Nat'l Ass'n for the Advancement of Colored People, Spring Valley Branch v. E. Ramapo Cent. Sch. Dist.

• Decision Date: 25 May 2020
• Docket Number: No. 17-CV-8943 (CS),17-CV-8943 (CS)
• Citation: 462 F.Supp.3d 368
• Parties: NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR the ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, SPRING VALLEY BRANCH; Julio Clerveaux; Chevon Dos Reis; Eric Goodwin; Jose Vitelio Gregorio; Dorothy Miller; and Hillary Moreau, Plaintiffs, v. EAST RAMAPO CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

462 F.Supp.3d 368

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR the ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, SPRING VALLEY BRANCH; Julio Clerveaux; Chevon Dos Reis; Eric Goodwin; Jose Vitelio Gregorio; Dorothy Miller; and Hillary Moreau, Plaintiffs,

v.EAST RAMAPO CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, Defendant.

No. 17-CV-8943 (CS)

United States District Court, S.D. New York.

Signed May 25, 2020

Claudia T. Salomon, Corey A. Calabrese, Andrej Novakovski, Latham & Watkins LLP, New York, New York, Marc Zubick, Russell Mangas, Latham & Watkins LLP, Chicago, Illinois, Andrew Clubok, Latham & Watkins LLP, Washington, D.C., Arthur Eisenberg, Perry Grossman, New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation, New York, New York, Counsel for Plaintiffs.

David J. Butler, Randall Levine, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, New York, New York, Washington, D.C., William S.D. Cravens, Clara Kollm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Washington, D.C., Counsel for Defendant.

DECISION AND ORDER

Seibel, J.

1. This case involves a challenge to the election system that the East Ramapo Central School District (the "District") uses to elect members of its Board of Education (the "Board"). Plaintiffs allege that the election system results in vote dilution – that is, that it affords black and Latino residents "less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice," Thornburg v. Gingles , 478 U.S. 30, 36, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986) (internal quotation marks omitted) – in violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ("VRA" or the "Act"), which provides, in pertinent part, that "[n]o voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color," 52 U.S.C. § 10301(a) ("Section 2"). Following a bench trial held on January 22, February 10-14, 18-21, and 24-27, and March 3, 5, and 24, 2020, I make the following findings of fact and conclusions of law.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Plaintiffs

2. Plaintiff National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Spring Valley Branch ("NAACP") is a racial justice organization that includes District residents. (PX 288 ¶ 3.)¹

3. Plaintiffs Julio Clerveaux, Chevon Dos Reis, Eric Goodwin, and Dorothy Miller are minority registered voters in the District.² In 2017, Dos Reis and Goodwin ran for the Board and believe they were supported by the "public school community," a group of residents interested in improving public schools after past budget cuts. Both lost to white candidates by a margin of approximately 5,000 votes. (PX 279 ¶¶ 25, 64 (Dos Reis); PX 281 ¶¶ 23, 59 (Goodwin); JPTO at 10.) Since 2008, every candidate for whom Dos Reis, Clerveaux, Goodwin, and Miller voted in a contested Board election lost. (PX 279 ¶ 11 (Dos Reis); PX 280 ¶ 9 (Clerveaux); PX 281 ¶ 9 (Goodwin); PX 282 ¶ 11 (Miller).)

B. Defendant

4. The District is a "highly segregated," (Tr. at 514:17-20 (Cooper)),³ political subdivision of New York State located in Rockland County that in the 2017-2018 school year served approximately 8,843 public school students at fourteen schools and approximately 29,279 private school students, (JPTO at 4; PX 372 ¶ 24).⁴ The District's population is approximately 65.7% white, 19.1% black, 10.7% Latino, and 3.3% Asian. (PX 244A ¶ 4.)⁵ Most white residents live in majority-white neighborhoods, and most minority residents live in majority-minority neighborhoods, according to data from the American Community Survey, which is a survey of 2% of households performed by the Census Bureau every year for five years, generating results for 10% of U.S. households.

(Tr. at 256:14-257:7 (Barreto).)⁶ Of the white residents in the District, 69.4% live in block groups that are 80% or more white and 33.03% live in block groups that are 95% or more white. Of the minority residents in the District – who are concentrated in and around Hillcrest, Spring Valley, and Nanuet – 55.7% live in block groups that are 83.6% to 98.2% minority. (PX 244A ¶¶ 28-29 & fig.8; id. ¶¶ 32-33 & fig.9; see Tr. at 512:7-23; 514:14-16 (Cooper).) A "block group" is a collection of several blocks. (See note 17 below.)

5. Public school students are almost all black or Latino (92%), and students attending private schools located in the District are almost all white (98%). (JPTO at 4; PX 372 ¶ 24.)⁷ Most witnesses acknowledged the existence of a "private school community," consisting of white Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who educate their children in yeshivas, and a "public school community," consisting of all races but primarily black and Latino persons, and virtually all witnesses involved in District elections used those terms. (Tr. at 612:15-614:6 (Castor); id. at 1238:11-14 (Germain); id. at 2560:11-14 (Charles-Pierre); PX 257 at 191:18-192:2 (Russell); PX 286 ¶ 12 (Price); PX 279 ¶ 58 (Dos Reis); Tr. at 655:25-656:10, 657:17-20 (same); PX 283 ¶¶ 40-41, 67 (Fields); PX 281 ¶¶ 20, 62 (Goodwin); PX 282 ¶¶ 11-15 (Miller); PX 288 ¶¶ 9, 37 (Trotman); Tr. at 1373:20-22 (same); see Tr. at 725:5-16, 730:14-17 (Board member Joel Freilich identifying himself as member of "private school community" and someone else as member of "public school community"); id. at 997:1-6 (Rabbi Hersh Horowitz discussing "private" and "public school community" vote totals); id. at 1896:6-24 (former Board member Suzanne Young-Mercer was on "public school team" but received support from "private school community" including Orthodox and Hasidic voters); id. at 1942:5-21 (public school advocate Oscar Cohen identifying public school community as "people of all races" and private school community as Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox); id. at 1082:15-18 (Board member Yehuda Weissmandl using term "public school community"); id. at 1523:12-14 (Board member Harry Grossman acknowledging "public school advocates" spoke at Board meetings); id. at 2479:10-24 (influential community leader Rabbi Yehuda Oshry vetted candidates by ensuring they would be responsive to needs of "Jewish community besides the public school").)

6. The District is governed by nine Board members whose responsibilities include selecting the Superintendent of Schools and approving District personnel, setting a budget and levying taxes, establishing District policies, and evaluating and communicating the "progress and needs of the District to the community, educational governing boards and legislators." (PX 259 at 1; JPTO at 5.)⁸ To register to vote in elections for Board members and to vote on the annual school budget and other ballot referenda in the District, a person must be a United States citizen, a resident of the District for at least thirty days, eighteen years of age or older, and either registered for District elections or registered to vote in general elections in Rockland County. (JPTO at 5.) Board elections are not held with other local, state, or federal elections (that is, they are off cycle), and they are staggered such that three seats – each having a three-year term – are open each year (although on occasion an extra seat will be open if a Board member resigns, dies, or is removed). (Id. ) Each candidate runs for an individual numbered seat that is elected at large, meaning that all eligible voters in the District cast votes in each race. (Id. )⁹ Candidates can reside anywhere in the District. (PX 257 at 38:5-8.)

7. A table summarizing the results of Board elections from 2008 through 2018 is set out below, including the year, the candidates, the candidates’ races ("W" indicating white, "B" indicating black, and "L" indicating Latino), and the number of votes each received.

Table 1: Summary of Board Elections: 2008-2018. (JPTO at 12 tbl.1.)

C. Legal Standard

8. "The essence of a § 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 [minority] and white voters to elect their preferred representatives." Gingles , 478 U.S. at 47, 106 S.Ct. 2752. To establish that the minority vote is diluted, a plaintiff must show that (1) the minority group "is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district," (2) the minority group is "politically cohesive," and (3) "the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it – in the absence of special circumstances ... – usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate," (together, the " Gingles preconditions"). Id. at 50-51, 106 S.Ct. 2752 (citation omitted). These "showings are needed to establish that the challenged districting thwarts a distinctive minority vote by submerging it in larger white voting population." Growe v. Emison , 507 U.S. 25, 40, 113 S.Ct. 1075, 122 L.Ed.2d 388 (1993).

9. "Lack of electoral success is evidence of vote dilution, but courts must also examine other evidence in the totality of circumstances, including the extent of the opportunities minority voters enjoy to participate in the political processes." Johnson v. De Grandy , 512 U.S. 997, 1011-12, 114 S.Ct. 2647, 129 L.Ed.2d 775 (1994). Thus, if a plaintiff satisfies the Gingles preconditions, the court must then examine the totality of the circumstances, including by assessing the following factors identified by the U.S. Senate in Section 2's legislative history: (1) " ‘the history of voting-related discrimination in the ... political subdivision,’ " (2) " ‘the extent to which voting ... is racially polarized,’ " (3) the extent to which voting practices " ‘enhance the opportunity for discrimination,’ " (4) " ‘the exclusion of members of the minority group from candidate slating processes,’ " (5) " ‘the extent to which minority group members bear the effects of past discrimination in areas such as education, employment, and health,’ " (6) " ‘the use of overt or subtle racial...