Montiel v. Davis
| Decision Date | 08 July 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. CIV.A. 01-0447-BHS.,CIV.A. 01-0447-BHS. |
| Citation | 215 F.Supp.2d 1279 |
| Parties | Gonzalo Fitch MONTIEL, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Don DAVIS, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Alabama |
v.
Don DAVIS, et al., Defendants.
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Mark Montiel, Mark G. Montiel, P.C., Montgomery, AL, for Plaintiffs.
John J. Park, Jr., Deputy Attorney General, Charles Brinsfield Campbell, Esp., Office of the Attorney General State of Alabama, Montgomery, AL, Jeffrey M. Sewell, Birmingham, AL, for Defendants.
Larry Menefee, Montgomery, AL, Flynn Mozingo, Melton, Espy, Williams & Hayes, P.C., Montgomery, AL, for Movants.
James U. Blacksher, Birmingham, AL, for Intervenor-Defendants.
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PER CURIAM.
The action is now before this three-judge court on the parties' respective motions for summary judgment.1 Upon consideration of these motions, the respective briefs filed in support thereof (Docs. 84, 93, 95 and 99) and opposition thereto (Docs. 100, 102, 103, 108, and 111), and all other pertinent portions of the record, we conclude that the defendants' motions are due to be granted while the plaintiffs' motion must be denied.
The history of the Alabama Legislature's difficulty with reapportionment is well documented. See, Kelley v. Bennett, 96 F.Supp.2d 1301, 1308-1312 (M.D.Ala. 2000). The districts for the Alabama Senate and House of Representatives, which have been used since the 1990 federal census, were created by a consent judgment entered in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Alabama, which was not appealed. This districting scheme, known as the Reed-Buskey Legislative Districting Plan ("Reed-Buskey Plan"), was later challenged in both state and federal court litigation on equal protection (racial gerrymandering) grounds but was subsequently upheld. See, Sinkfield v. Kelley, 531 U.S. 28, 121 S.Ct. 446, 148 L.Ed.2d 329 (2000)(held that white voters lacked standing to claim that Alabama's Legislative redistricting plan was racial gerrymandered in violated Equal Protection Clause); Rice v. Sinkfield, 732 So.2d 993 (Ala.1998)(appeal dismissed as moot).
In contrast to this history, the Alabama Legislature has now successfully completed its responsibility to reapportion the State's House and Senate districts pursuant to the 2000 census. We herein reject plaintiffs challenges to that effort.
In this action, as now constituted,2 plaintiffs
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first claim that Acts 2001-727 and 2001-729 violate the constitutional requirements of one-person, one-vote under the mandates of Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964) and Roman v. Sincock, 377 U.S. 695, 84 S.Ct. 1449, 12 L.Ed.2d 620 (1964). Plaintiffs contend that the Alabama Legislature did not make an honest and good faith effort to populate State Senate and House districts equally, as required by the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs also challenge these districting plans on the grounds that the Alabama Legislature has implemented a goal of racial maximization in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs further contend that the election scheme created in Acts 2001-727 and 2001-729 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by overpopulating white majority districts and thereby diluting their vote.
The Alabama Legislature enacted the subject Senate and House redistricting plans on July 3, 2001. The Senate plan, Act 2001-727, received preclearance under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973c, on October 15, 2001, and the House plan, Act 2001-729, was precleared November 5, 2001. Alabama Acts 2001-727 and 2001-729 incorporate the results of the 2000 census.
Under the previous Reed-Buskey Plan, there were eight black-majority Senate districts and 27 black-majority House Districts. There are still eight black-majority Senate districts under Act 2001-727 and 27 black-majority House Districts under Act 2001-729. Under Act 2001-727, 6 of the 8 black-majority Senate districts and 11 of the 27 white-majority Senate districts have a population that is below the population of an ideal Senate district. However, the overall population deviation3 of Act 2001-727 is 9.78%. Under Act 2001-729, 23 of the 27 black-majority House districts and 31 of the 78 white-majority House districts have a population that is below the population of an ideal House district. The overall population deviation of Act 2001-729 is 9.93%. All Senate districts under Act 2001-727 and all House districts under Act 2001-729 are within 5% of the population of an ideal district of those respective districting plans.
The Alabama Legislature established Guidelines for Reapportionment and Redistricting through the work of its Permanent Legislative Committee on Reapportionment ("PLCR") which provide, in pertinent part:
In accordance with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, legislative and State Board of Education districts will be drawn to achieve "substantial equality of population among the various districts."
a. As a general proposition, deviations from the "ideal district" population should be justifiable either as a result of limitations of census geography, or as a result of the promotion of a rational state policy.
b. In keeping with subpart a, above, proponents of legislative and State Board of Education reapportionment plans should establish as a high priority minimizing population deviations among the districts. In any case, the relative population deviation for any
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legislative or state board of education district should not exceed plus or minus five percent (5%). Adherence to this rule will insure that the overall deviation in the plan does not exceed ten percent (10%), which is generally considered by controlling federal judicial decisions as a permissible overall deviation.
c. Any proponent submitting a proposal to the Reapportionment Committee or the Legislature shall submit a detailed explanation of how the deviations in the proposed plan further the rational state policies described in Section IV of these Guidelines, or are necessitated by census geography.
Third Amended Complaint at ¶ 60. The Guidelines, at Section IV, also favor the use of traditional race-neutral districting criteria such as compactness, contiguity, respect for communities of interest, preservation of the cores of existing districts and avoidance of conflicts between incumbents.4
Plaintiffs have proffered no evidence to refute the abundant evidence submitted by the defendants and defendant-intervenors which establishes that black voters and Democratic voters in Alabama are highly correlated; that the Legislature utilized recent election returns to ascertain actual voter behavior; and that Acts 2001-727 and 2001-729 were the product of the Democratic Legislators' partisan political objective to design Senate and House plans that would preserve their respective Democratic majorities.5 For example, although plaintiffs challenge the evidence on admissibility grounds, plaintiffs do not refute the sworn testimony of Mr. Sam Pierce, the expert designated by plaintiff Montiel in both the Congressional action which was transferred to the Middle District of Alabama and in the instant case, that black census populations are so strongly correlated with Democratic voting behavior throughout Alabama that, when he drew the Congressional plan adopted by this Court in Wesch v. Hunt, 785 F.Supp. 1491, 1500 (S.D.Ala.1992)(three-judge court), and the plan proposed by Mr. Montiel in the current Congressional redistricting litigation, he referred only to census data and attempted to minimize the number of black persons residing in districts he was designing to favor Republican candidates. See also, Report of Richard L. Engstrom (Blacksher Affidavit at Exh. D at 6-7) (employed the same type of examination relied upon in Hunt v. Cromartie, 526 U.S. 541, 119 S.Ct. 1545, 143 L.Ed.2d 731 (1999), and concluded that "as the African American percentage [of votes] increases across counties, the percentages of the vote for the Democratic candidates, regardless of their race, increases as well [and][t]his relationship is especially pronounced for the counties in which African Americans constitute a majority of the registered voters.").
Plaintiffs, despite their contentions to the contrary, have failed to proffer evidence, either direct or circumstantial, which establishes to any degree that the Alabama Legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles such as those set forth in Section IV of the Guidelines to racial considerations in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs essentially challenge Acts 2001-727 and 2001-729 solely on their face, relying on the population numbers and district boundaries alone. Plaintiffs predicate their contention that the apportionment
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process utilized by the Alabama Legislature had a taint of arbitrariness or discrimination on unsubstantiated supposition.
A. ONE-MAN, ONE-VOTE CHALLENGE
The principles of the one-man one-vote constitutional requirement were first enunciated in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. at 577, 84 S.Ct. at 1389-90:
By holding that as a federal constitutional requisite both houses of a state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis, we mean that the Equal Protection Clause requires that a State make an honest and good faith effort to construct districts, in both houses of its legislature, as nearly of equal population as is practicable. We realize that it is a practical impossibility to arrange legislative districts so that each one has an identical number of residents, or citizens, or voters. Mathematical exactness or precision is hardly a workable constitutional requirement.
The Supreme Court made it abundantly clear that "[s]o long as the divergences from a strict population standard are based on legitimate...
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