Clerveaux v. E. Ramapo Cent. Sch. Dist.

• Decision Date: 06 January 2021
• Docket Number: August Term, 2020,Docket No. 20-1668
• Parties: Julio CLERVEAUX, Chevon Dos Reis, Eric Goodwin, Jose Vitelio Gregorio, Dorothy Miller, Hillary Moreau, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Spring Valley Branch, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. EAST RAMAPO CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

984 F.3d 213

Julio CLERVEAUX, Chevon Dos Reis, Eric Goodwin, Jose Vitelio Gregorio, Dorothy Miller, Hillary Moreau, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Spring Valley Branch, Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.EAST RAMAPO CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, Defendant-Appellant.¹

Docket No. 20-1668

August Term, 2020

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: August 19, 2020

Decided: January 6, 2021

RANDALL M. LEVINE, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP (David J. Butler, William S.D. Cravens, Clara Kollm, David B. Salmons, Bryan Killian, Stephanie Schuster, on the brief), Washington, D.C., for Defendant-Appellant East Ramapo Central School District.

CHARLES S. DAMERON, Latham & Watkins LLP (Andrew Clubok, Claudia T. Salomon, Corey A. Calabrese, Marc N. Zubick, Russell D. Mangas, on the brief), Washington, D.C., for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Arthur N. Eisenberg, Perry M. Grossman, New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation (on the brief), New York, N.Y., for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Nathan Lewin, Lewin & Lewin, LLP, Washington, D.C., for Agudath Israel of America, amicus curiae.

Before: POOLER, HALL, and CHIN, Circuit Judges.

POOLER, Circuit Judge:

Few rights are more sacred than the right to vote. Indeed, the right to vote is preservative of all other rights, see Yick Wo v. Hopkins , 118 U.S. 356, 370, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886), but historically it has not been granted equally in this country. To rectify this deprivation, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 of that statute prohibits states or political subdivisions from structuring elections "in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color," such that minority citizens "have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice." 52 U.S.C. § 10301. In doing so, the Voting Rights Act fulfills the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment—that no citizen shall be denied the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." U.S. Const. amend. XV.

East Ramapo Central School District ("District") appeals from the May 25, 2020 decision and order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Seibel, J .), issued following a bench trial, holding that the at-large election system used by the District to elect members to its Board of Education ("Board") resulted in dilution of black and Latino residents’ votes in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10301. On appeal, the District argues that: Section 2 requires a finding that racial motivations caused the election results; the district court abused its discretion in admitting and relying on Plaintiffs’ expert's findings, which used data derived through Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding ("BISG") rather than the more traditional Citizen Voting Age Population ("CVAP") data; and the totality of the circumstances does not support a finding of impermissible vote dilution.

We reject these arguments. We hold that Section 2 does not require racial causation, though the existence or absence of such causation is a relevant factor for consideration. We further hold that the district court did not err in concluding that the analysis using BISG is reliable and superior to analysis using CVAP. Lastly, we hold that the totality of the circumstances supports the finding of a Section 2 violation given the near-perfect correlation between race and school-type; the scant evidence supporting the District's claim that policy preferences, not race, caused election results; the Board's blatant neglect of minority needs; the lack of minority-preferred success in elections; the exclusive, white-dominated slating organization² ; and evidence suggesting the District acted in bad faith throughout the litigation.

The order of the district court enjoining Board elections until the District proposes and executes a remedial plan, before us through an interlocutory appeal, is accordingly affirmed. On December 23, 2020, the District moved to stay the district court's injunction pending the resolution of this appeal. As this opinion resolves the appeal and affirms the district court's order, the District's motion is denied as moot.

BACKGROUND

I. Factual Background³

A. The District and Board Elections

Plaintiffs-Appellees are the Spring Valley Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Julio Clerveaux, Chevon Dos Reis, Eric Goodwin, and Dorothy Miller, who are minorities and registered voters in the District. Since 2008, every candidate these individuals have voted for has lost. In addition, Dos Reis and Goodwin unsuccessfully ran for the Board in 2017 with the perceived support of the public-school community, a group of residents interested in improving the conditions of public schools in the District.

The District is a highly segregated political subdivision of New York State located in Rockland County. The population in the District is approximately 65.7% white, 19.1% black, 10.7% Latino, and 3.3% Asian. During the 2017-2018 school year, approximately 8,843 students attended public schools, while 29,279 students attended private schools. The private-school community consists primarily of white Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish residents who educate their children in yeshivas, while the public-school community consists of primarily black and Latino residents whose children attend public schools. The correlation between race and school attended in the District is near perfect: 92% of public-school students are black or Latino, while 98% of private-school students are white.

The District is governed by a Board, which consists of nine members whose responsibilities include selecting the Superintendent of Schools and approving other personnel, setting the budget and levying taxes, establishing policies, and evaluating and communicating the progress and needs of the District to the public and others. As of early 2020, the Board members were: Harry Grossman, president; Sabrina Charles-Pierre, vice president; Mark Berkowitz; Carole Anderson, appointed on an interim basis due to the resignation of Bernard L. Charles, Jr.; Joel Freilich; Ashley Leveille; Yoel T. Trieger; Ephraim Weissmandl; and Yehuda Weissmandl.

Board elections are staggered so that three seats, each carrying a three-year term, are open every year (absent special circumstances, such as death or resignation of a member, in which case an extra seat may be available that year). Candidates run for a specific, individually numbered seat. The elections are at-large, meaning that all eligible voters in the District vote in each race. The following table summarizes the results of Board elections from 2008-2018 (with "W" designating white candidates, "B" designating black candidates, and "L" designating Latino candidates).⁴

B. The Slating Organization

Influential members of the white, private-school community have an informal slating process by which preferred Board candidates are selected, endorsed, promoted, and elected. Rabbi Yehuda Oshry, an influential Orthodox community leader, selects and approves candidates, controls access to the slating process, and submits petitions on behalf of candidates. Private-school advocate Shaya Glick also helps select candidates and publicizes their candidacy. Yakov Horowitz, a leader in the Orthodox community, connects potential candidates to Rabbi Oshry and approves candidates. The slating organization (the "Organization") has secured victory for the white community's preferred candidate in each contested election. Although some minority candidates have been slated by the Organization and have won seats on the Board, minority voters did not prefer these candidates.

The Organization does not hold an open call for candidates, and only those with connections to the Organization or its leaders have been introduced, vetted, and selected. When vetted, candidates were not asked about their policy views. Multiple successful private-school candidates did not campaign or spend money to get elected; rather, they simply were approved by Rabbi Rosenfeld, Rabbi Oshry, or Glick.

For instance, Charles, a black man who won multiple Board elections after being slated by the Organization, was connected to Rabbi Rosenfeld through a mutual acquaintance. Rabbi Rosenfeld met with Charles, but he did not ask Charles about his policy platform. Rabbi Rosenfeld did, however, require interviews with Charles's running mates, and Charles needed Rabbi Rosenfeld's approval to add his running mates to his slate.

Charles's situation contrasts with that of public-school candidate and plaintiff Goodwin. Goodwin "genuinely impressed" a former Board member from the private-school community, but he was nonetheless not introduced to anyone in the Orthodox community for endorsement. Supp. App'x at 94. Charles believed that "when it comes to running for the school board ... you're either working with [the] white community or you're working with the other community." Supp. App'x at 146.

C. Minority Board Members

Minority candidates have won seven out of thirty-two contested Board elections in the District from 2005 to 2018. However, from 2008 to 2018, no minority-preferred candidate won a contested Board election, and each minority candidate who did win did so with the approval and support of the Organization.

Most notable are Charles and Pierre Germain, both black men who won four of the elections analyzed. Both were vetted and endorsed by the Organization. Neither candidate campaigned in, nor sought to appeal to the public-school community given that they had already secured the Organization's endorsement and with it the support of the white community. Minority voters did not support Charles and Germain. Once elected, Charles and Germain allied with private-school interests and against public-school interests. For example, Charles did...