Howard v. Adams County Board of Supervisors, 71-2361 Summary Calendar.

• Decision Date: 25 February 1972
• Docket Number: No. 71-2361 Summary Calendar.,71-2361 Summary Calendar.
• Parties: Reverend Leon HOWARD and Barney Schoby, Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross Appellees, v. ADAMS COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS et al., Defendants-Appellees Cross Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

453 F.2d 455 (1972)

Reverend Leon HOWARD and Barney Schoby, Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross Appellees, v. ADAMS COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS et al., Defendants-Appellees Cross Appellants.

No. 71-2361 Summary Calendar.^*

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

January 6, 1972.

Rehearing and Rehearing Denied February 25, 1972.

Frank R. Parker, George Peach Taylor, Jackson, Miss., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Lucien C. Gwin, Jr., Lucien C. Gwin, Natchez, Miss., for defendants-appellees.

Before GEWIN, GOLDBERG and DYER, Circuit Judges.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied February 25, 1972.

DYER, Circuit Judge:

Howard and Schoby, black citizens of Adams County, Mississippi, filed a class action attacking a county-wide redistricting plan adopted by and for the election of the Adams County Board of Supervisors. The focus of this appeal is the district court's denial of relief of plaintiffs' claim that the new plan is constitutionally impermissible as a racially motivated gerrymander, operating to dilute the voting strength of the blacks of Adams County. We affirm.¹

Adams County is the southwesternmost county in Mississippi, having as its western boundary the Mississippi River. The only incorporated municipality in the county is the City of Natchez, situated on the river at the approximate center of the western boundary of the county. The total population of the county in 1960 was 37,730, the City of Natchez consisting of 23,791 or 64% of the total population. The ratio of blacks to whites in the county is roughly one to one, 48% black—52% white. The black population of the county is heavily concentrated in the City of Natchez, with the concentration extending into the rural areas that border northwestern Natchez and comprise the northwestern corner of the county.

As late as 1970, the Board of Supervisors, the county's legislative body, was elected from five electoral districts which varied in population from 800 to 16,832. These districts were patently malapportioned. Redistricting was essential to a constitutionally valid election in November of 1970 under the one-man, one-vote mandate of Reynolds v. Sims, 1964, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506. Accordingly, in January of 1970 the Board of Supervisors retained Comprehensive Planners, Inc. (CPI) to prepare a redistricting plan. The resulting plan was adopted by the Board on November 2 of that year. The Board submitted the plan to the Attorney General of the United States for his approval pursuant to § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S.C.A. § 1973c. No objection was interposed.

Equality of population in electoral districts was a primary goal of the revision. Another objective, however, was the equalization of the responsibilities of each Supervisor in exercising their traditional function of highway and bridge maintenance. Thus, the Board instructed CPI not only to equate, as best it could, the population of the districts, but also the mileage of roads for county maintenance, and the square mile area of each district. With its land area largely rural, and its population concentrated in one urban area, the realization of these legitimate planning objectives dictated a plan which would consolidate urban and rural areas into each district. As the new plan was developed, therefore, each district converged in spokelike fashion from a broad rural base into the City of Natchez. This dissection of the population concentration of the county resulted in an equal allocation of the population of Natchez among the new districts. Under the population figures available to CPI in 1970, prior to the publication of the 1970 census, the result was a plan in which substantial equality of population was reached in districts that reflected cross sections of urban and rural land areas.

The allocation of the population concentration of the city resulted in the removal of some 7000 blacks from old Supervisor District Four, where prior to the implementation of the plan 60% of the blacks in the county lived and commanded a 75% population majority. These blacks, now residing in new districts other than Four, found themselves in electoral districts where blacks no longer represented a majority of the population. The reallocation of the population of Natchez, on the other hand, substantially balanced the racial ratio of the population in new Districts Three, 51% white, 49% black, and One, 55% white, 45% black, and resulted in a significant amelioration of the racial population disparities in the other two districts, although whites there continued to constitute a 60%-40% population majority.

Plaintiffs object to the CPI plan as a racially motivated gerrymander, contending that as a result of the shift of a part of the highly concentrated black population of the county, the voting strength of blacks as a legally cognizable racial element was unconstitutionally diluted and the effectiveness of their franchise correspondingly reduced. Their claim is essentially based upon the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Specifically, plaintiffs argue that this dilution is represented by the difference in effective voting power blacks now command in Adams County, under the new plan, and the effective voting power blacks could command if the revision had been drawn to recognize their population segment of northwestern Adams County as numerically large enough and geographically contiguous enough, to constitute two electoral districts in which blacks would retain a significant population majority. Further, as a side effect of the plan, it is urged that these blacks, Howard and Schoby included, who formerly were part of the majority class in old District Four, and now are a minority class in each of the new electoral districts, have suffered a more serious dilution of their voting power since they are "denied the right to vote in a district where they constituted a majority prior to the redistricting" and could "elect black candidates if they so chose."

A long line of cases beginning with Gray v. Sanders, 1963, 372 U.S. 368, 83 S.Ct. 801, 9 L.Ed.2d 821 and Reynolds v. Sims, supra, teaches that each citizen must have an equally effective voice in the election of his legislative representative by requiring substantial equality of population in electoral districts. Malapportionment, however, is not the only evil which this effectiveness guarantee is designed to combat. It is also aimed at the gerrymander. It is the gerrymander, not malapportionment, that is at issue in this appeal.

The gerrymander is as great a threat to equality of representation as malapportionment. While malapportionment generally emphasizes considerations of the weight of an individual's vote, a gerrymandering operates to destroy the effectiveness of the franchise by diluting the vote of...