Lawyer v. Department of Justice

• Decision Date: 25 June 1997
• Docket Number: 952024
• Citation: 521 U.S. 567,138 L.Ed.2d 669,117 S.Ct. 2186
• Parties: C. Martin LAWYER, III, Appellant, v. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

521 U.S. 567

117 S.Ct. 2186

138 L.Ed.2d 669

C. Martin LAWYER, III, Appellant,

v DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al.

No. 95-2024.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Feb. 19, 1997.

Decided June 25, 1997.

Syllabus ^*

Based on the 1990 census, the Florida Legislature adopted a reapportionment plan for State Senate and House districts. When the Justice Department refused to preclear the plan, the State Supreme Court entered an order encouraging the state legislature to adopt a new plan. Advised that the Governor would not convene an extraordinary session and that neither the Senate President nor the House Speaker would convene his respective house, the court concluded that legislative impasse had occurred and revised the redistricting plan itself producing Plan 330. In 1995, appellant and other residents of Senate District 21 as revised in Plan 330 filed suit against state and federal parties in the Federal District Court, alleging that District 21 violated the Equal Protection Clause. The three-judge court permitted intervention by the State Senate, the House of Representatives and others. Ultimately, all the parties but appellant agreed to a settlement that would revise District 21 under a new plan, Plan 386. At a hearing, the District Court rejected appellant's objections that the court was obliged to find Plan 330 unconstitutional before approving the settlement, and that Plan 386 was unconstitutional under Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 115 S.Ct. 2475, 132 L.Ed.2d 762, because only race could explain District 21's contours. The court approved the settlement.

Held:

1.The District Court did not err in approving the settlement agreement without formally holding Plan 330 unconstitutional. Pp. ____-____.

(a) State redistricting responsibility should be accorded primacy to the extent possible when a federal court exercises remedial power. Growe v. Emison, 507 U.S. 25, 34, 113 S.Ct. 1075, 1081, 122 L.Ed.2d 388. A State should be given the opportunity to make its own redistricting decision so long as that is practically possible and the State chooses to take the opportunity. Ibid.; Wise v. Lipscomb, 437 U.S. 535, 540, 98 S.Ct. 2493, 2497, 57 L.Ed.2d 411. The District Court's decision did not deny the State's legislature and Supreme Court the opportunity to devise a new redistricting plan here, for the State has selected its opportunity by entering into the settlement agreement. There is no reason to suppose that the State's attorney general lacked authority to propose a plan as an incident of his authority to represent the State in the litigation, and the participation of counsel for the each legislative chamber confirms this authority as well as the legislature's continuing refusal to address the issue in formal session. The State has taken advantage of the opportunity recognized in Growe and Wise. Pp. ____-____.

(b) The District Court was not bound to adjudicate liability before settlement even though appellant refused to settle. The settlement agreement did not impermissibly impose duties or obligations on appellant or dispose of his claims. See Firefighters v. Cleveland, 478 U.S. 501, 529, 106 S.Ct. 3063, 3079, 92 L.Ed.2d 405. It disposed of his claim not in the forbidden sense of cutting him off from a remedy to which he was entitled, but only in the legitimate sense of granting him an element of the very relief he had sought: the elimination of the plan he claimed was unconstitutional. Insofar as appellant also wanted the new plan to be constitutional, he is in the same position he would have been with a formal decree: his views on Plan 386's merits were heard, and his right to attack it in this appeal is unimpaired. He may not demand the adjudication that the State could have demanded but instead waived. Pp. ____-____.

2.The District Court's finding that Plan 386 did not subordinate traditional districting principles to race is not clearly erroneous. See Miller v. Johnson, supra, at ----, 115 S.Ct., at 2488-2489. Appellant's contrary claim is based on his charges that District 21 encompasses more than one county, crosses a body of water, is irregular in shape, lacks compactness, and contains a percentage of black voters significantly higher than the overall percentage in the counties from which the district is drawn. His first four points ignore unrefuted evidence showing that District 21 is no different from what Florida's traditional districting principles could have been expected to produce. As to the final point, this Court has never suggested that the percentage of black residents in a district may not exceed the percentage of black residents in any of the counties from which a district is created, and has never required similar racial composition of different political districts to avoid an inference of racial gerrymandering in any one of them. Pp. ____-____.

920 F.Supp. 1248, affirmed.

SOUTER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and STEVENS, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which O'CONNOR, KENNEDY, and THOMAS, JJ., joined.

Robert J. Shapiro, Tampa, FL, for appellant.

Richard G. Taranto, Washington, DC, for state appellees.

Irving L. Gornstein, Washington, DC, for federal appellee.

Justice SOUTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

Appellant was one of several plaintiffs in this suit challenging the configuration of a Florida legislative district under the Equal Protection Clause. All parties except appellant reached a provisional settlement agreement and, after a fairness hearing, a three-judge District Court approved the remedial districting plan proposed in the agreement. Appellant claims that the District Court acted without giving the State an adequate opportunity to make its own redistricting choice by approving the remedial plan without first adjudicating the legality of the original plan, that the court had no authority to approve any settlement over his objection, and that the remedial plan violates the Constitution. We hold that the State exercised the choice to which it was entitled under our cases, that appellant has no right to block the settlement, and that he has failed to point up any unconstitutionality in the plan proposed.

I

After the 1990 Decennial Census, the Florida Legislature adopted a reapportionment plan for Florida's 40 Senate districts and 120 House districts. Following the procedure for reapportionment set forth in the state constitution, see Fla. Const., Art. III, §16(c) (1970), the attorney general of Florida petitioned the State Supreme Court for a declaration that the plan comported with state and federal law. That court approved the redistricting plan, while noting that time constraints imposed by the state constitution precluded a full review of objections raised to the plan under §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 42 U.S.C. §1973. The court retained jurisdiction to entertain further objections to the plan. See In re Constitutionality of SJR 2G, 597 So.2d 276, 285-286 (Fla.), amended, 601 So.2d 543 (Fla.1992); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1001, 114 S.Ct. 2647, 2652, 129 L.Ed.2d 775 (1994).

Since five Florida counties, including Hillsborough County where the city of Tampa is located, are covered jurisdictions under §5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 439, as amended, 42 U.S.C. §1973c, see 28 CFR pt. 51, App. (1996); see also Johnson, supra, at 1001, n. 2, 114 S.Ct., at 2652, n. 2, the state attorney general submitted the redistricting plan to the United States Department of Justice for preclearance. On June 16, 1992, the Department declined to preclear the proposed State Senate districts, on the grounds that the redistricting plan divided "politically cohesive minority populations'' in the Hillsborough county area and failed to create a majority-minority district in that region. Letter from Assistant United States Attorney General John Dunne to Florida Attorney General Robert A. Butterworth (quoted in In re Constitutionality of SJR 2G, supra, at 547 (Shaw, C. J., specially concurring)); see also De Grandy v. Wetherell, 815 F.Supp. 1550, 1556 (N.D.Fla.1992), aff'd. in part and rev'd in part, Johnson v. De Grandy, supra.

The Supreme Court of Florida then entered an order encouraging the state legislature to adopt a new plan to address the Justice Department's objection, and noting that if the legislature failed to act, the court itself would adopt a reapportionment plan. See 815 F.Supp., at 1556; see also 601 So.2d, at 544-545. The state court was advised that the Governor had no intent to convene the legislature in extraordinary session and that neither the President of the Senate nor the Speaker of the House of Representatives would convene his respective house. Ibid.; see also 815 F.Supp., at 1556. The court concluded that a legislative impasse had occurred and, invoking authority under state law, revised the Senate redistricting plan to address the Justice Department's objection. 601 So.2d, at 545.

The amended plan, known as Plan 330, called for an irregularly shaped Senate District 21, with a voting-age population 45.8% black and 9.4% hispanic and comprising portions of four counties in the Tampa Bay area. Id., at 546. The district included the central portions of Tampa in Hillsborough County, the eastern shore of Tampa Bay running south to Bradenton in Manatee County, central portions of St. Petersburg in Pinellas County, a narrow projection eastward through parts of Hillsborough and Polk Counties, and a narrow finger running north from St. Petersburg to Clearwater. See Juris. Statement 29a. Although the State Supreme Court acknowledged that the district was "more contorted'' than other possible plans and that black residents in different parts of the district might have little in common besides their race, it decided that such concerns "must give way to racial and ethnic fairness.'' See 601 So.2d, at 546. Elections were held under...