United States v. City of Eastpointe
| Decision Date | 27 March 2019 |
| Docket Number | 4:17-cv-10079 |
| Citation | 378 F.Supp.3d 589 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF EASTPOINTE, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan |
George Eppsteiner, Jasmyn G. Richardson, Daniel J. Freeman, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, Luttrell Levingston, U.S. Department of Justice, Detroit, MI, for Plaintiff.
Angela B. Gabel, Abg Law Office, Clayton, MO, Calvin C. Brown, Virginia Office of the Attorney General, Richmond, VA, Richard S. Albright, Robert D. Ihrie, Ihrie, O'Brien, St. Clair Shores, MI, for Defendants.
The City of Eastpointe, Michigan uses an "at-large" voting method to elect its City Council. The United States ("the government" or "Plaintiff") has filed a complaint challenging this voting method, claiming that it dilutes the voting strength of African Americans who reside in Eastpointe and thereby violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits any voting practice or procedure that "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). Named as Defendants in this lawsuit are the City of Eastpointe, the Eastpointe City Council, Mayor Susan Pixley, City Council members Cardi Demonaco, Jr., Michael Klinefelt, Sarah Lucido, and John Marion, as well as City Clerk Steve Duchane (together, "Defendants").
The parties have filed several motions that have been fully briefed, argued, and are now before the Court: Defendants' motion for summary judgment (ECF No. 26 ); Defendants' motion to exclude a certain kind of research methodology and its data, known as Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding ("BISG"), which was relied upon by one of the government's expert witnesses, Dr. Lisa Handley (ECF No. 25 ); Defendants' motion to strike the government's notice of supplemental exhibit and corresponding exhibit (ECF No. 45 ); and Plaintiff's motion to strike Defendants' purportedly untimely supplemental expert disclosures (ECF No. 42 ). For the reasons set forth in detail below, all of the pending motions will be denied.
Eastpointe is a compact municipality of slightly over five square miles located in Macomb County, Michigan, on the northeast border of the City of Detroit. In considering challenges under the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court in the seminal case of Thornburg v. Gingles , 478 U.S. 30, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986) emphasized the importance of understanding the historical and social context in which the challenge is being raised, requiring that this Court conduct a "searching practical evaluation of the ‘past and present reality’ of the electoral system's operation." Id. at 45, 106 S.Ct. 2752 (quoting S. Rep. No. 417, 97th Cong., 2d Sess. 30 (1982) ). Because vote-dilution cases require a holistic rather than formalistic inquiry, the Supreme Court has emphasized the necessity of conducting "an intensely local appraisal of the design and impact" of the challenged electoral structure. Gingles , 478 U.S. at 79, 106 S.Ct. 2752 (quoting Rogers v. Lodge , 458 U.S. 613, 622, 102 S.Ct. 3272, 73 L.Ed.2d 1012 (1982) ).
In accord with the Supreme Court's admonition, the Court will discuss in some detail one of the expert reports before the Court. The report, authored by Dr. Thomas J. Sugrue, a noted 20th Century American historian, details how racial segregation and discrimination have been intertwined with Eastpointe's residential patterns, schools, and civic life since at least the early 20th Century. See generally ECF No. 38-13. According to the report, a combination of discriminatory real estate practices and public as well as private discrimination discouraged African Americans from moving to Eastpointe for several decades. Id. at PageID.1775–78. As recently as 1960 Eastpointe had no black residents. Id. at PageID.1773. In 1990, the City's African American population remained below 1%. Id. at PageID.1774. The City's decision in 1992 to change its name from East Detroit to Eastpointe is reported as emblematic of its desire to dissociate the predominantly white municipality from predominantly African American Detroit. Id. at PageID.1784–85.
Beginning in the 2000's, the City's African American population began to grow rapidly—part of a wave of what the expert report calls "black flight" out of the City of Detroit to the inner-ring suburbs. Id. PageID.1784, 1792–93. By 2010, African Americans comprised 30.3% of Eastpointe's population, mostly concentrated on the City's south side, along its Eight Mile Road boundary-line with the City of Detroit. Id. at PageID.1773, 1795–96. Consistent with this trend, information collected by the United States Census Bureau in the 2000 and 2010 censuses demonstrates Eastpointe's black voting age population ("VAP") rose from 4.25% in 2000 to 25.53% in 2010. ECF No. 38-2 PageID.1600 tbl. 2 (Expert Report of Dr. Lisa Handley). Similarly, data on citizen voting age population ("CVAP") by race gathered in the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Surveys (the sole source of citizenship data published by the Census Bureau), which pool data from five-year periods, shows Eastpointe's black CVAP increasing from 21.45% in 2005–2009 to 36.65% in 2011–2015. Id. By the most recent census estimate, African Americans now comprise 41.2% of Eastpointe residents. ECF No. 38-13 at PageID.1773. The chart below, created by one of the government's experts, Dr. Lisa Handley, illustrates the fast-paced growth of Eastpointe's black voting age population and citizen voting age population.
Table 2: Total and Black Population in Eastpointe
Year(s) Total VAP Black VAP Percent Black
Census 2000 25744 1095 4.25%
Census 2010 24103 6154 25.53%
Total CVAP Black CVAP Percent Black
ACS 2005-09 24360 5225 21.45%
ACS 2006-10 24165 6034 24.97%
ACS 2007-11 23590 6349 26.91%
ACS 2008-12 23480 6945 29.58%
ACS 2009-13 23371 7438 31.83%
ACS 2010-14 23567 8034 34.09%
ACS 2011-15 23670 8674 36.65%
ECF No. 38-2 PageID.1600 tbl. 2; see ECF No. 26 at PageID.614 ¶¶ 6–9 ().
Despite these rapidly changing demographics, Dr. Sugrue's report recounts that the City's long history of segregation and racial exclusion, as well as indifference towards integrating housing, prevented African Americans from becoming a cohesive part of the Eastpointe community. Complaints of harassment of African American residents remained troublingly common and at times violent. ECF No. 38-13 at PageID.1778–81, 1787–91. Additionally, statistics in the record demonstrate that major disparities exist between the City's black and white residents. Between 2006–2010, more than one in four of Eastpointe's black residents suffered unemployment, for example, compared to one in seven white residents. Id. at PageID.1810. During that same period, only about one in eleven white City residents lived beneath the poverty line, while more than one in five black residents did. Id. This racial poverty gap only widened between 2011 and 2015. Id. at PageID.1811. Income, employment, and poverty levels all affect the likelihood that an individual will vote. Id. at PageID.1820. And lower socioeconomic status is correlated with less participation in the political process. Id.
Eastpointe elects five individuals to serve on its City Council: the mayor and four City Council members. ECF No. 26 PageID.614 ¶ 2. Members of the City Council are elected at-large by all voters in Eastpointe to serve staggered, four-year terms. Id. ¶ 3. Under an at-large voting system, all voters in the jurisdiction can cast ballots for as many seats as there are up for election. The candidates who receive the most votes will represent the entire political subdivision. In contrast, in a single-member system, the jurisdiction is divided into sections and each section elects, and is represented by, a single elected official. As explained by the United States Supreme Court in Rogers v. Lodge , 458 U.S. 613, 616, 102 S.Ct. 3272, 73 L.Ed.2d 1012 (1982), "[a]t-large voting schemes and multimember districts tend to minimize the voting strength of minority groups by permitting the political majority to elect all representatives of the district." While a racial, ethnic, economic, or political minority "may be unable to elect any representatives in an at-large election," the minority "may be able to elect several representatives if the political unit is divided into single-member districts." Id.
At the time this lawsuit was filed, no African American can-didate had ever been elected to the Eastpointe City Council. ECF No. 1 PageID.5 ¶¶ 22–23. This is the case even though at least 39% of the City's total population and 34% of its CVAP are black, and black candidates have frequently run for City Council seats. ECF No. 26 PageID.614 ¶¶ 9–10, 25 (). Until the election of Council Member Monique Owens in the November 2017 election, after this lawsuit was filed, no black candidate had ever successfully run for Eastpointe's City Council. Id. PageID.614–615 ¶ 10. The next local election for the City of Eastpointe will be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2019 to elect the mayor and two city council members.
The difficulty inherent in evaluating vote-dilution claims is that, because of the secrecy of the...
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