Wallace v. House

• Decision Date: 17 September 1976
• Docket Number: No. 74-2654,74-2654
• Citation: 538 F.2d 1138
• Parties: George WALLACE, Sr., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. J. P. HOUSE, Individually and as Registrar of Voters of Concordia Parish, Louisiana, et al., Defendants, L. W. Davis, etc., et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1138

538 F.2d 1138

George WALLACE, Sr., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. J. P. HOUSE, Individually and as Registrar of Voters of

Concordia Parish, Louisiana, et al., Defendants,

L. W. Davis, etc., et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 74-2654.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 17, 1976.

Norman M. Magee, Ferriday, La., Robert C. Downing, Asst. Atty. Gen., State of La., Dept. of Justice, Monroe, La., for defendants-appellants.

W. C. Falkenheiner, Dist. Atty., Vidalia, La., A. Mills McCawley, Special Counsel, Shreveport, La., for J. P. House.

Paul H. Kidd, Monroe, La., Stanley A. Halpin, Jr., New Orleans, La., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Before GOLDBERG and RONEY, Circuit Judges, and GROOMS, District Judge.

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge:

This case comes before us for the second time, our earlier decision having been vacated and remanded by the Supreme Court for reconsideration in light of East Carroll Parish School Board v. Marshall, 1976, --- U.S. ----, 96 S.Ct. 1083, 47 L.Ed.2d 296 (per curiam), and Public Law 94-73 (42 U.S.C. § 1973l (e)). ¹

East Carroll purports to defoliate the political thicket in which we have been wandering for some years. In our travels, we had, whenever possible, sought guidance from the local legislature, thereby seeking the goal of judicious redistricting through some constitutional route proposed by a representative body. We traversed this path in our original opinion, holding that where an existing apportionment plan has been held unconstitutional and the district court is put to the task of fashioning a remedial plan, it ought to defer to a constitutional plan preferred by the local legislative body. The Supreme Court's contemporary cartography commended this route to us.

In East Carroll, however, the Court declaimed that when the legislative body has once strayed from the path of constitutional rectitude and the district court is charged with fashioning a remedial apportionment plan, the court need pay no heed to the legislative preference for at-large districts. The Board of Aldermen of Ferriday, Louisiana, left that constitutional path by imposing on the town's citizens an all-at-large aldermanic election scheme that diluted the votes of black citizens; we can therefore no longer follow the Board's directions through the thicket. Having cleared away the underbrush, the Supreme Court has given us a route to be followed over all but the most inhospitable terrain: in fashioning remedial districting schemes, federal district courts are to order single-member plans absent special circumstances.

We must review under the guidelines established in East Carroll the district court's choice of a single-member reapportionment scheme, and under the authority of 42 U.S.C. § 1973l (e) the lower court's award of attorneys' fees to plaintiffs. We affirm the district court's judgment on both questions, thereby bringing closer to resolution this dispute between the black citizens of Ferriday, Louisiana, and the Board of Aldermen, which proposed to supplant the town's unconstitutional all-at-large aldermanic election scheme with a plan that would retain one at-large member. To the town's black citizens, the single at-large seat retained in the Board's preferred plan represents the fulcrum of continued white political control.

I. The District Court's Choice of Districting Plans

On June 13, 1972, the black candidates for election to the Ferriday, Louisiana, Board of Aldermen filed this class action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in federal district court. Plaintiffs charged that Ferriday's all-at-large voting scheme impermissibly diluted the votes of local blacks and asked for appropriate declaratory and injunctive relief. The court ordered each party to submit alternative redistricting plans. The Board submitted two redistricting plans to the district court. ² The plan first submitted (the mixed plan) divided Ferriday into four single-member districts and one at-large district encompassing the entire town. The second plan (the all single-member plan) created five single-member aldermanic districts. A bench trial was held on April 24 and 25, 1974, after which the district court concluded that only single-member aldermanic districts would sufficiently guarantee to black voters the full efficacy of their right of suffrage.

The Court found both the existing all-at-large plan and the Board's preferred mixed plan unconstitutional. The mixed plan was "clearly constitutionally infirm because of the special racially discriminatory effect of that plan in the context of this case." Wallace v. House, W.D.La.1974, 377 F.Supp. 1192, 1200. The mixed plan would have created two "safe" white seats and two "safe" black seats. The pivotal at-large aldermanic seat would likely have been controlled by Ferriday's white voting majority. ³ A fairly drawn single-member plan, on the other hand, "ordinarily will result in blacks having a majority in three of the five districts." Id. at 1200. The mixed plan was also unconstitutional in the district court's view because, like the existing all-at-large plan, it operated to dilute the voting strength of black citizens and prevented them "from participating equally with white citizens in the political process . . . ." Id. at 1199.

On appeal, it was conceded that Ferriday's all-at-large aldermanic election scheme operated to dilute the votes of the black citizens of the town in violation of their Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment rights. ⁴ The problem was whether the district court made the proper choice between the alternative plans submitted by the Board of Aldermen. We held that the trial court was mistaken in adopting a per se rule that even a single at-large aldermanic seat would have the same pernicious effect as the previously all-at-large scheme, that the Board's mixed plan was not unconstitutional, and that the Board's preference for the mixed plan must override the district court's preference for the all single-member plan. 515 F.2d at 632, 636. Our panel decision was vacated and remanded by the Supreme Court for reconsideration of this question in light of East Carroll.

In Zimmer v. McKeithen, 5 Cir. 1973, 485 F.2d 1297 (en banc), aff'd sub nom. East Carroll Parish School Board v. Marshall, 1976, --- U.S. ----, 96 S.Ct. 1083, 47 L.Ed.2d 296 (per curiam), we reversed a district court decision approving an at-large reapportionment plan submitted by the East Carroll Police Jury. A district court had ordered a change from ward to at-large voting in East Carroll Parish in 1968. The Parish Police Jury subsequently resubmitted the at-large plan pursuant to a district court order to submit a reapportionment plan in light of the 1970 census. Black voters in East Carroll challenged the propriety of the plan under, inter alia, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The district court found that the at-large plan did not dilute black voting strength and ordered police jury and school board elections under the at-large plan. ⁵ A panel of the Fifth Circuit affirmed, 467 F.2d 1381, but on rehearing en banc, this Court reversed, 485 F.2d 1297. We found clearly erroneous the trial court's findings that at-large elections would not dilute the black voting strength of East Carroll Parish.

In affirming our en banc decision, the Supreme Court found it unnecessary to reach the constitutional merits of the proffered at-large plan. The Court held simply that the district court had abused its discretion in failing initially to order a single-member reapportionment plan. The Court reaffirmed the rule "that when United States district courts are put to the task of fashioning reapportionment plans to supplant concededly invalid state legislation, single-member districts are to be preferred absent unusual circumstances." --- U.S. at ----, 96 S.Ct. at 1085. Had the Court been articulating a new test, a remand might have been appropriate. But the Court, finding it "inexplicable" that our en banc opinion had declined to rest on this "frequently reaffirmed" rule, did not remand to determine whether there were special circumstances. Instead, the Court reasoned that the en banc opinion "amply demonstrates (that) no special circumstances here dictate the use of multimember districts."

East Carroll makes clear that in fashioning remedial relief subsequent to finding an existing apportionment plan unconstitutional, a federal district court must, absent special circumstances, order a single-member reapportionment plan. A district court need not reject an all-at-large or mixed plan as unconstitutional in order to justify its choice of an all-single-member plan. A reviewing court need not reach the constitutionality of the mixed plan to decide whether the district court's choice was proper. When district courts are forced to fashion reapportionment plans, the general rule is that single-member districts are to be preferred. East Carroll, supra, --- U.S. ----, 96 S.Ct. at 1085; Chapman v. Meier, 1975, 420 U.S. 1, 17-19, 95 S.Ct. 751, 761-62, 42 L.Ed.2d 766, 778-80; Mahan v. Howell, 1973, 410 U.S. 315, 333, 93 S.Ct. 979, 989, 35 L.Ed.2d 320, 335; Connor v. Williams, 1972, 404 U.S. 549, 551, 92 S.Ct. 656, 658, 30 L.Ed.2d 704, 707; Connor v. Johnson, 1971, 402 U.S. 690, 692, 91 S.Ct. 1760, 1762, 29 L.Ed.2d 268 (per curiam).

Two paradigm situations will arise under this rule. In the first paradigm, a district court departs from the favored single-member plan and chooses a plan containing at least one at-large district. In this case the trial court must justify its rejection of the favored alternative by demonstrating that there are special circumstances that mandate this choice. ⁶ In the second paradigm, the district court orders single-member districting in the first instance. The question on appeal then becomes whether the presumptively proper choice of the district court must be overturned as an...