 19, 102 S.Ct. at 2754 n. 19.

. 365 U.S. at 725, 81 S.Ct. at 862.

. 387 U.S. 369, 87 S.Ct. 1627, 18 L.Ed.2d 830 (1967).

. 387 U.S. at 376, 381, 87 S.Ct. at 1631, 1634.

. 365 U.S. at 722, 81 S.Ct. at 860 (quoting Kotch v. Board of River Port Pilot Com’rs, 330 U.S. 552, 556, 67 S.Ct. 910, 912, 91 L.Ed. 1093 (1947)).

. 457 U.S. 991, 102 S.Ct. 2777, 73 L.Ed.2d 534 (1982).

. 457 U.S. at 1003, 102 S.Ct. at 2785 (citing cases).

. 457 U.S. at 1005, 102 S.Ct. at 2786.

. 396 U.S. 435, 90 S.Ct. 628, 24 L.Ed.2d 634 (1970).

. 396 U.S. at 445, 90 S.Ct. at 633-34.

. Lugar, 457 U.S. at 939, 102 S.Ct. at 2755.

. Majority at 221.

. 454 U.S. 312, 102 S.Ct. 445, 70 L.Ed.2d 509 (1981).

. 454 U.S. at 318, 102 S.Ct. at 449.

. 454 U.S. at 321-22, 102 S.Ct. at 451-52.

. See 454 U.S. at 322 n. 12, 102 S.Ct. at 451-52 n. 12.

. Lugar, 457 U.S. at 935 n. 18, 102 S.Ct. at 2752-53 n. 18.

. 457 U.S. at 937, 102 S.Ct. at 2753.

. 28 U.S.C. § 1861.

. 28 U.S.C. § 1862.

. 28 U.S.C. § 1863.

. Ibid.

. 28 U.S.C. § 1864.

. 28 U.S.C. § 1865.

. 28 U.S.C. § 1866.

. Alschuler, supra, at 197.

. 28 U.S.C. § 1870.

. Fed.R.Crim.P. 24(b).

. See 28 U.S.C. § 1870; Fed.R.Cr.P. 24(b).

. See Gradsky v. United States, 342 F.2d 147, 152-53 (5th Cir.1965), vacated on other grounds sub nom. Levine v. United States, 383 U.S. 265, 86 S.Ct. 925, 15 L.Ed.2d 737 (1966); see also Moore v. South African Marine Corp., Ltd., 469 F.2d 280, 281 (5th Cir.1972); Carey v. Lykes Bros. Steamship Co., 455 F.2d 1192, 1194 (5th Cir.1972); United States v. Williams, 447 F.2d 894, 896-97 (5th Cir.1971); Nehring v. Empresa Lineas Maritimas Argentinas, 401 F.2d 767, 767-68 (5th Cir.1968), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 819, 90 S.Ct. 55, 24 L.Ed.2d 69 (1969).

. See Colgrove v. Battin, 413 U.S. 149, 93 S.Ct. 2448, 37 L.Ed.2d 522 (1973).

. See Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U.S. 182, 188-89, 101 S.Ct. 1629, 1634, 68 L.Ed.2d 22 (1981).

. See United States v. Jones, 712 F.2d 115, 121 (5th Cir.1983).

. See United States v. Nell, 526 F.2d 1223, 1229 (5th Cir.1976); but see United States v. Garza, 574 F.2d 298, 302-03 (5th Cir.1978); Stewart v. Texas & Pacific Rwy. Co., 278 F.2d 676, 677-78 (5th Cir.1960).

. See United States v. Calhoun, 542 F.2d 1094, 1103 (9th Cir.1976) (citing United States v. Bailey, 468 F.2d 652, 658, aff'd on other grounds, 480 F.2d 518 (5th Cir.1973) (en banc)), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1064, 97 S.Ct. 792, 50 L.Ed.2d 781 (1977).

. See Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 2279, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988).

. See United States v. Durham, 587 F.2d 799, 801 (5th Cir.1979).

. See United States v. Sarris, 632 F.2d 1341, 1343 (5th Cir. Unit A 1980).

. See Gafford v. Star Fish & Oyster Co., 475 F.2d 767, 767-68 (5th Cir.1973).

. People v. Gary M, 138 Misc.2d 1081, 526 N.Y.S.2d 986, 994 (1988).

. 1 A. Tocqueville, Democracy in America 295-96 (Vintage Books ed. 1945).

. Lugar, 457 U.S. at 937, 102 S.Ct. at 2754.

. Alschuler, supra, at 197.

. See, e.g., Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 1070, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886).

. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 74 S.Ct. 693, 98 L.Ed. 884 (1954).

. Batson, 476 U.S. at 84, 106 S.Ct. at 1716 (quoting Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 203-204, 85 S.Ct. 824, 826-27, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965)); see also 476 U.S. at 84 n. 3, 106 S.Ct. at 1716 n. 3 (citing cases).

. 100 U.S. (10 Otto) 303, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1880).

. 476 U.S. at 85, 106 S.Ct. at 1716; see also Holland v. Illinois, 110 S.Ct. 803, 810-11 ("the systematic exclusion of blacks from the jury system through peremptory challenges” is "obviously” unlawful).

. 100 U.S. (10 Otto) at 305.

. 100 U.S. (10 Otto) at 307-08.

. 100 U.S. (10 Otto) at 308; see also Holland v. Illinois, 110 S.Ct. at 806-07 (citing Strauder), Thiel v. Southern Pac. Co., 328 U.S. 217, 220, 66 S.Ct. 984, 985, 90 L.Ed. 1181 (1946).

. 100 U.S. (10 Otto) at 310.

. 100 U.S. (10 Otto) at 311-12.

. 380 U.S. at 205-10, 217-18, 85 S.Ct. at 827-30, 834-35.

. 380 U.S. at 222, 86 S.Ct. at 837.

. 380 U.S. at 223, 85 S.Ct. at 837.

. 380 U.S. at 224, 85 S.Ct. at 838.

. 380 U.S. at 224-27, 86 S.Ct. at 838-39.

. See King v. County of Nassau, 581 F.Supp. 493, 499-500 (E.D.N.Y.1984); see also Clark v. City of Bridgeport, 645 F.Supp. 890, 895 (D.Conn.1986) (citing Swain and King).

. Cf. Reynolds v. City of Little Rock, 893 F.2d 1004 (8th Cir.1990).

. 476 U.S. at 85, 106 S.Ct. at 1716.

. — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 803, 107 L.Ed.2d 905 (1990).

. Ibid.

. The Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Circuits have declined to resolve the issue. See Nowlin v. General Tel. Co. of the Southeast, S.C., Lake City Dist., 892 F.2d 1041 (4th Cir.1989) (unpublished opinion); Robinson v. Quick, 875 F.2d 867 (6th Cir.1989) (unpublished opinion); Boykin v. Hamilton County Bd. of Educ., 869 F.2d 1488 (6th Cir.1989) (unpublished opinion); Maloney v. Plunkett, 854 F.2d 152, 155 (7th Cir.1988).

. 863 F.2d 822 (11th Cir.1989).

. Id. at 828-29.

. 893 F.2d 1004.

. Ibid.

. Ibid.

. 476 U.S. at 85, 106 S.Ct. at 1716.

. 476 U.S. at 87, 106 S.Ct. at 1718.

. Ibid, (citations and portions of text omitted); see also 28 U.S.C. § 1862.

. Cf. 28 U.S.C. § 1866(c), (e), (f).

. See 28 U.S.C. § 547.

. See Maloney v. Washington, 690 F.Supp. 687 (N.D.Ill.1988) (memorandum opinion), vacated on other grounds, Maloney v. Plunkett, 854 F.2d 152 (7th Cir.1988).

. Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. at 724, 81 S.Ct. at 861.

. Majority at 231-32.

. See infra notes 118-20 and accompanying text.

. See Wolfram, The Constitutional History of the Seventh Amendment, 57 Minn.L.Rev. 639, 644, 708-10 (1973); Note, The Civil Implications of Batson v. Kentucky and State v. Gilmore: A Further Look at Limitations on the Peremptory Challenge, 40 Rutgers L.Rev. 891, 946-48 (1988).

. Report of the Proceedings of the Judicial Conference of the United States, Annual Report *237of the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts table C7 at 225 (1988).

. See, e.g., Sup.Ct.R. 36.

. See Caminker, The Constitutionality of Qui Tam Actions, 99 Yale L.J. 341, 342-44 (1989).

. 15 U.S.C. §§ 15, 26.

. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5. See generally Stewart & Sunstein, Public Programs and Private Rights, 95 Harv.L.Rev. 1195 (1982).

. U.S. Const, art. Ill, § 2, cl. 1.

. Majority at 222 n. 10.

. Reynolds v. City of Little Rock; see also Fludd, 863 F.2d at 828-29; Clark, 645 F.Supp. at 894-96.

. Swain, 380 U.S. at 224, 85 S.Ct. at 838.

. Majority at 221 n. 6.

. Lugar, 457 U.S. at 936-37, 102 S.Ct. at 2753.

. Batson, 476 U.S. at 86, 106 S.Ct. at 1717 (citations omitted).