Anderson v. Martin

• Decision Date: 29 June 1962
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 2623.
• Citation: 206 F. Supp. 700
• Parties: Dupuy H. ANDERSON and Acie J. Belton, Complainants, v. Wade O. MARTIN, Jr., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana

206 F. Supp. 700

Dupuy H. ANDERSON and Acie J. Belton, Complainants, v. Wade O. MARTIN, Jr., Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 2623.

United States District Court D. Louisiana.

June 29, 1962.

Johnnie A. Jones, Murphy W. Bell, Bruce A. Bell, Leonard P. Avery, Samuel Dickens, Baton Rouge, La., Wilmon L. Richardson, Pascagoula, Miss., Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit, III, New York City, Michael Meltsner, New York City, of counsel, for complainants.

Jack P. F. Gremillion, Atty. Gen. of Louisiana, Carroll Buck, First Asst. Atty. Gen., Harry Fuller, Second Asst. Atty. Gen., Teddy W. Airhart, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Thomas W. McFerrin, Special Counsel, for defendant.

Before WISDOM, Circuit Judge, and WEST and ELLIS, District Judges.

WEST, District Judge.

In 1960 the Louisiana Legislature enacted legislation requiring the Secretary of State to place a racial designation over the name of every candidate on the ballot in the primary or general election.¹ Under the statute the candidate must place his name and racial designation on his certificate of candidacy and the Secretary of State uses that information in preparing the ballot. The designation applies to all candidates. The Statute requires that the designation of "Caucasian", "Negro", or "other specified race" be placed on the ballot after the name of each candidate.

Plaintiffs are two Negro candidates for the school board in East Baton Rouge Parish, State of Louisiana. They challenge the constitutionality of this statute under the First, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and request injunctive relief against the Secretary of State prior to the July 28, 1962, Democratic primary.

The District Judge denied a temporary restraining order and thereafter a three-judge court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C.A. § 2284. Defendant filed his answer together with a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction in court on the day of the hearing. The court recessed to consider its jurisdiction and having concluded that it had jurisdiction,² the court reconvened to hear the merits. The parties stipulated that the facts were as stated in plaintiffs' complaint; the case proceeded to argument, and was submitted.

At the outset it is important to grasp the fundamental relationships of the parties. Plaintiffs are candidates for office and the rights they advance arise out of that status. Secondly, the statute in question is a state statute and applies to all. While it requires the Negro to have his race disclosed on the ballot, it requires the same of the Caucasian, Mongolian, and so on. The garden variety discrimination between white and Negro is not involved. Moreover, the state adopts no "sophisticated" method of discrimination that might give us pause.³ The sole question is whether the constitutional rights of a Negro candidate are abridged when his race, like that of all other candidates, is disclosed on the ballot pursuant to state statute.

Precisely which constitutional rights plaintiffs advance is somewhat difficult to determine. Certainly the Fifteenth Amendment gives plaintiffs no comfort. While the Fourteenth Amendment apparently protects rights broader than those originally conceived by its drafters due to the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses,⁴ the Fifteenth Amendment is direct in its protection.⁵ It is exclusively the right to vote, and nothing more, which, in terms, is protected. Surely the statute must be interpreted in such a way as to protect the fundamental power of the franchise in whatever context a State bent on discrimination seeks to cast it.⁶ But at no time has the Supreme Court expanded the protection of the amendment beyond the franchise. Even with the recognition that the Fifteenth Amendment created affirmative rights,⁷ the court has not gone beyond the protection of the voter per se. Likewise, McDonald v. Key,⁸ which is urged on us as controlling, recognized that the right to vote is not involved in a statute requiring racial designations on the ballot. Moreover the facts of the case do not suggest a restriction on voting rights. The unfathomable vagaries of the voter operate just as freely with this statute as without it. This statute merely contributes to a more informed electorate. In any event, plaintiffs do not validly assert a right under the Fifteenth Amendment.

There is a creeping tendency, when dealing with problems in the area of the First and Fourteenth Amendments,⁹ to outlaw State statutes on the grounds of their lack of rightness or wisdom, while under the misapprehension that only their constitutionality is being tested. This the Supreme Court has told us, more than once, we may not do.¹⁰ With due respect for our federalism, the court must examine the Constitution and the various lines of Supreme Court decisions and determine if the State action contravenes the Constitution. The examination must be liberal so as not to exalt form over substance; it must be circumspect so as to accord the states their just powers.¹¹

Plaintiffs' reliance on the Fourteenth Amendment suggests two lines of Supreme Court cases which might control this action. The first of these is the right to anonymity defined in N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S. Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488. This case, plus Bates v. Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516, 80 S.Ct. 412, 4 L.Ed.2d 480, and Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60, 80 S.Ct. 536, 4 L. Ed.2d 559, expounded the proposition that a person exercising freedom of speech or association had a right to anonymity if disclosure entailed "the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise * * * of their right to freedom of association."¹² Justice Black in Talley v. California, supra at 65, 80 S.Ct. at 539, explained that "the reason for these holdings was that identification and fear of reprisal might deter perfectly peaceful discussions of public matters of importance."

It may be assumed, for present purposes, that plaintiffs have a constitutional right to seek office.¹³ However, no matter what the length and breadth of that right, there is no basis for saying that a candidate for office has a right to anonymity. The Court in N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama, was of the opinion that the injury to a right subsequent to disclosure of identity precludes the right to identification. A political candidate does not lose his right to run for office by disclosure of his race. Further, it is safe to say that his race, like his name and political affiliation which also appear on the ballot¹⁴, will come out in the campaign. This court is not disposed to create a shield against the brightest light of public examination of candidates for public office.

The Court in Bates, N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama, and Talley, recognized that the right to anonymity could be abridged in certain instances. However, in those instances, the State bore the burden of showing an overriding interest in the public sufficient to justify the partial abridgement of the right.¹⁵ In the case before us the right of anonymity on the ballot does not exist so far as this court can determine. Thus this court is not put to any balancing since no personal interests are placed in the scale opposite the State interest, whatever it may be. We conclude that the Louisiana statute does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment on that score.

The second line of cases which appears applicable are the "state action" cases having their matrix in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161, and Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249, 73 S.Ct. 1031, 97 L.Ed. 1586. It is insufficient to state that these cases are distinguishable because state action is clear in this case. These cases must be read for their meaning as well as their facts.

The first case is, of course, McDonald v. Key, supra. While it does not fall precisely within the "state action" concept, it is the case closest on its facts and involves the equal protection clause. There the Tenth Circuit found that the requirement that only Negroes have their race designated on the ballot violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs attempt to make more of this case than is in it. The Tenth Circuit did not require any intricate theory of constitutional deprivation to strike down the Oklahoma Statute. Negro candidates were treated different from all other candidates without good reason being shown. Given those facts the Court need not have gone further, and it did not. This is not the case before us. Here all candidates must state their race and have it printed on the ballot. Plaintiffs must look further to find unconstitutionality.

Plaintiffs would have us find in Shelley v. Kraemer and its progeny some principle which would deter a state from placing racial classifications on the ballot. A brief synopsis of the principle of these cases is in order. The Supreme Court, in the first instance, recognized that discrimination by private individuals was beyond the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment under the Civil Rights Cases.¹⁶ To this was added the undeniable proposition that discrimination by the states was improper under the Fourteenth Amendment. Further the Court held that ostensibly private discrimination which was in fact enforced by the state was discriminatory "state action" under the Fourteenth Amendment.¹⁷ The crucial fact in all these cases, insofar as the instant case is concerned, is that there existed a prior act of actually proven discrimination to which the state was privy. Either the private individual was seeking to exclude Negroes from a neighborhood,¹⁸ or denying Negroes the right to vote,¹⁹ or segregating buses,²⁰ train terminals,²¹ restaurants,²² or golf courses.²³ In those cases the state sought either to enforce the discrimination²⁴ or permit it within the public domain²⁵. Since the Louisiana statute does not discriminate on its face, the Court must ask where the proven discrimination lies. Plaintiffs offer no proof of actual discrimination against them.²⁶ They ask the...