Meek v. Metropolitan Dade County

• Decision Date: 17 August 1990
• Docket Number: No. 89-5146,89-5146
• Citation: 908 F.2d 1540
• Parties: Carrie MEEK, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. METROPOLITAN DADE COUNTY, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1540

908 F.2d 1540

59 USLW 2144

Carrie MEEK, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. METROPOLITAN DADE COUNTY, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 89-5146.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Aug. 17, 1990.

Stephen M. Cody, Miami, Fla., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Murray A. Greenberg, Robert A. Duvall, Miami, Fla., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before KRAVITCH and JOHNSON, Circuit Judges, and KAUFMAN ^*, Senior District Judge.

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge:

Carrie Meek and other plaintiffs appeal from the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Metropolitan Dade County, Florida ("the county"). The district court held that the plaintiffs failed to establish certain required elements of their vote dilution case, and therefore granted summary judgment for the defendants and denied the plaintiffs' summary judgment motion. Because the district court erred in applying the law regarding vote dilution, we reverse and remand.

BACKGROUND

The plaintiffs, Black and Hispanic citizens and registered voters of Dade County, brought suit against the county alleging that the at-large scheme for the election of the Board of County Commissioners, which is the legislative and governing body of the county, violated section two of the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black and Hispanic voting strength. ¹ Although the county has an ethnically diverse population, the three major groups, as identified by the parties and the district court, are: Blacks, Hispanics, and Non Latin Whites. None of the groups constitutes a majority of the total number of registered voters. As the district court noted: "Non Latin Whites comprise approximately 37 percent of the population and 48.67 percent of the registered voters; Hispanics (including Hispanics born in the United States) comprise approximately 43 percent of the population and The county electoral system for county commissioners is part of a so-called "federated plan" that provides for the allocation of authority between the county and the metropolitan governments. The county commission is composed of a mayor and eight commissioners. Although the mayor may live anywhere in the county, each of the commissioners must reside in a different one of the eight residence districts. Each commissioner, however, must run for election county-wide. Thus, although the county is divided into various residence districts, the elections are conducted at-large and county-wide.

                32.96 percent of the registered voters;  and Blacks comprise approximately 20 percent of the population and 18.37 percent of the registered voters of Dade County."    Meek v. Metropolitan Dade County, Florida, No. 86-1820, slip op. at 15 (S.D.Fla. Oct. 5, 1988) [hereinafter Order of October 5, 1988]
                

The plaintiffs' vote dilution claim was brought under section two of the Voting Rights Act as amended in 1982. ² The Supreme Court in Thornburg v. Gingles stated that:

[t]he essence of a Sec. 2 claim is that a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters to elect their preferred representatives. This Court has long recognized that multi-member districts and at-large voting schemes may " 'operate to minimize or cancel out the voting strength of racial [minorities in] the voting population.' "

478 U.S. 30, 47, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 2764, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986) (citation and footnote omitted) (interpolation in original). The Court further explicated the requirements a plaintiff must meet in pursuing a section two vote dilution claim:

First, the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district. If it is not, as would be the case in a substantially integrated district, the multi-member form of the district cannot be responsible for minority voters' inability to elect its candidates. Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive. If the minority group is not politically cohesive, it cannot be said that the selection of a multimember electoral structure thwarts distinctive minority group interests. Third, the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it--in the absence of special circumstances, such as the minority candidate running unopposed--usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate. In establishing this last circumstance, the minority group demonstrates that submergence in a white multimember district impedes its ability to elect its chosen representatives.

Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50-51, 106 S.Ct. at 2766-67 (footnotes and citations omitted; emphasis in original).

The Court further explained the causation threshold of Gingles as follows:

The reason that a minority group making such a challenge must show, as a threshold matter, that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district is this: Unless minority voters possess the potential to elect representatives in the absence of the challenged structure or practice, they cannot claim to have been injured by that structure or practice. The single-member district is generally the appropriate standard against which to measure minority group potential to elect because it is the smallest political unit from which representatives are elected. Thus, if the minority group is spread evenly throughout a multimember district, or if, although geographically compact, the minority group is so small in relation to the surrounding white population that it could not constitute a majority in a single-member district, these minority voters cannot maintain that they would have been able to elect representatives of their choice in the absence of the multimember electoral structure. As two commentators have explained:

"To demonstrate [that minority voters are injured by at-large elections], the minority voters must be sufficiently concentrated and politically cohesive that a putative districting plan would result in districts in which members of a racial minority would constitute a majority of the voters, whose clear electoral choices are in fact defeated by at-large voting. If minority voters' residences are substantially integrated throughout the jurisdiction, the at-large district cannot be blamed for the defeat of minority-supported candidates.... [This standard] thus would only protect racial minority votes from diminution proximately caused by the district plan; it would not assure racial minorities proportional representation." Blacksher & Menefee 55-66 (footnotes omitted; emphasis added).

Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50, 106 S.Ct. at 2766 n. 17.

While the full contours of Gingles have not been agreed upon by this circuit, it is clear that the plaintiff must establish the three core Gingles factors in order to prevail on a vote dilution claim. See Solomon v. Liberty County, 899 F.2d 1012, 1017-21 (Kravitch, J., specially concurring), 899 F.2d at 1037 (Tjoflat, C.J., specially concurring) (11th Cir.1990) (evenly divided en banc court).

The district court's order granting summary judgment in favor of the county held that the plaintiffs had not established that the Non Latin White bloc voting was "legally sufficient" because the plaintiffs had not proved "the existence of a Non Latin White bloc majority that usually defeats the election of the minority's preferred candidate." ³ The district court reasoned that where Non Latin Whites did not constitute a majority, Non Latin White bloc voting could not, through numerical superiority, defeat the choice of minority voters.

After the plaintiffs filed a motion to alter and amend the judgment, the district court, albeit conceding that it had erred in its understanding of the statistical data, issued an opinion denying the motion. The district court found that Hispanics were in fact politically cohesive, but nevertheless the district court refused to alter the judgment because the plaintiffs still had not proved the third Gingles factor of legally significant Non Latin White bloc voting that caused defeat at the polls for the minorities' preferred candidates.

JURISDICTION

The county contends that we lack jurisdiction because the plaintiff-appellants failed to give timely notice of appeal. We disagree. A clerk in the district court provided plaintiffs' counsel with contradictory information concerning the date upon which the order denying the plaintiffs' motion We have noted previously that the addition of the "good cause" language "indicates that the standard should be interpreted flexibly." Davis v. Page, 618 F.2d 374, 378 (5th Cir.1980) (citation omitted), aff'd in part and rev'd in part on other grounds, 640 F.2d 599 (1981) (en banc), ⁴ vacated on other grounds, 458 U.S. 1118, 102 S.Ct. 3504, 73 L.Ed.2d 1380 (1982). We hold that counsel's justifiable reliance on the district court clerk's erroneous information provides "good cause" under the unique circumstances of this case. Furthermore, this court, rather than "second-guess" the district court, defers to the district court so long as its decision does not constitute an abuse of discretion. Id.; see also Chipser v. Kohlmeyer & Co., 600 F.2d 1061, 1063 (5th Cir.1979). Accordingly, we conclude that the extension of time was properly granted, the notice of appeal was timely filed, and that we have jurisdiction.

to alter the judgment was entered. The clerk's statement to counsel led him to believe that the time for appeal under Fed.R.App.P. 4(a) had already expired, although in fact counsel still had two remaining days to file a notice of appeal. Had counsel been informed accurately, he would have been able to file a timely notice of appeal. He was led, however, by the district court clerk's statement to believe that his only avenue was...