Court Opinion

ID: 9426702
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:42.482639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:02.521941
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
dissenting.
The question presented in this difficult case is whether New York violated the rights of the petitioners under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by direct reliance on fixed racial percentages in its 1974 redistricting of Kings County. For purposes of analysis I will treat this in two steps: (1) Is the state legislative action constitutionally permissible absent any special considerations raised by the Fed*181eral Voting Rights Act; and (2) does New York’s obligation to comply with the Voting Rights Act permit it to use these means to achieve a federal statutory objective?
(1)
I begin with this Court’s holding in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960), the first case to strike down a state attempt at racial gerrymandering. If Gomillion teaches anything, I had thought it was that drawing of political boundary lines with the sole, explicit objective of reaching a predetermined racial result cannot ordinarily be squared with the Constitution. The record before us reveals—and it is not disputed—that this is precisely what took place here. In drawing up the 1974 reapportionment scheme, the New York Legislature did not consider racial composition as merely one of several political characteristics; on the contrary, race appears to have been the one and only criterion applied.
The principal opinion notes that after the 1972 apportionment plan was rejected, New York officials conferred with the Justice Department as to what plan could obtain the Attorney General’s approval. One New York official testified that he “ ‘got the feeling [from a Justice Department spokesman] . . . that 65 percent would be probably an approved figure.’ ” Ante, at 152. Further testimony by that same official is revealing:
“Q: So that your reason for dividing the Ha[s]idic community was to effect compliance with the Department of Justice determination, and the minimum standards they impose—they appear to impose?
“A: That was the sole reason. We spent over a full day right around the clock, attempting to come up with some other type of districting plan that would maintain the Ha[s]idic community as one entity, and I think that is evidenced clearly by the fact that that district is exactly 65 percent, and it’s because we went block by *182block, and didn’t go higher or lower than that, in order to maintain as much of the community as possible.” App. 112 (emphasis added).
This official also testified that apportionment solutions which would have kept the Hasidic community within a single district, but would have resulted in a 63.4% nonwhite concentration, were rejected for fear that, falling short of “exactly 65 percent,” they “would not be acceptable” to the Justice Department. Id., at 115.
The words “racial quota” are emotionally loaded and must be used with caution. Yet this undisputed testimony shows that the 65% figure was viewed by the legislative reapportionment committee as so firm a criterion that even a fractional deviation was deemed impermissible. I cannot see how this can be characterized otherwise than a strict quota approach and I must therefore view today’s holding as casting doubt on the clear-cut principles established in Gomillion.
(2)
My second inquiry is whether the action of the State of New York becomes constitutionally permissible because it was taken to comply with the remedial provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act.
In South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301 (1966) the Court, while recognizing that the “stringent new remedies” were “an uncommon exercise of Congressional power” id., at 334-335, upheld the Act as a “permissibly decisive” response to “the extraordinary stratagem of . . . perpetrating voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal court decrees.” Ibid. In Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U. S. 544, 569 (1969), the Court sustained an application of § 5 to a change from a district to an at-large election of county supervisors because of a potential for “dilution” of minority voting power which could “nullify [the] ability to elect the candidate of [one’s] choice.” In Allen and Katzenbach the Court acknowledged *183that the Voting Rights Act contemplated that the Attorney General and the affected state legislatures would be obliged to think in racial terms. In Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379, 397 (1971) (concurring in judgment), and again in Georgia v. United States, 411 U. S. 526, 541 (1973) (dissenting opinion), I expressed doubt as to the correctness of Allen but acquiesced in the judgments on the basis of stare decisis.
The present case, however, presents a quite different situation. Faced with the straightforward obligation to redistrict so as to avoid “a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise,” Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 141 (1976), the state legislature mechanically adhered to a plan designed to maintain—without tolerance for even a 1.6% deviation—a “nonwhite” population of 65% within several of the new districts. There is no indication whatever that use of this rigid figure was in any way related—much less necessary—to fulfilling the State's obligation under the Voting Rights Act as defined in Beer.
The plurality opinion acknowledges our recent Beer holding by noting that “there is no evidence in the record to show whether the 1972 plan increased or decreased the number of senate or assembly districts with substantial nonwhite majorities of 65%,” and by speculating that “the 1974 revisions may have accomplished nothing more than the restoration of nonwhite voting strength to 1966 levels.” Ante, at 163. It then proceeds to assume that the 1974 reapportionment was undertaken in compliance with Beer. The lack of evidence on this subject is, of course, not surprising, since petitioners’ case was dismissed at the pleading stage. If this kind of racial redistricting is to be upheld, however, it should, at the very least, be done on the basis of record facts, not suppositions. If the Court seriously considers the issue in doubt, I should think that a remand for further factual determinations would be *184the proper course of action.1 On the present sparse record, however, I cannot find support in the Voting Rights Act for the arbitrary process followed by the New York Legislature.
The record is devoid of any evidence that the 65% figure was a reasoned response to the problem of past discrimination.2 It is, rather, clear that under the time pressure of upcoming elections, and “in an atmosphere of hasty dickering,” 510 F. 2d 512, 525, 526 (CA2 1975) (Frankel, J., dissenting), the New York Legislature simply accepted the standard formula from the Department of Justice and treated it as mandatory. Moreover, the formula appears to be based upon factually unsupportable assumptions. For example, it would make no sense to assure nonwhites a majority of 65% in a voting district *185unless it were assumed that nonwhites and whites vote in racial blocs, and that the blocs vote adversely to, or independently of, one another. Not only is the record in this case devoid of any evidence that such bloc voting has taken or will take place in Kings County, but such evidence as there is points in the opposite direction: We are informed that four out of the five “safe” (65%+) nonwhite districts established by the 1974 plan have since elected white representatives. Brief for Respondent-Intervenors 48.
The assumption that “whites” and “nonwhites” in the county form homogeneous entities for voting purposes is entirely without foundation. The “whites” category consists of a veritable galaxy of national origins, ethnic backgrounds, and religious denominations. It simply cannot be assumed that the legislative interests of all “whites” are even substantially identical. In similar fashion, those described as “nonwhites” include, in addition to Negroes, a substantial portion of Puerto Ricans. Memorandum of Decision, U. S. Dept. of Justice Nos. V6541-47, July 1, 1974, p. 13 (App. 294).3 The Puerto Rican population, for whose protection the Voting Rights Act was “triggered” in Kings County, see n. 2, supra, has expressly disavowed any identity of interest with the Negroes, and, in fact, objected to the 1974 redistricting scheme because it did not establish a Puerto Rican controlled district within the county.
(3)
Although reference to racial composition of a political unit may, under certain circumstances, serve as “a starting point in the process of shaping a remedy,” Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education, 402 U. S. 1, 25 (1971), rigid adherence to quotas, especially in a case like this, deprives citizens such as petitioners of the opportunity to have the legislature make a determination free from unnecessary *186bias for or against any racial, ethnic, or religious group. I do not quarrel with the proposition that the New York Legislature may choose to take ethnic or community union into consideration in drawing its district lines. Indeed, petitioners are members of an ethnic community which, without deliberate purpose so far as shown on this record, has long been within a single assembly and senate district. While petitioners certainly have no constitutional right to remain unified within a single political district, they do have, in my view, the constitutional right not to be carved up so as to create a voting bloc composed of some other ethnic or racial group through the kind of racial gerrymandering the Court condemned in Gomillion v. Lightfoot.
If districts have been drawn in a racially biased manner in the past (which the record does not show to have been the case here) the proper remedy is to reapportion along neutral lines. Manipulating the racial composition of electoral districts to assure one minority or another its “deserved” representation will not promote the goal of a racially neutral legislature. On the contrary, such racial gerrymandering puts the imprimatur of the State on the concept that race is a proper consideration in the electoral process. “The vice lies . . . in . . . placing . . . the power of the State behind a racial classification that induces racial prejudice at the polls.” Anderson v. Martin, 375 U. S. 399, 402 (1964).
The result reached by the Court today in the name of the Voting Rights Act is ironic. The use of a mathematical formula tends to sustain the existence of ghettos by promoting the notion that political clout is to be gained or maintained by marshaling particular racial, ethnic, or religious groups in enclaves. It suggests to the voter that only a candidate of the same race, religion, or ethnic origin can properly represent that voter’s interests, and that such candidate can be elected only from a district with a sufficient minority concentration. The device employed by the State of New York, and endorsed *187by the Court today, moves us one step farther away from a truly homogeneous society. This retreat from the ideal of the American “melting pot” is curiously out of step with recent political history—and indeed with what the Court has said and done for more than a decade. The notion that Americans vote in firm blocs has been repudiated in the election of minority members as mayors and legislators in numerous American cities and districts overwhelmingly white. Since I cannot square the mechanical racial gerrymandering in this case with the mandate of the Constitution, I respectfully dissent from the affirmance of the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 It is clear to me that Part III of the plurality opinion, is singularly out of step with the rationale of Beer and may signal an erosion of that case decided only last Term. In explaining why, absent any facts, it is willing to assume that the 1974 reapportionment was undertaken in compliance with the Voting Rights Act as explicated in Beer, the opinion states:
“In the absence of any evidence regarding nonwhite voting strength under the 1966 apportionment, the creation of substantial nonwhite majorities in approximately 30% of the senate and assembly districts in Kings County was reasonably related to the constitutionally valid statutory mandate of maintaining nonwhite voting strength. The percentage of districts with nonwhite majorities was less than the percentage of nonwhites in the county as a whole (35%).” Ante, at 163.
The rationale of Beer, of course, makes clear that the proportionality of nonwhite districts to the percentage of nonwhites in the county has absolutely no relation to the question of whether or not the Voting Rights Act was complied with. On the contrary, the proportionality rationale was embraced by Mr. Justice White’s dissent in that case, 425 U. S., at 143-144, and was rejected by the Court.

 It should be noted that the sole reason that New York, Bronx, and Kings Counties were brought under the sweep of the Voting Rights Act was that ballots in those counties had been prepared only in English and not in Spanish. In light of the large Puerto Rican population in those counties, this was held to be a “discriminatory test or device.” See Torres v. Sachs, 381 F. Supp. 309 (SDNY 1974).

 The Puerto Rican population constitutes 10.4% of the entire county-population and one-third of the “nonwhite” population.