Ala. Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama
| Decision Date | 02 August 2013 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION NO. 2:12cv1081,CIVIL ACTION NO. 2:12cv691 |
| Parties | ALABAMA LEGISLATIVE BLACK CAUCUS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. THE STATE OF ALABAMA, et al., Defendants. DEMETRIUS NEWTON, et al., Plaintiffs, v. THE STATE OF ALABAMA, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Alabama |
(Three-Judge Court)
(WO)
(Three-Judge Court)
I agree with the majority's disposition of the First Amendment partisan gerrymandering claim and with much of its reasoning in support of that disposition. As for the one-person, one-vote claim, while I agree that the issueof justiciability has been properly raised by the court, I respectfully disagree with the majority's dismissal of the claim on that ground. And, second, I respectfully disagree with the majority's reasoning on the merits.
In Alabama, during each election for members of the State Legislature (the House of Representatives and Senate), when Alabamians cast a vote for a single legislative representative, they are actually electing one official who will serve in two capacities tied to the geographic locations from which they are elected. For one, the legislator will represent a particular district in the State Legislature as a whole. Second, the legislator, depending on the location of the district, will become a member of one or more "Local Delegations" (or, as they are sometimes called, "Legislative Delegations"), which are formally subdivisions of the Legislature charged with the origination of "local" lawsgenerally affecting a single county alone. See Ala. Const. art. IV, § 110 (defining "general" and "local" laws). Although Alabama has created certain local bodies of county governance, such as county commissions, see 1975 Ala. Code. § 11-3-1, state law generally vests those bodies with very limited authority, if any at all, to legislate for the county. Compare, e.g., Ala. Const. amend. 783 (), with, e.g., amend. 482 ().
Rather, state law generally requires that local laws, no matter how purely local their character may be, must be enacted by the Legislature as a whole (and, for reasons unnecessary to discuss here, often as amendments to the State Constitution rather than as mere statutes). The Alabama Constitution has been amended hundreds oftimes with such laws addressing an enormous range of wholly local concerns, from the mundane to the very important. Compare, e.g., Ala. Const. amend. 497 (), with, e.g., amend. 429 ().
Because the Alabama Legislature as a whole must address the varying interests across all of Alabama's 67 counties, it has created a system of Local Delegations to carry out the task efficiently. Each Alabama county has a corresponding Local Delegation in both houses of the State Legislature. Every legislator elected to the Senate or House, upon his election, automatically becomes a member of the Local Delegation for every county that lies within his district, no matter how large or small is the part of the county falling within the districtboundaries. If a legislator's district lies almost entirely in one county and only slightly in another, that legislator nevertheless joins the respective Local Delegations for both counties. Within any given delegation, all members cast equal votes regardless of the comparative sizes of their constituencies in the county at issue.
In order to be enacted eventually, all proposed local laws must be first proposed by the Local Delegation for the county affected. Some Local Delegations require majority approval in the delegation and others require unanimous approval. Without the approval of the delegation for the county at issue, the bill proceeds no further. In that sense, the delegations are the "gatekeepers" of local legislation.
Once the delegation approves a local law, the bill is sent to a legislative committee.1 After committeeapproval, the bill is sent to the Legislature as a whole. There, after approval by the requisite number of legislators in both chambers, the bill is sent to the governor for signature, after which it becomes binding law. When a proposed local law is being considered by the Legislature as a whole, the Legislature generally applies an unwritten rule of so-called "local courtesy" holding that the delegations deserve significant deference and their proposed laws should be enacted as a matter of course. While the rule of courtesy is sometimes violated, such violations are more the exception than the rule. In any event, regardless of what happens in the Legislature as a whole, the gatekeeping requirement that the bill be first approvedby the applicable Local Delegation is steadfastly applied. There is no indication in the record that the gatekeeping requirement has ever been violated. In short, the Local Delegations, although subdivisions of the Legislature for the State as a whole, are geographically based on the State's individual counties and are the single most important legislating bodies for those counties.
The State Legislature is established by formal state law. Ala. Const. art. III, § 42 & art. IV, § 44. The Local Delegations, by contrast, are generally creatures of custom. The delegations' core local-law-gatekeeping function is not an enumerated power in any particular part of Alabama's Constitution or statutory law, and likewise, no written law provides for the whole of the delegations' operations. However, provisions scattered throughout the State Constitution and Code appear to recognize the existence of the delegations and control a number of aspects of their existence. See, e.g., 1975Ala. Code §§ 36-6-12 (), 36-27-5.1 (pensions), 45-22-130.02 (providing for Local Delegation involvement in certain intra-governmental disputes), 45-24-210 (providing for certain Local Delegation funding), and 45-27A-60 (relating to town trust account). In particular, a number of Constitution and Code provisions appear to afford various Local Delegations the power to appoint officers of various other governmental agencies. See, e.g., 1975 Ala. Code §§ 9-14C-3 (park commission), 45-2-243.22 (tourism board), 45-5-90 (economic development authority), 45-6-231 (prison work-release program regulatory board), 45-8-90 (economic development authority), 45-8-150.02 (bingo regulatory agency), 45-8A-24 (water and sewage board), 45-8A-130.04 (civil service board), 45-25-92.30 (economic development authority), 45-28-91.01 (tourism board), 45-28-244.01(d) (taxing agency), 45-28-244.01(e) (library committee), and 45-30-101.01 (board of education); Ala. Const. amend. 677(water and sewage board), amend. 741 (judicial commission), and 780 (judicial commission).
While the Local Delegations are formally part of the Legislature as a whole and are generally maintained through unwritten custom, one would be mistaken to assume that they are nothing more than amorphous practices that can be found in the halls of Montgomery's legislative buildings. While the delegations differ, at least some appear to maintain local office space and regular paid staff, like any typical governmental agency that serves the public in a defined geographic region. See, e.g., 1975 Ala. Code §§ 45-2-190 ( ), 45-6-190(similar, for Macon and Bullock counties), 45-24-190 (similar, for Dallas County), 45-27-190 (similar, for Escambia County), and 45-29-190 (similar, for Fayette and Lamar counties).
This Local Delegations system has existed in some form for decades at least, if not since the enactment of the 1901 State Constitution. It is, in short, the mostly unwritten law of county governance in Alabama.
The plaintiffs' one-person, one-vote claim contends, essentially, that Alabama's Local Delegations system causes unconstitutional discrimination as to voters' representation in government because all Local Delegation members have equal powers in the delegation while representing disproportionate numbers of voters in the county at issue, and members often representing constituencies outside the county as well. They base their claim not on the legislative districts currently inplace, which are set to expire soon, but rather on the redistricting plans that have already been enacted and will be in effect for the next election, and under which, the plaintiffs allege, the State divides an excessive and unprecedented number of counties among multiple legislative districts. The county splitting is relevant, the plaintiffs explain, because now, more than ever before, more Local Delegation members will represent larger out-of-county interests over and to the detriment of smaller in-county interests, thus diluting the ability of a county's residents to affect their county's affairs. In essence, the plaintiffs seek to have greater local control over local affairs than the State's redistricting plans provide. In response, the majority says that Alabama's next Legislature may choose to abandon entirely or alter materially the whole Local Delegations system,...
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