Goosby v. Town Bd. of Town of Hempstead, N.Y.

• Decision Date: 25 June 1999
• Docket Number: Docket No. 97-7403
• Parties: , Dorothy GOOSBY and Samuel Prioleau, Plaintiffs-Appellees, Xavier Morales and Miladys Morales, Plaintiffs, v. TOWN BOARD OF THE TOWN OF HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK, Gregory P. Peterson, Richard V. Guardino, Patrick A. Zagarino, Curtis Fisher, Joseph Ra, Anthony Santino and Joseph Kearney in their official capacities as members of the Town Board of the Town of Hempstead, Defendants-Appellants, Nassau County Board of Elections, John Degrace, Steven Sabbath, in their official capacities as Commissioners of Elections of Nassau County, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 476

180 F.3d 476, Dorothy GOOSBY and Samuel Prioleau, Plaintiffs-Appellees Xavier Morales and Miladys Morales, Plaintiffs, v. TOWN BOARD OF THE TOWN OF HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK, Gregory P Peterson, Richard V. Guardino, Patrick A. Zagarino, Curtis Fisher, Joseph Ra, Anthony Santino and Joseph Kearney in their official capacities as members of the Town Board of the Town of Hempstead, Defendants-Appellants Nassau County Board of Elections, John Degrace, Steven Sabbath, in their official capacities as Commissioners of Elections of Nassau County, Defendants.

Docket No. 97-7403.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued June 15, 1998.

Decided June 25, 1999.

Appeal from a final judgment entered in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Gleeson, J.), after a bench trial, enjoining the Town of Hempstead from using an at-large voting method to elect members to the Town of Hempstead Town Board and ordering that a remedial plan consisting of six single-member districts be adopted by the Town Board, the court having determined that the at-large system violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as amended and that a remedial plan consisting of one single-member district and one multi-member district violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Affirmed.

RANDOLPH M. SCOTT-McLAUGHLIN, White Plains, N.Y. (Frederick K. Brewington, Hempstead, NY, Richard Charles Hamburger and David N. Yaffe, Melville, NY, of counsel), for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

KATHERINE I. BUTLER, University of South Carolina Law School, Columbia, SC (Evan H. Krinick, Joseph J. Ortego and Kenneth A. Novikoff, Rivikin, Radler & Kremer, Uniondale, NY, of counsel), for Defendants-Appellants.

(Elaine R. Jones, Norman J. Chachkin, Jaqueline A. Berrien, Victor A. Bolden, Victor Paladino, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., New York, NY, Todd A. Cox, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., Washington, DC, of counsel) for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., as amicus curiae.

(Willie Abrams, Dennis Courtland Hayes, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Baltimore, MD, of counsel) for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as amicus curiae.

Before: MINER, McLAUGHLIN, and LEVAL, Circuit Judges.

Leval, Circuit Judge, concurs in the result in a separate opinion.

Miner, Circuit Judge:

Defendants-appellants the Town Board of the Town of Hempstead, New York (the "Board" or "Town Board"), and Gregory P. Peterson, Richard V. Guardino, Patrick A. Zagarino, Curtis Fisher, Joseph Ra, Anthony Santino and Joseph Kearney, in their official capacities as members of the Town Board, ¹ appeal from a final judgment entered in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Gleeson, J.), following a bench trial, enjoining the Town of Hempstead from the use of an at-large voting method to elect members of the Town Board. The court determined that the at-large method violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1973, and ordered the Town Board to submit a remedial plan that would divide the Town of Hempstead (the "Town") into six single-member districts. The Town Board thereafter submitted two proposed plans, the first consisting of one single-member district and one multi-member district, which the district court determined violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court found that the alternative proposal of six single-member districts was consistent with the Equal Protection Clause and ordered that it be adopted by the Town Board.

For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

INTRODUCTION

In August of 1988, plaintiffs Dorothy Goosby and Samuel Prioleau brought a class action alleging that the at-large voting method adopted for the election of members to the Town Board violated their rights under the First, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1973. The district court certified a class that included "[a]ll present and/or potentially eligible Black voters residing in the Town of Hempstead." ² The plaintiffs alleged that the at-large method diluted and submerged their voting strength into the white majority, thereby effectively ensuring that they would not be fairly represented on the Town Board.

Following discovery, the Town Board moved for summary judgment, arguing that plaintiffs could not demonstrate legally significant white majority bloc voting, an essential precondition for a successful section 2 claim under Thornburgh v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 50-51, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986). The Town Board argued that, because Republican Party affiliation was the determinant of electoral success in Town-wide elections, the "bloc voting" that plaintiffs had demonstrated was along partisan, not racial, lines. The majority bloc that consistently defeated the typically Democratic candidates of choice of the black population was therefore not a "white" majority bloc but simply a Republican one. The district court denied the motion for summary judgment after concluding that the resolution of this issue depended on material issues of fact to be determined at trial.

In July and August of 1996, the district court conducted a bench trial at which it heard testimony from fact and expert witnesses produced by each side and received in evidence documents produced by each side. In February of 1997, the district court entered comprehensive Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in an opinion that first analyzed whether the at-large election method for Town Board members violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act under the framework of Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50-51.

The district court found that the plaintiffs had satisfied the first two Gingles preconditions, that "the minority group [is] sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a hypothetical single-member district," and that "black voters in the Town are politically cohesive." Goosby v. Town Bd. of the Town of Hempstead, 956 F.Supp. 326, 348, 350 (E.D.N.Y.1997) ("Goosby I ") (citing Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50).

In addressing the third Gingles precondition, the district court determined that there was "legally significant white bloc voting" such that "the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the minority-preferred candidate." Id. at 350 (citing Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50-51). Relying on our holding in NAACP, Inc. v. City of Niagara Falls, NY, 65 F.3d 1002, 1019 (2d Cir.1995), the district court noted that there had been, in almost every election, a "most preferred candidate" among black voters. See Goosby I, 956 F.Supp. at 351. This most preferred candidate always lost as a result of white voters voting for another candidate. See id. Having found, through a review of statistical evidence, that there was a "persistent pattern of racially polarized voting," the district court concluded that "this [wa]s sufficient to satisfy the third Gingles precondition." Id. In so doing, the district court implicitly rejected the Town Board's contention that the strong correlation between race and partisan-based voting precluded it from finding "legally significant white bloc voting" unless it first found that partisan politics was a proxy for racial animus in the Town. The district court instead addressed the evidence of partisanship under the "totality of the circumstances" analysis. See id. at 353-55.

The district court then noted that the satisfaction of the Gingles preconditions was not in itself sufficient to establish a violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. See id. at 351. Accordingly, it proceeded to evaluate whether, under the "totality of the circumstances," the at-large method of electing Town Board members "impair[ed] the ability of black voters to participate equally in the political process and elect candidates of their choice." Id. at 351. As a guide to this inquiry, the district court used the factors outlined in the Senate Judiciary Committee Report accompanying the passage of the 1982 Amendment to section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (the "Senate Report").

The district court proceeded to address and make factual findings regarding the history of discrimination in the Town and other factors concerning the voting power of black voters in the Town. It reviewed the record to make findings addressing electoral mechanisms that enhance vote dilution, the dearth of black candidates elected to the Town Board, the Board's lack of responsiveness to the concerns of the black communities, the inaccessibility to blacks of the Republican Party slating process, evidence of subtle racial appeals in campaigns for Town Board and the justifications offered for retaining the at-large system. See id. at 337-48.

The district court then addressed and rejected the Town Board's contentions that "partisan affiliation, not race, best explains the divergent voting patterns among black and white voters in the Town." Id. at 353. It rejected the Town Board's argument that the correlation between race and partisanship created a presumption that partisanship was the controlling factor and the further argument that plaintiffs must establish that racial bias infected the voting community to rebut this presumption. See id. Instead, the district court found that the correlation between race and partisanship was not dispositive but "simply among the many factors to be considered" under the totality of the circumstances analysis. Id. In light of all the surrounding circumstances, the district court found that the divergent voting patterns were better explained by race than by partisanship. See id. at 355.

The district court concluded that the at-large system employed for Town Board elections "operated to invidiously exclude blacks from...