Court Opinion

ID: 9472417
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:59:40.168102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:55.477836
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the result.
With deference, I submit this special concurring opinion.
I agree that summary judgment was inappropriate in this case, but my reasons differ from those of my colleagues. The majority opinion states that because the 1983 annexation was an effort to secure preclearance, it “may be characterized as remedial, thereby allowing the city explicitly to use race in fashioning the annexation”. As I see it, however, neither United Jewish Organizations v. Carey, 1977, 430 U.S. 144, 97 S.Ct. 996, 51 L.Ed.2d 229, nor Fullilove v. Klutznick, 1980, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 65 L.Ed.2d 902, supports the use of a “remedial” plan to justify a discriminatory refusal to annex black citizens because of their race. Applying UJO to the facts of the present case turns its doctrine upside down. In UJO, a certain Jewish community had been split as part of a state redistricting plan. The split was designed to enhance the voting strength of the state’s black population to obtain the Attorney General’s approval of the redistricting plan. Members of the Jewish com*1027munity sued the governor. The district court dismissed their complaint. The Supreme Court affirmed. Even though the redistricting plan diluted the voting strength of the white community, the plan was constitutional because its purpose was not to minimize the voting strength of the whites or to impair their access to the political process. See 430 U.S. at 167, 97 S.Ct. at 1010 (opinion of White, J.); id. at 179-80, 97 S.Ct. at 1016-17 (Stewart, J., concurring in the judgment).
UJO establishes that government may use race explicitly in fashioning a remedial plan if the use of race is necessary to the remedy. UJO, however, does not give the government carte blanche to discriminate against minorities whenever the government is engaged in fashioning a remedy. In the present case, I fail to see how the exclusion of Southgate is necessary to remedy Indianola’s failure to preclear its previous annexations. The remedy that the city is pursuing is to annex enough blacks so that the Justice Department will approve the 1965 annexation. It is not necessary to exclude Southgate to secure the desired preclearance. Indeed, on January 20, 1984, the Justice Department refused to preclear the 1983 annexation and the 1965 annexation, precisely because the Department found that the exclusion of Southgate was motivated by racially discriminatory considerations.
In Fullilove Justices Powell and Stewart indicate that the interests of “innocent” whites may be taken into account in fashioning a remedial plan, but Chief Justice Burger’s plurality opinion, citing UJO, states, “When effectuating a limited and properly tailored remedy to cure the effects of prior discrimination, ... ‘a sharing of the burden’ by innocent parties is not impermissible.” 448 U.S. at 484, 100 S.Ct. at 2777. Nothing in UJO or Fullilove suggests that the need to “limit and tailor” a remedial plan can justify a city’s exclusion of a black segment of the population solely because inclusion would decrease the voting strength of the white population. Such an exclusion is not a “balancing process”; it is favoritism for white voters over black voters. Furthermore, one may question just how “innocent” the white voters of Indianola are in this case. From 1965 until September 1981, the city’s white population enjoyed the benefits of an electoral majority that was the result of discriminatory annexation policy.
I agree with Judge Higginbotham that the district court should not have distinguished between those blacks within the city (Classes A and B) and those excluded (Class C). If the purpose of excluding Class C was to dilute black voting strength, then all blacks were affected. Although the individual blacks in Classes A and B were not denied the right to vote, they were the victims of unlawful discrimination targeted not at the individual members of Class C but rather at Indianola blacks as a group. This type of discrimination against racial groups is precisely the kind of discrimination prohibited by the Civil War Amendments and the Voting Rights Act. The effect of that discrimination was to continue the historic caste status of blacks. See 42 U.S.C.A. § 1973(b) (West Supp.1983) (voting practice may not deny equal participation to “members of a class of citizens protected” by the Act); Marshall, A Comment on the Nondiscrimination Principle in a “Nation of Minorities”, 93 Yale L.J. 1006 (1984). I cannot reconcile this holding with a holding that Indianola could legitimately exclude any blacks whose annexation was not necessary to secure Justice Department preclearance. Indianola had a policy against annexing blacks, because they are black — except to the limited extent mandated by the Justice Department. This policy was discriminatory against blacks as a group.
I cannot fault the district court’s conclusion that Mayor Fratesi’s affidavit demonstrates an unlawful intent to discriminate against blacks, 551 F.Supp. at 517-18, 519-20. The court correctly interpreted the affidavit to mean that the government of Indianola wanted to avoid annexing any more blacks than necessary to secure preclearanee of the 1965 annexation of white voters. Nevertheless I agree that summa*1028ry judgment was inappropriate. Nonracial criteria may also have entered into the City’s decision not to annex Southgate. As Judge Higginbotham correctly observes, the presence of unlawful motives does not automatically invalidate an action: the action may stand if the defendant can prove that the same decision would have resulted in the absence of the impermissible motive. Of course, even then the action may not have a discriminatory result prohibited by section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 Ú.S.C.A. § 1973 (West Supp.1983). Indianola may not be able to meet either the mixed-motive test or the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, but it is entitled to try.
I must concur in the majority’s vacating of the judgment. I note, however, that in the light of the Supreme Court’s recent action in Escambia County v. McMillan, 1984, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 1577, 80 L.Ed.2d 36 (per curiam), the district court should probably attempt to resolve the statutory as well as the constitutional issues. Whether or not the City’s purposes were permissible, it is unlikely that they can overcome the Voting Rights Act’s prohibition of discriminatory results.