Court Opinion

ID: 9463776
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:16:02.752052+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:16.895084
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
Both at the time of the district court’s action and decision in this case and at the time of our panel opinion, 528 F.2d 536 (5th Cir. 1976), the clear constitutional law of equal protection seemed to be that racial gerrymanders, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 81 S.Ct. 125, 5 L.Ed.2d 110 (1960), and election districts drawn along racial lines, Wright v. Rockefeller, 376 U.S. 52, 84 S.Ct. 603, 11 L.Ed.2d 512 (1964), were invalid. Faithful to that apparent mandate, the trial court ordered the preparation of a plan drawn without regard to race, found on essentially undisputed evidence that it was so drawn, and ordered it installed and implemented. It also seemed to be the law that even such a plan might be invalid unless it had effect to give each significant racial group in the electorate of the apportioned community a fair opportunity to *154elect representatives of its choice.1 This was not thought to mean, however, that voting districts must be so arranged that proportional representation, either by race or by racially chosen representatives, was afforded.2
In the light of these imperfectly harmonious imperatives, the panel examined the district court’s actions and decision from two perspectives. First, we reviewed the evidence supporting the finding that the court’s j>lanvwa§ drawn without regard to mqe. ÍThis wk'Sj-'h.s noted, essentially undisputed. The court’s decision that the plan was so drawn therefore seemed beyond our power to disturb. Next, we attempted to discern a model against which to measure the plan’s likely effect, concluding as follows:
It remains to determine whether the supervisors’ plan approved by the court below, though not by design, otherwise —that is, unintentionally — operates to minimize minority voting power in an impermissible way. To determine whether that power is minimized, we must first ascertain its proper or natural magnitude, its expectable effect under normal conditions when neither weakened nor enhanced. And this is simply stated: in an infinite series of elections, any 35% of the electorate should elect 35% of the candidates whom it favors or, in other words, it should receive proportionate representation. As applied to any hypothetical five-man board, then, our 35% voting bloc should be represented by two out of five officials favored by it about three-fourths of the time and by only one of the other fourth. This model illustrates its normal voting strength.
Plaintiffs are correct when they insist that we consider whether the impact of the black vote in Hinds County is diminished by the proposed plan. Where they err is in their selected model against which diminishment is to be measured. Plaintiffs focus on preserving intact the black geographical cluster in northern and central Jackson and would have us determine diminishment by inquiring merely whether the proposed district lines divide it. But of course they do. Any likely division of the county would do so except one drawn on racial lines with the purpose of securing safe “black” or “white” seats on the board of supervisors. Plaintiffs’ focus is too narrow, their approach too mechanical, at this stage of the inquiry. There being no intended gerrymander, the proper present focus of inquiry is not a map area19 but the voting power of the entire black populace of Hinds County, and the model against which its claimed diminishment must be measured is, as indicated above, the number of seats on the board proportionate to that population’s percentage of the whole.
So tested, the conclusion of the district court stands firm that *155the black voting strength in Hinds County is not minimized or cancelled out by the 1973 Board plan, but on the contrary, the Board plan offers black residents of Hinds County, who constitute less than 40% of the total population thereof, a realistic opportunity to elect officials of their choice, whether they be white or black, in two supervisor’s districts and significantly affect the election of county officials in the three remaining supervisors’ districts
528 F.2d at 542-43. Measuring the plan against this model, we concluded that the district court did not err in' finding that the plan offered a realistic opportunity to each segment of the community, consonant with its normal or natural voting strength, to elect representatives favored by it. We therefore affirmed the trial court.
At the time of en banc hearing in September 1976, the array of Supreme Court decisions in the general area of equal protection was, but for the addition of Washington v. Davis,3 unaltered. Nevertheless, the en banc court was able tentatively to discern that we and the trial court had erred in our crucial assumption: that racial gerrymandering to augment or dimmish the voting strength of voting blocs within the community was unconstitutional. On March 1, 1977, with the delivery of the Supreme Court’s opinion in United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey, — U.S. —, 97 S.Ct. 996, 51 L.Ed.2d 229 (1977), it became clear that the en banc court was correct in its perception of things to come and that our panel had been mistaken. Thus, the opinion of the én banc court, indirectly but unmistakably commanding the trial court to devise and install a more partisan gerrymander in favor of Hinds County black voters so as to guarantee their proportionate representation on the county board, seems to be both required and appropriate.
Until only yesterday, it had seemed possible to discern a firm and accelerating trend in Supreme Court authority to require proof that discriminatory intent was a motivating factor in a state or local action before invalidating it.4 As each of the decisions cited in footnote 4 was handed down, I for one became increasingly convinced that the unassailable (and, in my view, unassailed) finding of the trial court herein that no regard was given to race in preparing the now-invalidated plan rendered the plan invulnerable to attack on equal protection grounds. This budding conviction was cut down by the United Jewish Organizations decision, which I can only read as approving, not racial gerrymanders only, but those of such generous dimensions as to dictate the outcomes of elections and insure proportionate representation. It is true that the holding’s import is slightly blurred since what was there approved was “voluntary” legislative action under pressure of the Attorney General, acting pursuant to the Voting Rights Act; but, like the Chief Justice, I do not see how these considerations can sanitize what would otherwise be unconstitutional.5
I take respectful leave to say briefly why I think this a wrong turning. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that by United Jewish Organizations what the Court underwrites is a tribal, rather than a republican, form of *156government.6 Transposed to this case where the federal court must devise a plan, the clear implication of United Jewish Organizations is that a life-tenured magistrate is to exercise a casting vote in the selection of local legislators.7 For who does not know that by judicious tinkering with apportioning lines almost any electoral outcome desired can be produced? Indeed, this is precisely what we now appear to require the district court to do.8 I had not thought that the constitution empowered any court to intrude so far upon the elective process. But unless this is what the United Jewish Organizations decision requires and means, then I do not know what it means.
And if this is its meaning, we have indeed come a long way from Avery v. Midland County, 390 U.S. 474, 88 S.Ct. 1114, 20 L.Ed.2d 45 (1968), with its demand that every citizen’s vote be equal in weight as nearly as may be,9 and from Gomillion v. Lightfoot, supra. These decisions had effect to free the electoral process from vote-weighting contrivances; United Jewish Organizations approves their deliberate imposition, and on avowedly racial grounds at that. It is true that the racial gerrymander there approved was done by the New York Legislature under pressure from the Congress,10 but I am unable to grasp how this can validate action so plainly at variance with the language of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments and uncomfortable with court action intruding so purposively and affirmatively upon the process of selecting legislative bodies. Removing trammels upon the equality of the franchise is one thing: deliberately gerrymandering to weight some votes and lighten others in order to produce a representative of a particular race, or at least a representative especially beholden to one racial bloc of the electorate, seems to me quite another. What seems to be envisioned is something more approximating a tribal council than a representative body chosen by republican methods.
To say no more, then, with the delivery of United Jewish Organizations, my apprehension of equal protection law is cast in disarray. Doubtless the Court holds a coherent vision of better things to come which is denied me.11 At any rate, I am sustained *157by the recollection that it is not for us to pursue matters of national policy in competition with or obstruction of the Court. Where relevant precedent exists, our duty is to ascertain and obey that which is closest and most recent. For the time being, that is United Jewish Organizations. Since it is, I concur in the en banc court’s judgment invalidating those of our panel and the district court, though not in its opinion.

. The panel opinion quotes, 528 F.2d at 540-41, the commination against plans which “designedly or otherwise" minimize black voting strength found in Burns v. Richardson, 384 U.S. 73, 88, 86 S.Ct. 1286, 16 L.Ed.2d 376 (1966), itself drawn from Fortson v. Dorsey, 379 U.S. 433, 439, 85 S.Ct. 498, 13 L.Ed.2d 401 (1965).

. At 528 F.2d 541, the panel opinion quotes Judge Rives, writing for the court in Gilbert v. Sterrett, 5 Cir., 509 F.2d 1389, 1391:
An apportionment scheme is not constitutionally impermissible merely because its lines are not carefully drawn to ensure representation to sizable racial, ethnic, economic or religious groups.
See also Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124, 156-60, 91 S.Ct. 1858, 29 L.Ed.2d 363 (1971), and Turner v. McKeithen, 490 F.2d 191, 197 (5 Cir. 1973).

 Of course, the ’ unusual shapes of the proposed districts are important. But the shapes are chiefly relevant to the question of whether the plan is a racial gerrymander. Once we accept the district court’s unchallenged findings that the plan was drawn without reference to race and that the districts reasonably follow natural boundaries, see p. 538 supra, the significance of the geographic shapes is almost exhausted. They may, for example, indicate nothing more than a political gerrymander, an inhabitant of the thicket at present out of season to courts. See Jiminez v. Hidalgo County Water Imp. Dist. No. 2, 68 F.R.D. 668, 672-75 (S.D.Tex.1975).

. 426 U.S. 229, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976). See n. 4, infra.

. Washington v. Davis, supra (absent discriminatory intent, qualification examination for police recruits not invalid solely because it disqualified black applicants disproportionately); Austin Independent School Dist. v. United States, 429 U.S. 990, 97 S.Ct. 517, 50 L.Ed.2d 603 (1976) (school desegregation order remanded for reconsideration in light of Washington v. Davis; segregative intent posed as issue in special concurrences); Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 97 S.Ct. 555, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977) (denial of zoning for low-income housing project not unconstitutional for racially disproportionate effect; proof of discriminatory intent or purpose as motivating factor requisite).

. United Jewish Organizations, supra, — U.S. at —, 97 S.Ct. at 1018-1021, 51 L.Ed.2d at 256-59, passim (Burger, C. J., dissenting).

. See United States Constitution art. IV, § 4.

. The only logical alternative is to me inconceivable: that what is a constitutional gerrymander when done by a legislature is not so when done by a court in the legislature’s default. Since the court is to act in the legislature’s place, surely it is to do what the legislature should have done?

. I say “appear” because I am as confused as Judge Clark, infra at 158-159, slip opin. at 3803, about what election outcome it is that the en banc majority directs the district court to produce. What is generally desired — a plan confected on racial grounds and weighted more heavily toward the black voter — is tolerably clear. But if an outcome is to be configured, and if the majority is correct in its factfinding of pervasive bloc voting, several choices are possible. The district court could, for example, deploy the 35% minority of black voters so as to produce three districts out of the five with almost two-to-one black majorities and so insure, again assuming the rigorous voting by race which the majority ascertains, a black majority on the county board. I doubt this is what the majority envisions; probably what it wants is guaranteed proportionate representation by race. But I do not know; and if this is what the majority wants the district court to produce, then I think the majority should steel itself to say so.

. “Every qualified resident . . . has the right to a ballot for election of state legislators of equal weight to the vote of every other resident. ...” 390 U.S. at 478, 88 S.Ct. at 1117.

. It seems ironic that there, in order to achieve a sufficiently partisan gerrymander in favor of “non-whites,” the Attorney General required (the Supreme Court eventually approving) that the New York Legislature fragment one of the few geographically concentrated communities of Hasidic Jews in the United States; while the majority in this case invalidates the district court’s plan primarily because it “fragments a geographically concentrated minority voting community.”

. It may even be that United Jewish Organizations signals the first note of recall from the thicket. That opinion can be read as indicating that from henceforth the courts are to withdraw with the best grace they can muster and leave contests on this particular darkling plain to be fought out among Congress, the Attorney General and local governments. But in this event, what are such district courts as ours here to do when they themselves are required to fashion plans?