Court Opinion

ID: 9690921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 19:52:17.47179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:06.873139
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, District Judge
(specially concurring:)
I concur except I do not find it necessary to reach the question of the applicability of § 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. I think that under the facts and circumstances of this case the Fifteenth Amendment provides a more appropriate and substantial basis upon which the issues presented must be resolved.
Nor can I concur in the finding that there was no racially discriminatory motivation in the passage of Act 536. The history of voting discrimination against *919Negroes over a substantial period of time in Bullock County on the part of the State of Alabama and Bullock County officials, as reflected by the evidence in this case and as judicially found to exist in Sellers v. Wilson, D.C., 123 F.Supp. 917 (1954) and in United States v. Alabama, D.C., 252 F.Supp. 95 (also see orders of September 13, 1961, July 26, 1962, and April 27, 1965), has been systematic, intentional, invidious, and in clear violation of the Fifteenth Amendment. Any determination in this case of legislative motive must be viewed in this light. Viewing Act 536 in such light, leads me, in the absence of any reasonable explanation for its passage, to the firm conclusion that its introduction and passage was racially motivated. The explanation for the introduction of the proposed statewide bill — which did not even get out of the House Committee — cannot serve, in the absence of some such testimony, as an explanation for the introduction and passage of local Act 536. Certainly, with this background, with the evidence in this case, and where the manifest consequences and clear effect of legislation is discriminatory, an inference of a purpose to discriminate is compelling. This is the clear teaching of Gomillion v. Light-foot, 364 U.S. 339, 81 S.Ct. 125 (1960); Cassell v. State of Texas, 339 U.S. 282, 70 S.Ct. 629, 94 L.Ed. 839 (1950); United States v. State of Alabama, 304 F.2d 583 (5th Cir. 1962); and Sims v. Baggett, 247 F.Supp. 96 (M.D. Ala. 1965). A passage from the Sims opinion amply illustrates this point:
With the pattern and practice of discrimination in Alabama as a backdrop, the cavalier treatment accorded predominately Negro counties in the House plan takes on added meaning. The court is permitted to find the intent of the Legislature from the consistency of inherent probabilities inferred from the record as a whole. We, therefore, hold that the Legislature intentionally aggregated predominately Negro counties with predominately white counties for the sole purpose of preventing the election of Negroes to House membership. The plan adopted by the Legislature can have no other effect. 247 F.Supp. at 109.
The facts and law of this case, to me, require the finding and conclusion of racially discriminatory motivation behind Act 536.