Quilter v. Voinovich

• Decision Date: 22 August 1997
• Docket Number: No. 5:91CV-2219.,5:91CV-2219.
• Parties: Barney QUILTER, et al., Plaintiffs, v. George V. VOINOVICH, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

981 F.Supp. 1032

Barney QUILTER, et al., Plaintiffs, v. George V. VOINOVICH, et al., Defendants.

No. 5:91CV-2219.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Eastern Division.

August 22, 1997.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Timothy F. Scanlon, Scanlon & Gearinger, Akron, OH, Armistead W. Gilliam, Jr., Ann Wightman, Faruki, Gilliam & Ireland, Dayton, OH, for Barney Quilter, Thomas E. Ferguson, Glen Achtermann, Sam Barone, Sandra Guy, Robert McLaughlin, James B. McCarthy, Gladys Henson, Tom Kilbane, Robert H. Trainer, A. Wane Bussler, James P. Speros, Kenneth Thorne, Charles Walker, William Shanklin, Clarence Lumpkin, Tyrone Riley.

Timothy F. Scanlon, Scanlon & Gearinger, Akron, OH, Thomas I. Atkins, Sr., Brooklyn, NY, Armistead W. Gilliam, Jr., Ann Wightman, Laura A. Sanom, Faruki, Gilliam & Ireland, Dayton, OH, for William L. Mallory.

Orla Ellis Collier, III, Norton Victor Goodman, James F. DeLeone, Mark D. Tucker, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, Columbus, OH, Charles M. Rosenberg, Maynard A. Buck, III, Jeremy Gilman, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, Cleveland, OH, for George V. Voinovich, Stanley J. Aronoff, Robert A. Taft, II.

Charles M. Rosenberg, Maynard A. Buck, III, Jeremy Gilman, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, Cleveland, OH, for James R. Tilling.

Jack Gregg Haught, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, Columbus, OH, Andrew S. Bergman, Office of Atty. Gen., Columbus, OH, for State of Ohio, party in interest.

Elizabeth Johnson, Rebecca J. Wertz, Daniel H. Claman, Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., for U.S.

Armistead W. Gilliam, Jr., Ann Wightman, Faruki, Gilliam & Ireland, Dayton, OH, for Paul Mechling, Mary Abel, Ronald Gerberry, Richard Cordray.

Before JONES and MOORE, Circuit Judges, and DOWD, District Judge.

OPINION

MOORE, Circuit Judge.

The question before this court is whether the Ohio Apportionment Board's consideration of race in its 1992 redistricting plan violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We hold that because the plaintiffs have failed to make a threshold showing that the defendants subordinated traditional districting principles to consideration of race, strict scrutiny of the challenged districts is not applicable. Applying rational basis scrutiny, we conclude that the plan does not violate the Equal Protection Clause.

I. BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

This case is before this court on remand from the United States Supreme Court. Because we focus on application of the legal analysis outlined by the Supreme Court in recent cases, we will not revisit the facts and procedural history of this case in detail. The tortuous history of this litigation, which first came to this court in the form of a suit based on vote dilution and population deviation, was more thoroughly recounted in a previous opinion of this court. See Quilter v. Voinovich, 912 F.Supp. 1006, 1011-14 (N.D.Ohio 1995).

This litigation arose from the reapportionment of Ohio's electoral districts following the 1990 federal census. The plaintiffs include the Democratic members of the Republican-dominated Apportionment Board; the defendants are the Republican members of the Board and James R. Tilling, who drew the majority's plan. After the Supreme Court reversed this court's judgment for the plaintiffs on claims of vote dilution and remanded for further proceedings on a Fourteenth Amendment claim involving population deviation, see Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 113 S.Ct. 1149, 122 L.Ed.2d 500 (1993), this court permitted the plaintiffs to amend the complaint in light of the then-recent decision in Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 113 S.Ct. 2816, 125 L.Ed.2d 511 (1993) ("Shaw I") which recognized an equal protection claim of racial gerrymandering. Quilter v. Voinovich, 157 F.R.D. 36 (N.D.Ohio 1994). This court held in favor of the defendants on the population deviation issue, Quilter v. Voinovich, 857 F.Supp. 579 (N.D.Ohio 1994), but held in favor of the plaintiffs on the Shaw claims. Quilter v. Voinovich, 912 F.Supp. 1006 (N.D.Ohio 1995). The Supreme Court vacated the latter opinion and remanded for further consideration in light of the recent opinions in Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952, 116 S.Ct. 1941, 135 L.Ed.2d 248 (1996), and Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899, 116 S.Ct. 1894, 135 L.Ed.2d 207 (1996) ("Shaw II"). Voinovich v. Quilter, ___ U.S. ___, 116 S.Ct. 2542, 135 L.Ed.2d 1064 (1996).

On remand, we have limited our consideration to the effect of Bush and Shaw II on our previous analysis and holding. We have not considered any new evidence; we therefore readopt our previous factual findings, as outlined in the vacated opinion, to the extent that they are findings of fact and not conclusions of law regarding the "predominant factor" analysis, and to the extent that they are relevant to the threshold analysis. Specifically, we readopt ¶¶ 2, 3, and 5-10. See 912 F.Supp. at 1023-25. As to ¶ 11, we readopt the description of Tilling's notes and the finding that they are "probative" of the defendants' consideration of race, but we do not adopt the characterization of that consideration as "predominant" under the now-relevant Supreme Court standards. We need not readopt our previous findings of fact or conclusions of law as to the analysis under strict scrutiny, in which we held that the defendants did not have a compelling state interest to justify race-based redistricting. See 912 F.Supp. at 1027-30 (¶¶ 15-22). We see nothing in Bush or Shaw II that would change our previous analysis of compelling interest, but our holding that strict scrutiny is not applicable to the plan renders the compelling interest analysis unnecessary.

II. STANDING

Although we did not previously address the plaintiffs' standing to challenge the apportionment plan or certain districts, the Supreme Court's clear and limited definition of standing in Shaw II prompts us to consider not only whether the plaintiffs have standing, but also the scope of that standing. Federal courts have "an independent obligation to examine their own jurisdiction, and standing `is perhaps the most important of [the jurisdictional] doctrines.'" United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 742, 115 S.Ct. 2431, 2435, 132 L.Ed.2d 635 (1995) (quoting FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 231, 110 S.Ct. 596, 607, 107 L.Ed.2d 603 (1990) (citations omitted)) (alteration in original).

The Supreme Court's treatment of standing in Shaw claim cases has not been entirely consistent. Shaw I itself appeared to be based on broadly conceptualized harms, focusing on the stigmatization of individuals because of their race and on potential "representational harms" resulting from representation only of members of the majority racial group in a district.¹ See Hays, 515 U.S. at 744-45, 115 S.Ct. at 2436; Shaw I, 509 U.S. at 643, 648, 113 S.Ct. at 2824-25, 2827; Mark S. Nagel, Recent Developments, 19 HARV.J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 188, 196 (1995). See also Richard H. Pildes & Richard G. Niemi, Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," and Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw v. Reno, 92 MICH. L.REV. 483, 515-16 (1993) (commenting on "just how nonindividualized ... the expressive harm central to Shaw" was, and noting the Court's failure in Shaw I to address issues of standing); Pamela S. Karlan, Still Hazy After All These Years: Voting Rights in the Post-Shaw Era, 26 CUMB.L.REV. 287, 290 (1995-1996) (noting Shaw's "`complete disregard for standing requirements'") (citation omitted); Jeffrey L. Fisher, Note, The Unwelcome Judicial Obligation to Respect Politics in Racial Gerrymandering Remedies, 95 MICH.L.REV. 1404, 1416 (1997) ("[S]uch a speculative view of harm [as Shaw's representational harm], however, has never been enough to satisfy Article III's standing requirement."). In Hays, the Court rejected the argument that "anybody in the State" could challenge an allegedly racially gerrymandered district, holding instead that a plaintiff who does not reside in the challenged district must present "specific evidence" that he or she "has personally been subjected to a racial classification." 515 U.S. at 745, 115 S.Ct. at 2436. The Court explained that "[v]oters in [racially gerrymandered] districts may suffer the special representational harms racial classifications can cause in the voting context. On the other hand, where a plaintiff does not live in such a district, he or she does not suffer those special harms...." Id.

In another decision issued on the same day as Hays, however, the Court appeared to focus not on the representational harms to the white plaintiffs who challenged a majority-minority district, but on the general, expressive harms that result from government use of racial classifications. See Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 911-13, 115 S.Ct. 2475, 2486, 132 L.Ed.2d 762 (1995) (emphasizing the offensiveness of such use); see also Karlan, supra, at 288 (commenting on "Miller's apparent abandonment of any requirement that plaintiffs prove `representational harms.'").

In Shaw II, the Shaw I suit that spawned this line of cases returned to the Supreme Court, which then applied the Hays rule and cemented the test of standing to bring a Shaw claim: a plaintiff who resides in a particular district has standing to challenge the legislation that created that district; a plaintiff from outside the district does not have standing to challenge the legislation without specific evidence that he or she "personally has been subjected to a racial classification." 517 U.S. at ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1900. The scope of the standing is specific — the plaintiff's challenge is limited to the particular district on which standing is based:

Two appellants, Ruth Shaw and Melvin Shimm, live in District 12 and thus have standing to challenge that part of Chapter 7 which defines District 12. The remaining appellants do not reside in District 1 [the other challenged district], however, and they have not provided specific evidence that they personally...