Court Opinion

ID: 9425403
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:36.554015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.341489
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
dissenting.
In my view, the District Court erred in denying appellants’ motion for leave to intervene in this suit under § 4 (a) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, 42 *373U. S. C. § 1973b (a). The case plainly turns on its facts, and its impact on the development of principles governing intervention will doubtless be small. But what is ultimately at stake in this suit by New York to obtain an exemption under the Voting Rights Act is the applicability of the protections of the Act to 2.2 million minority-group members residing in three New York counties. According to appellants, the total number of minority-group members affected by all previous exemptions combined was less than 100,000.
At the same time that the District Court denied the motion to intervene, it granted the State's motion for summary judgment, thereby exempting these three counties from the coverage of the Act. The United States, defendant in the suit, consented to the entry of summary judgment. As a result, the contention that appellants were prepared to urge — namely, that the grant of an exemption would nullify the specific congressional intent to extend the protections of the Act to the class represented by appellants — was never laid before the Court.
In upholding the denial of leave to intervene, the Court reasons that appellants' motion, filed four days after the United States consented to a grant of summary judgment, was untimely. In the Court’s view, appellants should have made their motion during the brief period between the filing of New York’s motion for summary judgment and the announcement by the United States that it would not contest that motion. The Court states, with the benefit of hindsight, that it was
“obvious that there was a strong likelihood that the United States would consent to the entry of judgment since its answer revealed that it was without information with which it could oppose the motion for summary judgment. Thus, it was in*374cumbent upon the appellants, at that stage of the proceedings, to take immediate affirmative steps to protect their interests either by supplying the Department of Justice with any information they possessed concerning the employment of literacy tests in a way designed to deny New York citizens of the right to vote on account of race or color, or by presenting that information to the District Court itself by way of an immediate motion to intervene.” Ante, at 367.
The timeliness of a motion to intervene is determined, not by reference to the date on which the suit began or the date on which the would-be intervenors learned that it was pending, but rather by reference to the date when the movants learned that intervention was needed to protect their interests. See Diaz v. Southern Drilling Corp., 427 F. 2d 1118, 1125 (CA5 1970); cf. Cascade Natural Gas Corp. v. El Paso Natural Gas Co., 386 U. S. 129 (1967). Prior to the announcement that the United States would not contest the motion for summary judgment, appellants could not have known that intervention was needed to protect their interests and the interests of the class they represent. In an affidavit filed in connection with the motion to intervene, appellants' attorney stated that he had been advised by three different Justice Department attorneys that the United States would oppose New York's motion for summary judgment. App. 48a-51a. The Court suggests that the contents of the representations made by these attorneys is “a matter of dispute.” Ante, at 368. The matter was not in dispute, however, at the time the affidavit was filed,* nor did it become the subject of dispute until five months later *375when the Government filed in this Court its Motion to Dismiss or Affirm. Even then, the United States did not deny that appellants had been offered certain assurances by Government attorneys, but stated only that the affidavit was not “an accurate representation of the substance of the conversations between counsel for appellants and attorneys for the government.” Motion to Dismiss or Affirm, filed Sept. 13, 1972, p. 4 n. 3.
Thus, the record before the District Court indicated reasonable reliance on the Government’s assurances that the suit would not be settled. And appellants did move to intervene within four days of learning that they could no longer rely on the Government to protect their interests. On that record, the District Court was obligated to conclude that the motion was timely filed. Since the allegation of untimeliness was, in my view, the only non-frivolous objection to the motion, the District Court’s denial of the motion was unquestionably erroneous. I dissent.

“The United States filed no response to appellants’ motion to intervene and did not otherwise object to the motion.” Brief for United States 10.