Ellis v. Coffee County Bd. of Registrars
| Decision Date | 12 January 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 91-7881,91-7881 |
| Parties | Coy Dell ELLIS; Nancy D. Ellis; Della Ellis and Joseph T. Ellis, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. The COFFEE COUNTY BOARD OF REGISTRARS, etc., et al., Defendants, Warren Rowe, individually and as attorney and agent for the Coffee County Commission; and Billy Eagerton; Eugene Bradley; Jim Dubose; Sidney Averett; Robert Stephens; Bill Faulk, and Damascus Crittenden, individually and as members of the Coffee County Commission, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
James W. Webb, Daryl L. Masters and Bart Harmon, Webb, Crumpton, McGregor, Davis & Alley, Montgomery, AL, for Billy Eagerton, et al.
F. Chadwick Morriss, Rushton, Stakely, Johnston & Garrett, P.A., Montgomery, AL, for Warren Rowe.
Julian L. McPhillips, Jr., McPhillips, Hawthorne & Shinbaum, Montgomery, AL, for plaintiffs-appellees.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
Before BIRCH, Circuit Judge, JOHNSON, Senior Circuit Judge, and THOMAS *, Senior District Judge.
This interlocutory appeal requires our determination of whether members of a local county commission and the county attorney are entitled to immunity for their participation in deciding and communicating the voting status of a family that had moved outside the county. The district court granted summary judgment to the county commissioners in their official capacity, but denied summary judgment to them in their individual capacities as to absolute or qualified immunity. The district court also denied summary judgment to the county attorney on qualified immunity. Because the individual county commissioners and the county attorney are protected by absolute legislative immunity, we REVERSE and REMAND.
Plaintiffs-appellees Coy Dell Ellis, Nancy D. Ellis, Della Ellis, and Joseph T. Ellis owned a home in Enterprise, Alabama, located in Coffee County, and voted in that county for many years. 1 In 1982, the Ellis family moved into a house in neighboring Geneva County, where they filed, and consistently have claimed, a homestead exemption. While the new home is located in Geneva County, it is situated on land straddling the dividing line between Coffee and Geneva Counties. From 1982 to 1988, Coy and Nancy Ellis continued to vote in Coffee County.
On November 12, 1986, a consent decree, including Coffee County and providing for elections from seven, single-member districts by 1988 to remedy unlawful dilution of black voting strength, was entered in Dillard v. Crenshaw County, 640 F.Supp. 1347 (M.D.Ala.1986). The Coffee County Board of Registrars requested the assistance of the Coffee County Commission 2 in complying with the consent decree by identifying to them voters who were not qualified to vote in Coffee County. The jurisdiction of the County Commission includes designation of voting precinct boundaries.
During the period in which the commissioners were ascertaining unqualified Coffee County voters, Coy Ellis, in early 1988, publically criticized the Coffee County Commission for failing to repair a county road 3 and for paying the county attorney, defendant-appellant Warren Rowe, an alleged unjustifiably high salary. While investigating Coy Ellis's complaints concerning the subject county road, Commissioner Eugene Bradley discovered that the Ellises' home was located over the Coffee County line in Geneva County.
Resulting from the investigation into voter eligibility in Coffee County in response to the redistricting mandate of Dillard, the names of 6,000 voters who needed to verify their qualifications to vote in Coffee County were published in the local newspaper. The published list included the four Ellises. Consequently, Coy Ellis asked the chairman of the Coffee County Board of Registrars, Charles Lewis, to research the voting status of the four Ellis family members. Lewis has admitted that the Ellis case was "borderline" and a "close case." 4 He investigated the Ellises' voting status by talking with various state agencies, and a political science professor at Auburn University; the opinion of all was that the Ellises were qualified voters in Coffee County. Following considerable time and energy spent in researching the issue, Lewis concluded that the Ellises were qualified Coffee County voters.
During a document production in Ellis's mother's case against the county in June, 1988, Rowe allegedly informed Coy Ellis that the Ellises could not vote legally in Coffee County and that their attempt to do so would constitute a felony offense. Rowe also advised Lewis that the Ellises were ineligible to vote in Coffee County. On August 28, 1988, Lewis resigned from the Board of Registrars, and was succeeded by Alfred Edwards as chairman. Based on the applicable law, Edwards disagreed with his predecessor, and concluded that the Ellises, as residents of another county, could not vote in Coffee County.
Following Edwards's appointment to the Board of Registrars, County Commissioner Bradley asked Rowe to notify the Board of Registrars that the Ellises lived in Geneva County. After a meeting on September 26, 1988, the Board of Registrars by letter informed the Ellises that they were being removed from the list of qualified voters in Coffee County. The Ellises appealed this decision to the state circuit court, and the ensuing trial resulted in a hung jury.
The Coffee County Commission then ordered a survey at county expense to determine whether the Ellises lived in Coffee or Geneva County. The Ellises' second attempt to appeal the Board of Registrars' decision regarding their voting status ended in a mistrial in January, 1989. 5 The local newspaper listed the Ellises among the names of those to be purged from the Coffee County voting roster in July, 1989.
The Ellises officially were purged from the Coffee County voting list in August, 1989. In response, Coy Ellis asked several attorneys and the Auburn professor, who formerly had investigated the Ellises' voting status for the Board of Registrars, to research the issue of his legal voting residence. The result of this research, commissioned by Coy Ellis, confirmed to the Ellises that they were qualified to vote in Coffee County.
On June 5, 1990, Coy, Nancy, and Della Ellis attempted to vote challenge ballots 6 in a primary election in Coffee County. Their challenge ballots were reviewed by the Board of Registrars, forwarded to the district attorney, and their case was presented to a grand jury. In July, 1990, the Ellises were indicted for election fraud and perjury. Meanwhile, Coy Ellis pursued the civil appeal of the original order of the Board of Registrars. After two mistrials, a third trial resulted in a verdict in favor of the Ellises' contention that they were domiciled in Coffee County for voting purposes. Following the result of the civil appeal, the Circuit Court of Coffee County granted the Ellises' motion to dismiss the indictments against them on September 6, 1990.
Subsequently, the Ellises filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in federal court for the Middle District of Alabama against the Coffee County Board of Registrars and its individual members, the Coffee County Commission and its individual members, and the County Attorney. Although the Ellises asserted many claims, the alleged constitutional deprivation relevant to this appeal is the Ellises' contention that they were denied their Fourteenth Amendment right to vote. The county commissioners and the county attorney filed a summary judgment motion asserting legislative and qualified immunity in their official and individual capacities.
In an order addressing all summary judgment motions by defendants, the district court granted summary judgment to the Coffee County Commission and its individual members in their official capacities, the Coffee County Board of Registrars, and to all parties on the charge of malicious prosecution of the Ellises. The court denied summary judgment to the Coffee County Commissioners in their individual capacities, the individual members of the Coffee County Board of Registrars, and County Attorney Warren Rowe. This interlocutory appeal concerns only the individual Coffee County Commissioners and Rowe, who contest denial of absolute legislative or qualified immunity. 7
"[D]enial of a substantial claim of absolute immunity is an order appealable before final judgment, for the essence of absolute immunity is its possessor's entitlement not to have to answer for his conduct in a civil damages action." Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 525, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985); see Harris v. Deveaux, 780 F.2d 911, 913 (11th Cir.1986) (). Accordingly, denial of a claim of absolute immunity is an immediately appealable interlocutory order. Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731, 742, 102 S.Ct. 2690, 2697, 73 L.Ed.2d 349 (1982).
Our jurisdiction analysis is limited to the narrow legal determination of whether the individual county commissioners and the county attorney are entitled to absolute immunity protection, not the merits of the section 1983 action. The Ellises contend that this court does not have immediate jurisdiction of this case because of the existence of material factual disputes which properly precluded summary judgment. The factual disputes noted by the Ellises are instances allegedly showing animus between the appellants and the Ellises and, consequently, the demonstration of a conspiracy to remove the Ellises from the voting roster in Coffee County.
"Absolute immunity does not depend on good faith or reasonableness; thus it would be unlikely to find a case where disputed factual questions precluded review." Harris, 780 F.2d at 914. Moreover, these alleged material factual disputes advanced by the Ellises are...
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