Cottier v. City of Martin
| Decision Date | 16 December 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 07-1628.,07-1628. |
| Parties | Pearl COTTIER; Rebecca Three Stars, Appellees, v. CITY OF MARTIN; Todd Alexander; Rod Anderson; Scott Larson; Don Moore; Brad Otte; Molly Risse, in their official capacities as member of the Martin City Council; Janet Speidel, in her official capacity as Finance Officer of the City of Martin, Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Sara Frankenstein, argued, Donald P. Knudsen, on the brief, Rapid City, SD, for appellant.
Bryan Sells, argued, American Civil Liberties Union, Atlanta, GA, Laughlin McDonald, American Civil Liberties Union, Atlanta, GA, and Patrick Duffy, Rapid City, SD, on the brief, for appellee.
Before BYE, SMITH, and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.
In September 2002, the American Civil Liberties Union brought an action on behalf of two Native Americans ("plaintiffs") against the City of Martin, South Dakota, and various city officials in their official capacities (collectively "Martin"). Plaintiffs challenged Ordinance 122, which redistricted the Martin City Council ("city council") ward boundaries, as intentionally and effectively diluting the voting strength of Native Americans and keeping Native American-preferred aldermen candidates from being elected in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1964(VRA) and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. After a trial, the district court1 denied relief, finding that plaintiffs had not met their burden of proving that the white majority in Martin usually voted as a bloc to defeat Native American-preferred candidates. A panel of this court disagreed and remanded the matter to the district court to complete the analysis required by the Supreme Court pursuant to Section 2 of the VRA as construed by Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986). Cottier v. City of Martin, 445 F.3d 1113 (8th Cir.2006) ("Cottier I").
On remand, the district court held, based on the totality of the circumstances, that Ordinance 122 impermissibly diluted the Native American vote and violated Section 2 of the VRA. Consequently, the district court instructed Martin to submit a remedial proposal consistent with the district court's opinion. Martin failed to propose a remedial plan, instead arguing no possible remedy existed for the violation. In contrast, plaintiffs proposed three plans. Subsequently, in a remedial order, the district court adopted plaintiffs' Plan C, an at-large, cumulative voting scheme. Martin now appeals, arguing that the district court erred: (1) in finding that, under the totality of the circumstances, Ordinance 122 diluted the vote of Native Americans in Martin in violation of Section 2 of the VRA; and (2) in ordering remedial Plan C. We affirm.
Plaintiffs, Pearl Cottier and Rebecca Three Stars, are Native Americans, qualified electors, members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and residents of Martin, South Dakota. Martin is located in the southwestern part of South Dakota and is part of Bennett County, which is adjacent to the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations. According to the 2000 census, Martin had a total population of 1,078 persons and a voting-age population (VAP) of 737 persons. The city is small in both population and land area; it covers slightly more than one half of a square mile. The Native American population in Martin is 485, which is 44.71 % of the total population and 36% of the VAP.
As described by a prior panel in this case:
For more than a decade Martin has been the focus of racial tension between Native-Americans and whites. In the mid-1990's, protests were held to end a racially offensive homecoming tradition that depicted Native-Americans in a demeaning, stereotypical fashion. Concurrently, the United States Justice Department sued and later entered into a consent decree with the local bank requiring an end to "redlining" loan practices and policies that adversely affected Native-Americans, and censuring the bank because it did not employ any Native-Americans. Most recently, resolution specialists from the Justice Department attempted to mediate an end to claims of racial discrimination by the local sheriff against Native-Americans.
Cottier I, 445 F.3d at 1115-16.
Historically, Martin was divided into three wards, each electing two city council members to staggered two-year terms on a non-partisan ballot. In addition, Martin has elected a mayor who ran at-large for a two-year term on a non-partisan ballot. The district court noted that the record is unclear as to when the ward lines were originally drawn but, by 2001, the wards had not been changed in 47 years and the wards within the city were not within the requisite variation of population.
Pursuant to South Dakota law, the city council had the power and duty to redistrict the ward boundaries following the decennial federal census. Martin contracted with Black Hills Council of Local Governments (BHCLG) to reconfigure the wards so that they would comply with the one-person, one-vote requirement in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 562-63, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964). Initially, BHCLG used incorrect population data in drawing the new wards, and so, on January 16, 2002, the city council, unaware of the errors, adopted the flawed redistricting recommendations submitted by BHCLG in Ordinance 121.
Once these new wards were published in the local newspaper, plaintiffs contacted their attorneys because they suspected the new boundaries were flawed. After analyzing the new boundaries in Ordinance 121, the attorneys concluded the new wards were severely malapportioned in violation of the one-person, one-vote principle. Counsel for plaintiffs also concluded that the new wards unlawfully fragmented the Native American population in violation of Section 2 of the VRA. In early March 2002, BHCLG received a letter detailing these concerns and Martin's Mayor, Bill Kuxhaus, was copied on the letter. The city council then asked BHCLG to redraw the wards to comply with the one-person, one-vote requirement, and a new map was submitted to the city council.
On March 12, 2002, plaintiffs' attorneys received a copy of the new redistricting plan, again drafted by BHCLG. Plaintiffs believed this revised plan did not fix the fragmentation problem, and they wrote a letter to the Mayor expressing this concern that same day. Despite the expressed concern, the city council proceeded to adopt the revised redistricting plan enacted as Ordinance 122. As has been done historically, Ordinance 122 divided Martin into three wards with no ward having a Native American majority. The district court created the following figure to summarize the total population and VAP under Ordinance 122:
Ordinance 122 Statistics
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Total Indian Percent Indian % Indian
Ward Population Population Indian VAP VAP VAP
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1 352 165 46.88% 236 90 38.14%
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2 361 177 49.03% 237 86 36.29%
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3 365 143 39.18% 264 90 34.09%
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Ordinance 122 became effective on May 8, 2002, and it is the plan currently in effect in Martin.
In an attempt to prevent the city from implementing this new plan, Native American voters submitted a petition to have Ordinance 122 referred to the voters as a ballot issue. City Finance Officer Janet Speidel reviewed this petition and decided that the petition did not contain a sufficient amount of valid signatures. Speidel did not tell the petitioners that the signatures were insufficient until the deadline for petitioning ballot initiatives had passed.
On April 3, 2002, plaintiffs brought suit alleging Ordinance 121 violated the one-person, one-vote requirement, and the district court dismissed the complaint as moot because Ordinance 121 had been replaced by Ordinance 122, which the court found equally redistributed the population into three wards alleviating the one-person, one-vote problem. The district court also granted plaintiffs' motion to supplement its complaint. Plaintiff's supplemented complaint challenged Ordinance 122, as intentionally and effectively diluting the voting strength of Native Americans and keeping Native American-preferred aldermen candidates from being elected in violation of Section 2 of the VRA and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
Following an eleven-day bench trial, the district court found that plaintiffs had met the first two conditions of Gingles—plaintiffs met their burden of showing that a permissible remedy in the context of the challenged system could be fashioned and that Native Americans in Martin were politically cohesive. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 49-51, 106 S.Ct. 2752. However, the district court also found that plaintiffs failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, the third Gingles precondition—that "the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate"—and therefore, the district court entered judgment for Martin on the vote dilution claim. Id. at 51, 106 S.Ct. 2752. The district court also found that plaintiffs could not prevail on their intent claim because there was no evidence that Ordinance 122 had been adopted and maintained for a discriminatory purpose.
Plaintiffs appealed, and a panel of this court reversed and remanded holding that the white majority in Martin usually voted in a way...
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