Court Opinion

ID: 9427885
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:11.326488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:10.337767
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion but write separately to state my understanding of the effect of the holding in Part IV-B. The Court there affirms, as not clearly erroneous, the District Court’s determination that the city of Rome failed to meet its burden of disproving that the 13 disputed annexations had a discriminatory effect. That issue, for me, is close, but I accept the District Court’s ruling. The holding, however, *188does seem to have the anomalous result of leaving the voters residing in those annexed areas within the jurisdiction of Rome’s Board of Education, but outside the jurisdiction of its City Commission.* As the appellees point out, however, Brief for Appellees 40-42, affirmance of the District Court’s holding does not preclude the city from altering this anomaly.
It seems significant to me that the District Court adopted the remedial device of conditioning its approval of the annexations on Rome’s abandonment of the residency requirement for City Commission elections. It thus denied the city’s motion for approval of the annexations “without prejudice to renewal . . . upon the undertaking of suitable action consistent with the views expressed herein.” 472 F. Supp. 221, 249 (DC 1979). This remedial device, conditioning the approval of annexations on the elimination of pre-existing discriminatory aspects of a city’s electoral system, was developed in City of Petersburg v. United States, 354 F. Supp. 1021 (DC 1972), summarily aff’d, 410 U. S. 962 (1973), and expressly approved by this Court in City of Richmond v. United States, 422 U. S. 358, 369-371 (1975).
I entertain some doubt about the District Court’s apparent conclusion that the residency requirement for Commission elections, standing alone, would render the postannexation electoral system of Rome one that did not “fairly recogniz[e] the minority’s political potential,” within the meaning of City of Richmond. Id., at 378. The discriminatory effect of a residency requirement in an at-large election system results from its necessary separation of one contest into a number of individual contests, thereby frustrating minority efforts to utilize effectively single-shot voting. See ante, at 185, n. 21. *189And in a city the size of Rome, one might reasonably conclude that a requirement that one Commission member reside in each of nine wards would have such an effect. The District Court failed to analyze, however, the impact of the Attorney General’s preclearance of Rome’s reduction of the number of wards in the city from nine to three. The potential for effective single-shot voting would not be frustrated by a requirement that three commissioners be elected from each of three wards, so long as candidates were not required to run for a particular “numbered post” within each ward. Given the Attorney General’s preclearance of the reduction of the number of wards from nine to three, the latter requirement is one that the District Court should have considered in determining whether the presence of a residency requirement would necessarily lead to the conclusion that Rome’s postannexation electoral system is one that does not fairly recognize the minority’s political potential.
I do not dissent from the affirmance of the District Court’s holding with respect to the annexations, however, because the appellees have conceded that Rome need not abandon its residency requirement in order to keep the annexed areas within the jurisdiction of the City Commission. Appellees state:
“If the City wished to retain both a residency requirement and at-large elections, ... it could couple its pre-1966 procedures with its subsequent shift to a system of electing three commissioners from each of three wards. (The Attorney General had not objected to the change from nine wards to three larger wards.) When candidates are running concurrently for three unnumbered positions in each of the three wards, without a majority-vote requirement, there can be no head-to-head contest, and single-shot voting by black voters would give them a chance to elect the candidate they supported.” Brief for Appellees 41-42.
*190Thus, on the understanding that the Attorney General would not object to the District Court’s approval of the annexations insofar as they expand the jurisdiction of the City Commission, if the city either eliminates the residency requirement and returns to a nine ward system, or retains the residency requirement and the three-ward system that has been in effect since 1966, I join in Part IV-B of the Court’s opinion.

The Attorney General, in response to the city’s motion for reconsideration of its submissions, agreed to preclear the 13 annexations for purposes of Board of Education elections. That decision was based solely on the fact that there was no residency requirement for Board of Education elections under Rome’s pre-1966 electoral rules. See ante, at 160, 162.