Court Opinion

ID: 9462707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:48:02.190374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:44.120579
License: Public Domain

VAN PELT, Senior District Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the excellently written majority opinion which accurately reflects the issues and the evidence.
I cannot subscribe to the finding of the Review Board that Bamford had failed to interview leaders of the Spanish-American population group at Corpus Christi. The four Spanish-Americans interviewed, as shown by the majority opinion are “a judge, a city councilman, a pastor of a Roman Catholic Mexican-American church, and the county clerk who was also president of the Knights of Columbus.” I am unable to believe in a community in which Spanish-Americans constitute 35.7% to 48% of the population (see note 10, majority opinion) that for a Spanish-American to be elected a judge, city councilman, or a county clerk is *87not prima facie evidence of his or her leadership. As to the approximately 18% of the population who are below the poverty level, I would feel critical of any survey of a poverty group in such a community which did not include a conference with a priest of a Roman Catholic Mexican-American church. I am not a member of that religious group but my experience teaches me that almost uniformly Catholic priests are well informed as to the poverty needs of their community.
I would sustain the petitioner’s request to reopen the record for the submission of new survey material.