Davis v. Thomas County, Georgia
| Decision Date | 26 June 1967 |
| Docket Number | No. 23882.,23882. |
| Citation | 380 F.2d 93 |
| Parties | Jasper C. DAVIS et al., Appellants, v. THOMAS COUNTY, GEORGIA et al., Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
A. J. Whitehurst, III, Thomasville, Ga., for appellants.
William P. Trotter, LaGrange, Ga., Charles F. Johnson, of Altman & Johnson, E. P. McCollum, Sol Altman, Thomasville, Ga., for appellees.
Before GEWIN and AINSWORTH, Circuit Judges, and LYNNE, District Judge.
Contending that the method of election of the eight members of the Board of Commissioners of Roads and Revenues of Thomas County provided by an act of the Georgia Legislature in 1911 (1911 Ga. Laws, p. 501), as amended in 1917 (1917 Ga.Laws, p. 394), constituted a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment within the principles articulated in Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 83 S.Ct. 801, 9 L.Ed.2d 821 (1963) and nurtured in Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 526, 11 L.Ed.2d 481 (1964), appellants, resident citizens of District No. 1 (Thomasville), filed their complaint for a declaratory judgment that such enactments are unconstitutional.
The thrust of their complaint is that although the present statute requires the election of all eight commissioners, with staggered terms, by the electorate of the county at large, the residence requirements set forth therein result in the representation of District No. 1, with a population of 20,492, by two commissioners, while the remaining four districts with a population of 13,827, are represented by six. This, they insist, amounts to invidious discrimination as a matter of law.
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Reese v. Dallas County, Alabama
...III); id., N.D.Miss., 1973, 361 F.Supp. 603 (Leflore II); id., N.D.Miss., 1973, 351 F.Supp. 848 (Leflore I). In Davis v. Thomas County, 5 Cir., 1967, 380 F.2d 93, decided one month after Dusch v. Davis, supra, a panel of this Court upheld an at-large election-- subdistrict residency plan in......
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Thomasville Branch of Nat. Ass'n for Advancement of Colored People v. Thomas County, Georgia
...was not an adequate basis for a constitutional attack and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, Davis v. Thomas County, Georgia, et al., 380 F.2d 93 (1967). In the case now under consideration a group of black citizens contend that the system results in invidious discriminati......
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Lytle v. Commissioners of Election of Union County, Civ. A. No. 74-237. Civ. A. No. 74-281.
...identical to the cases here under review; two of these cases, Mayes v. Teague, 341 F.Supp. 254 (E. D.Tenn., 1972), and Davis v. Thomas County, 380 F.2d 93 (5 Cir., 1967), support the argument advanced by the defendants, while the third case, Keller v. Gilliam, 454 F.2d 55 (5 Cir., 1972), su......
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