Valladolid v. City of National City, 91-56059

• Decision Date: 07 October 1992
• Docket Number: No. 91-56059,91-56059
• Citation: 976 F.2d 1293
• Parties: David VALLADOLID; Beatrice de La Roza, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF NATIONAL CITY; George M. Waters, National City Mayor; Marion F. Cooper, National City Councilmember; Michael R. Dalla; Jess Van Deventer; Fred Pruitt; Ione Campbell, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 1293

976 F.2d 1293

David VALLADOLID; Beatrice de La Roza, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF NATIONAL CITY; George M. Waters, National City Mayor; Marion F. Cooper, National City Councilmember Michael R. Dalla; Jess Van Deventer; Fred Pruitt; Ione Campbell, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 91-56059.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted July 8, 1992.

Decided Oct. 7, 1992.

Michael J. Aguirre, Aguirre & Meyer, San Diego, Cal., for plaintiffs-appellants.

John E. McDermott, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, Los Angeles, Cal., for defendants-appellees.

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

Before: FLETCHER, O'SCANNLAIN and KLEINFELD, Circuit Judges.

FLETCHER, Circuit Judge:

A class of Hispanic and black voting-age citizens who reside in the City of National City (the City) appeal the district court's grant of the City's motion for summary judgment. The action challenges the City's system of holding at-large elections for the selection of city council members. We affirm.

I.

National City is a California general law city located in San Diego County. It is governed by a city council consisting of four council members and a mayor. The council members are elected at-large by the city-wide electorate. They serve four-year terms, with their terms staggered so that two council members are elected every other year. There is no majority vote requirement for election to the council. Each registered voter can vote for two candidates, but there is no prohibition against casting only a single ballot (known as "single-shot" or "bullet" voting).

In 1980, National City had a population of 48,772. 38.4% of the population was Hispanic, 8.6% was black, and 41.0% was non-Hispanic white. The remaining residents (11.9% of the population) were Asian, American Indian, or members of other racial or ethnic groups. By 1990, the City's population had grown to 54,249. 49.6% of the City's residents were Hispanic, 7.9% were black, 26.0% were non-Hispanic white, and 16.4% were Asian, American Indian, or members of other groups.

Prior to 1968, no blacks or Hispanics were elected to the city council. ¹ Of the sixteen city council seats to have been contested by black or Hispanic candidates from 1968 onwards, black or Hispanic candidates have won seven. Two Hispanics currently sit on the four-member council.

The current action was commenced in 1988 on behalf of the Hispanic residents of National City. The plaintiffs claimed that the at-large system for electing city council members violated their rights under the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973, and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ² On September 30, 1988, the City moved for summary judgment. It contended that even if it adopted a system of electing council members from districts, it would not be able to create a district in which Hispanics represented a majority of the voting-age citizen population. Under the Supreme Court's decision in Thornburgh v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986), without such a showing, a voting rights challenge to the at-large system could not be maintained.

On April 17, 1989, the district court denied the City's motion, ruling that a triable issue of fact existed as to whether the Gingles' requirement that a plaintiff class be sufficiently large and concentrated to form the majority in at least one single member district could be satisfied if the plaintiffs amended their class to include black voting-age citizens. The plaintiffs subsequently filed an amended complaint in which they sought to join black citizens in their action, and on June 6, 1989 the district court certified the current appellant class consisting of "[a]ll voting age Hispanic and Black citizens residing in National City, California."

On March 1, 1990, following the close of discovery, the City filed its second motion for summary judgment. It claimed that Gingles again required the rejection of the appellants' Voting Rights Act claims because they had failed to present any evidence that their preferred candidates usually lost council elections as a result of majority bloc voting. It also contended that the appellants' Fourteenth Amendment claims should be dismissed because no evidence had been presented that the City's at-large election system had been adopted or maintained for a discriminatory purpose. The district court granted the motion for summary judgment on May 16, 1991 and this appeal followed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II.

A.

We review de novo a grant of summary judgment. Lockary v. Kayfetz, 917 F.2d 1150, 1153 (9th Cir.1990); California Architectural Bldg. Prods. v. Franciscan Ceramics, Inc., 818 F.2d 1466, 1468 (9th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1006, 108 S.Ct. 698, 98 L.Ed.2d 650 (1988). Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (Rule) 56(c) provides that summary judgment is properly granted where the pleadings and supporting materials "show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." In Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986), the Supreme Court held that "the plain language of Rule 56(c) mandates the entry of summary judgment, after adequate time for discovery and upon motion, against a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party's case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial." Id. at 322, 106 S.Ct. at 2552. The Court stated that the moving party's burden in such situations is simply to identify the elements of its adversary's case with respect to which it considers there to be a deficiency in proof. If the district court agrees as to the existence of the deficiency, summary judgment should follow as a matter of course. Id. at 325, 106 S.Ct. at 2553-54. ³

B.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. § 1973, proscribes practices or procedures which deny or abridge the right of citizens to vote on account of their race, color or membership in a language minority group. In City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 100 S.Ct. 1490, 64 L.Ed.2d 47 (1980), a plurality of the Supreme Court declared that a successful challenge to an electoral scheme could not be maintained under Section 2 absent a showing that the scheme was intentionally designed or maintained for a discriminatory purpose. Two years later, Congress responded to the Bolden decision by amending Section 2 to make it "clear that a violation [can] be proved by showing discriminatory effect alone...." Gingles, 478 U.S. at 35, 106 S.Ct. at 2758. ⁴ Where the members of a protected group establish that they have less opportunity to "participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice," 42 U.S.C. § 1973(b), than other members of the electorate because of the particular electoral mechanisms utilized by a State or locality, they need not establish discriminatory intent of the polity in adopting or maintaining those mechanisms.

Gingles represents the Supreme Court's first, and to this date its authoritative, interpretation of Section 2 in its amended form. The Gingles Court established three threshold requirements for the successful maintenance of a challenge to an at-large system of electing government officials.

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 ... 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 2766-2767 (citations, footnotes, and emphasis omitted); see also Romero v. City of Pomona, 883 F.2d 1418, 1427 (9th Cir.1989) ("[P]laintiffs must meet all three [Gingles ] preconditions in order to succeed on a section 2 claim....").

With respect to the third requirement, the Gingles Court noted that "[i]t is obvious that unless minority group members experience substantial difficulty electing representatives of their choice, they cannot prove that a challenged electoral mechanism impairs their ability 'to elect.' § 2(b).... Consequently, if difficulty in electing and white bloc voting are not proved, minority voters have not established that the multimember structure interferes with their ability to elect their preferred candidates." Gingles, 478 U.S. at 48 n. 15, 106 S.Ct. at 2767 n. 15. Hence, those challenging at-large electoral systems must demonstrate the existence of "a white bloc vote that normally will defeat the combined strength of minority support plus white 'crossover votes'...." Id. at 56, 106 S.Ct. at 2769.

Here, the City moved for, and the district court granted, summary judgment on the grounds that the appellants had failed to adduce any evidence to meet this third requirement. The City contended that the appellants had not presented any proof that their preferred candidates usually lost city council elections, let alone as a result of white bloc voting. The district court properly accepted this argument.

The only analysis presented by the plaintiffs below regarding...