City of Carrollton Branch of the N.A.A.C.P. v. Stallings, s. 86-8405

• Citation: 829 F.2d 1547
• Decision Date: 19 October 1987
• Docket Number: Nos. 86-8405,86-8661,s. 86-8405
• Parties: CITY OF CARROLLTON BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, Voter Education Project City of Carrollton, Marvin Walker, Robert Springer, James Wyatt and Jeff Long, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Tracey STALLINGS, Individually and in his official capacity as Mayor of the City of Carrollton, et al., Defendants, Horrie Duncan, Individually and in his capacity as Carroll County Commissioner, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

Page 1547

829 F.2d 1547

CITY OF CARROLLTON BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, Voter Education Project City of Carrollton, Marvin Walker, Robert Springer, James Wyatt and Jeff Long, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Tracey STALLINGS, Individually and in his official capacity as Mayor of the City of Carrollton, et al., Defendants Horrie Duncan, Individually and in his capacity as Carroll County Commissioner, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

Nos. 86-8405, 86-8661.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Oct. 19, 1987.

Hugh Jeffery Lanier, Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, Ga., J. Eugene Beckham, Jr., Johnson, Beckham & Price, Robert F. Dangle, Carrollton, Ga., for amicus curiae.

Wayne B. Kendall, Kendall, Kendall & Hurst, Angelia R. Souder, Atlanta, Ga., for plaintiffs-appellants.

J. Eugene Beckham, Jr., Johnson, Beckham & Price, Carrollton, Ga., for Horrie Duncan.

Robert H. Sullivan, Tisinger, Tisinger, Vance & Greer, P.C., Carrollton, Ga., for Brown, Ault, Martin, Gambel & Greer.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before HATCHETT and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges, and TUTTLE, Senior Circuit Judge.

TUTTLE, Senior Circuit Judge:

This appeal involves a challenge to the single county commissioner form of government in Carroll County, Georgia, under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, and under the Constitution of the United States. The plaintiffs are appealing the district court's judgment for the defendants, based on its finding that the creation and continued use of the single member Carroll County Commission does not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, nor does it deprive black persons in Carroll County of their Sec. 1983 claims by violating their rights guaranteed by the First, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE

The plaintiffs in this action are City of Carrollton Branch of the Voters Education Project (VEP), the City of Carrollton Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.), and various individuals who are black citizens, residents and registered voters of Carroll County, Georgia.

The plaintiffs originally filed this action against the City of Carrollton, members of the Carrollton City Council, individually and in their official capacity, the Carroll County Commission and members of the Carroll County Election Board, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief under the First, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and under Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Title 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973, et seq. and Sec. 1983.

The Section 5 claims were heard by a three-judge court convened under authority of 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2284, which denied a temporary injunction by order entered November 20, 1984. By order entered January 17, 1985, defendants Horrie Duncan, individually and in his official capacity as Carroll County Commissioner, Patti Brown, A.G. Ault, Carol Martin, James Gamble and Tommy Greer, individually and in their official capacities as members of the Carroll County Election Board, were severed from defendants Mayor and Council of the City of Carrollton. On October 16, 1985, the parties settled all claims against the city and a notice of dismissal was filed as to defendants Mayor and Council of the City of Carrollton. Thereafter, the case proceeded only as to the county defendants. Judgment was entered in their favor after trial by the court. Costs were assessed against the plaintiffs. ¹

A second issue relating to the defendants' award of costs in this lawsuit, is consolidated with this appeal.

II. FACTS

The plaintiffs alleged and sought to prove that the one person form of commission government in Carroll County resulted in the exclusion or dilution of black voting strength and lessened the opportunity of black persons in Carroll County to participate in the political process and to elect or have appointed to public office representatives of their choice. The facts, principally in the form of statistics and opinion evidence, will be discussed infra. The district court concluded that the plaintiffs failed to establish that there was a lack of ability of blacks to participate in the political process in Carroll County [the statutory claims] and failed to establish, by a preponderance of the evidence, that racial discrimination was a motivating factor for the present form of county government [the constitutional claims].

III. DISCUSSION

After the district court entered its judgment and opinion on April 29, 1986, the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, the first Supreme Court interpretation of 1982 amendments to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. ² The Gingles decision is important in many respects. We, therefore, measure the correctness of the trial court's decision in light of its holding. We note that the election procedure in Gingles required at-large voting for persons for a single district [multi-member district]. We consider the single-member county commission here to be in all essential respects comparable with the multi-member district discussed by the court in Gingles. It was the at-large election procedure in Gingles that commanded the court's attention.

First and foremost Gingles recognizes that both the language of the 1982 amendments to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and its legislative history establishes that "a violation could be proven by showing discriminatory effect alone," rather than discriminatory intent. ³ The 1982 amendments to the Act were a direct response by Congress to the Supreme Court's earlier plurality opinion in Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 100 S.Ct. 1490, 64 L.Ed.2d 47 (1980), which had established discriminatory intent as the standard for proving unconstitutional vote dilution under both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. ⁴ Supporters of the Voting Rights Act had successfully urged Congress to amend the Act to provide statutory protection for minority vote dilution through a results test, which had been applied by the Supreme Court in White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755, 93 S.Ct. 2332, 37 L.Ed.2d 314 (1973) and by other federal courts before Bolden.

Second, Gingles not only followed the results test mandated by Congress, but also established a new three-part test for analyzing minority vote dilution claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. ⁵ Both parties in this appeal and the district court's opinion followed the totality of circumstances approach in applying the results tests as outlined by the Senate Judiciary Report accompanying the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act. ⁶

Although reliance on the Senate factors is still relevant in evaluating a minority vote dilution claim, the Supreme Court has said that "unless there is a conjunction of the following circumstances, the use of multi-member districts generally will not impede the ability of minority voters to elect representatives of their choice. Stated succinctly, a bloc voting majority must usually be able to defeat candidates supported by a politically cohesive, geographically insular minority group." Id. at 2766.

The court then went on to state a new three-part test focusing on the existence of a politically cohesive geographically insular minority group and voting along racial lines, as necessary preconditions for multi-member districts to operate to impair minority voter's ability to elect representatives of their choice. The court enunciated the following test.

First, the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.... Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive.... Third, the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it--in the absence of special circumstances, such as the minority candidate running unopposed--usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate.

Id.

The court's new three-part test establishes that racial bloc voting is the hallmark of a vote dilution claim. Id. at 2784-86; see also Collins v. City of Norfolk, 816 F.2d 932, 936-37 (4th Cir.1987), on remand from Collins v. City of Norfolk, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 3326, 92 L.Ed.2d 733 (1986) (vacating Collins v. City of Norfolk, 768 F.2d 572 (4th Cir.1985). The Court remanded the case for consideration in light of Thornburg v. Gingles; see generally, Comment, Thornburg v. Gingles: The Supreme Court's New Test for Analyzing Minority Vote Dilution, 36 CATH U.L.Rev. 537, 552 (1987).

Although the district court examined each of the factors listed by the Senate Judiciary Committee under the totality of circumstances approach in deciding in favor of the county defendants, the district court's opinion placed too much importance on those factors on which the Supreme Court has since given less importance.

Since the district court strictly followed the totality of circumstances approach and Senate factors without the benefit of the Supreme Court's analysis of those factors in Gingles, we must note where the district court committed errors in trying this case below. Before summarizing those errors, we first note the background of this lawsuit, and the relative positions of each party and the district court's treatment of those issues.

1. Background and History

Carroll County is located in the west central part of Georgia between the Atlanta area and Alabama. It consists of 495 square miles, and has a population according to the 1980 census, of 56,346 people. Of that figure, 9,679, or 17% are black, and 46,441, or 82% are white. There are 39,517 persons 18 years old or older in the county, and 6,051 or 15.3% are black. Black voters constitute a minority in the county. For the most part, the black...