Seastrunk v. Burns
| Decision Date | 30 September 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 84-4207,84-4207 |
| Citation | 772 F.2d 143 |
| Parties | 27 Ed. Law Rep. 475 Regionald SEASTRUNK, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Gerald BURNS, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Louis Berry, Alexandria, La., for plaintiffs-appellants.
James Brady, Alexandria, La., for Vernon Parish School Bd.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Before BROWN, WILLIAMS, and GARWOOD, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from the district court's approval of a reapportionment plan adopted by the Vernon Parish, Louisiana School Board. Appellants, black residents of the Parish, alleged that the plan violated their rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and did not meet the standards required by the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973, as amended in 1982. The district court determined that it had not been shown that the School Board's plan violated appellants' rights under the Constitution, or failed to meet Voting Rights Act standards, and that accordingly the decision of the School Board, as the proper legislative body to promulgate the reapportionment plan, was entitled to deference and should be sustained. We affirm.
Vernon Parish (the "Parish") is a rural parish in western Louisiana, with a total population of 38,897, excluding Fort Polk military personnel. The population is 85 percent white, 12.4 percent black, and 2.6 percent other races. The majority of the black population is concentrated in a relatively small geographic region in and around the town of Leesville near the center of the Parish. Prior to the bringing of this suit, no black had been elected to the School Board under the existing twelve-member scheme.
Each Louisiana parish school board is authorized by state law to reapportion itself, as long as each board member as nearly as possible represents the same number of persons. La.-R.S. 17:71.1. 1 In so doing, the board "may create such special school board election districts as it deems desirable" and these districts "need not be coterminous with the wards that may be created by any governing authority...." La.-R.S. 17:71.3 (1982). 2 The districts may be single-member or multi-member. Id. Reapportionment may occur every decennial year. La.-R.S. 17:71.5. 3
Pursuant to this authority, the Vernon Parish School Board (the "Board") in Elections for Board members under the new plan were set for March 26, 1983 (primary election) and April 30, 1983 (general election). The candidate qualifying period was set for January 24-28, 1983. Shortly before the qualifying period was to begin, appellants, all black residents of Vernon Parish, at least some of whom are members of the local Political Action League ("PAL"), brought suit seeking an injunction to prohibit the qualifying of candidates and the holding of an election, alleging that their rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution had been violated by the adopted plan. Appellants also alleged that the plan failed to meet the standards set out in the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973 et seq., as amended in 1982.
March 1982 determined to reapportion itself. 4 The Board hired Tri-S Associates, Inc., of Ruston, Louisiana ("Tri-S"), to act as consultants and to draw the proposed Board plan. 5 Following preliminary work by Tri-S and discussions of the prospective reapportionment at several open meetings of the Board, which were attended by at least some of the appellants, on April 12, 1984, the Board adopted a plan calling for thirteen members from seven electoral districts. Four districts were single member; the remaining three were multi-member districts. One single-member district in the northwest Leesville area, denominated district 1-D, had a 90 percent black population. This plan replaced the existing twelve-member "mixed" (i.e., some single-member and some multi-member districts) plan. The new plan was forwarded to the Justice Department for preclearance as required by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973c. On October 5, 1982, the Justice Department informed the Board by letter that it would not object to the plan
On January 13, 1983, the district court entered a rule nisi enjoining the Board from holding the elections as scheduled, and ordering appellees to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not issue. On January 19, 1983, by consent of the parties, the court held a hearing on the merits.
Kenneth Selle, president of Tri-S, who worked on the plan for the Board, testified as an expert at the hearing. Selle testified that he received somewhat cursory instructions indicating the Board's concern that reapportionment was necessary because of population shifts within the district. He was instructed to take into account the requirements of the Constitution, the Voting Rights Act, and the Justice Department's current preclearance screening requirements, and to draw an acceptable plan. In accord with Selle's experience, he recommended that the new plan should as closely as possible track the basic apportionment geography of the existing scheme, 6 while also satisfying current state and federal voting law requirements.
Using detailed 1980 census data, Selle determined the total population of the Parish to be 38,897, excluding the military personnel stationed at Fort Polk. For a thirteen-member Board, and in consideration of the one-man-one-vote requirement of Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964), Selle determined the normative per-member population to be 2,997. He determined that drawing Selle admitted on cross-examination that a twelve single-member district plan was possible, as was also evidenced by the existing Parish Police Jury plan. He added that it was impossible, however, to carve out either a second "safe" black district or a second district in which blacks would have a sizable, if nonmajority, proportion of the vote. According to Selle, this result obtained because, notwithstanding the concentration of black population in the Leesville district 1-D area, the remainder of the black population within the parish was geographically scattered. 10 The presence of this "safe" black district ensured that a black member would be elected to the School Board for the first time. 11
a legally acceptable plan would require, if possible, the creation of a black seat on the Board. With these criteria in mind, Selle carved out a substantially black district (1-D) in the northwestern portion of Leesville, having a total population of 3,132, which was 90 percent black (2,823). The evidence does not reflect in meaningful detail how the black population was spread over district 1-D, although it does indicate some concentration of blacks and whites in the south-central portion of the district. Surrounding this "safe" black district was a predominantly white four-member district (districts 1-A, -B, -C, & -E; hereinafter "district 1"), encompassing the remainder of Leesville and a substantial rural area surrounding the town. 7 This four-member district had a total population of 12,226, of whom 1,067 were black, the 1067 being relatively evenly dispersed throughout that district. 8 The other districts in the new plan were geographically similar to the existing districts in the prior twelve-member plan, with moderate relocations of some district boundaries to compensate for the ten-year population shifts and to include the necessary normative population within each district. The final result was a plan consisting of four single-member districts (including 1-D, the "safe" black district), one four-member district, one three-member district, and one two-member district, for a total of thirteen Board members. 9
Shortly thereafter, on February 2, 1983, the district court enjoined the scheduled elections until further orders, pending its decision on the merits. On October 13, 1983, while the district court still had the suit under advisement, registered voters in (old) ward 1 of the Parish (covering an area The Police Jury plan consisted of twelve single-member districts. It, too, provided for one single-member district in substantially black northwest Leesville, including some rural portions of the old ward 1 area surrounding that Leesville district, an arrangement which would also virtually guarantee that a black be elected to the Board. The district court found the Police Jury plan superior in several respects to the Board's plan. In particular, the court expressly determined that: (1) the Police Jury plan was superior with respect to the Reynolds v. Sims one-man-one-vote requirement; (2) it was superior also because it did not increase the Board size from twelve to thirteen members, thereby diluting numerically the voting power of the potential black Board member; and (3) it was superior because it consisted entirely of single-member districts. The Police Jury plan had a maximum deviation factor from the normative per-member population of only 6.3 percent, where the Board's plan showed a maximum deviation of 8.94 percent (district 1-D versus district 2). 13
similar to new districts 1 and 1-D) sought to intervene. This motion was denied the same day, but the court allowed the petition of intervention and its attachments, including an alternative plan of reapportionment drawn by the Vernon Parish Police Jury (the "Police Jury plan"), to be filed by these individuals as an amicus brief. 12
The district court found as a matter of fact that, given the present geographical distribution of the minority populations within the Parish, no additional majority black district was possible. It determined that, although the proposed thirteen-member Board plan would numerically dilute the voting strength of individual members of the Board, including that of the prospective...
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