Wymbs v. Republican State Executive Committee of Florida

• Decision Date: 31 October 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-6066,82-6066
• Citation: 719 F.2d 1072
• Parties: Norman E. WYMBS and Ann R. Cassady, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. REPUBLICAN STATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF FLORIDA, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1072

719 F.2d 1072

Norman E. WYMBS and Ann R. Cassady, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. REPUBLICAN STATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF FLORIDA, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 82-6066.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Oct. 31, 1983.

McFarland, Bobo, Sternstein, Wiley & Cassedy, Richard C. McFarlain, Tallahassee, Fla., William H. Allen, Harris Weinstein, Washington, D.C., Benton L. Becker, Miami, Fla., for defendant-appellant.

Roberts, Miller, Baggett, LaFace, Richard & Wiser, Barry Richard, Tallahassee, Fla., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

Before TJOFLAT and HILL, Circuit Judges, and SIMPSON, Senior Circuit Judge.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

This appeal addresses the power of a federal district court (1) to reorder the manner in which the Florida Republican Party selects delegates to the Republican National Convention and (2) to control how the Party's State Executive Committee conducts its voting when carrying out functions required of it by Florida law. The district court struck down as violative of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment the rule of the Florida Republican Party that governs the selection of delegates to the national convention. The court also ordered the State Executive Committee to refrain from conducting certain statutorily mandated functions until the Committee weighted its voting on a one Republican, one vote standard. We hold that article III of the Constitution does not permit a federal court to entertain the claims that were presented to the district court in this case. Accordingly, we reverse.

I.

Norman E. Wymbs, Ann R. Cassady, and Jack L. Moss (collectively referred to as "Wymbs") brought this suit, in two counts, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida on January 31, 1980. ¹ Wymbs and Cassady are registered Republicans and residents of Palm Beach County, Florida. Moss is a registered Republican and resident of Broward County, Florida. Wymbs named as sole defendant the Republican State Executive Committee of Florida (the Committee). ² Wymbs alleged in count one that the Committee performs a number of important political and governmental functions that amount to state action: (1) the adoption of presidential preference primary rules, as authorized by Fla.Stat.Ann. Sec. 103.101; (2) the nomination of presidential electors, pursuant to Fla.Stat.Ann. Sec. 103.021(1); (3) the filling of vacancies in nominations, as authorized by Fla.Stat.Ann. Sec. 100.111; and (4) the collection of party assessments from candidates, as provided in Fla.Stat.Ann. Sec. 99.092. Wymbs alleged that when the Committee carries out these four "governmental functions" it violates his fourteenth amendment right to equal protection of the law. ³ Wymbs maintained that Palm Beach and Broward County Republicans, who numbered 96,368 and 154,624, respectively, received the same representation (two seats) on the Committee as did Liberty and Dixie County Republicans, who counted as their number 21 and 29, respectively. ⁴ Wymbs sought to end this disparity.

Wymbs did not request the district court to reform the Committee's membership, but, instead, to enjoin the Committee from voting on the above four matters until it adopted a weighted, proportional voting system. Thus, when voting only on these four matters the weight of the Committee members' votes would vary depending upon the number of registered Republicans in their counties. Although the Committee has, for many years, been required by state statutes to conduct these four activities, and full relief in this case would therefore impinge upon these laws, neither the State nor the state officer responsible for enforcing these statutes was made a party to this suit. ⁵

In count two of his complaint, Wymbs sought to overturn Rule 11(4)(b) of the Republican Party of Florida Party Rules of Procedure (Rev.1979), which required that three delegates and three alternates to the 1980 Republican National Convention be chosen from each congressional district in Florida irrespective of the number of registered Republicans in the district. As in count one, Wymbs alleged that this delegate selection rule denied Florida Republicans equal protection of the law. ⁶ Although rule 11(4)(b) was simply part of the state party's version of Republican National Party Rules 30 and 31, which were binding on every state Republican party in the nation, the Republican National Committee was not made a party to this suit. Because state rule 11 is based on national party rules which will govern the selection of delegates to the 1984 convention, Wymbs' count two claim is not moot. ⁷

On cross-motions for summary judgment the district court sustained Wymbs' attack on the selection of Republican National Convention delegates by congressional district. The district court agreed with Wymbs that even though the federal Constitution ⁸ commands that each congressional district contain nearly the same number of people, it is not equality of population but, instead, equality of party registration that counts in determining the constitutionality of the apportionment of a state's delegation to a national political party convention. The district court therefore held that each delegate district must contain an equal number of registered Republicans and, on July 1, 1980, enjoined the Committee from implementing rule 11(4)(b). The court stayed its injunctive order until after the 1980 Republican National Convention and the Committee immediately took an appeal to the former Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The district court then disposed of count one of the complaint. The court sustained the constitutionality of the Committee's right to have two members from each county, each having an equal vote, and to conduct the business that Wymbs challenged. The court held that even if Committee conduct were subject to equal protection principles, the Committee's composition and the allocation of one vote to each member were not constitutionally deficient. The court therefore dismissed count one. Wymbs moved for a rehearing, and the court asked for further briefing on this constitutional question.

While the appeal on count two was pending in the Fifth Circuit, ⁹ the United States Supreme Court held that the Democratic National Convention had a constitutional right to refuse to seat a delegation from Wisconsin that was elected under a state law at odds with party rules. Democratic Party v. Wisconsin ex rel. LaFollette, 450 U.S. 107, 101 S.Ct. 1010, 67 L.Ed.2d 82 (1981). The Fifth Circuit thereafter vacated the district court's injunctive order and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of LaFollette. Wymbs v. Republican State Executive Committee, 658 F.2d 324, 325 (5th Cir. Unit B 1981) (per curiam). The court considered LaFollette "of potential significance ... deserv[ing] careful scrutiny and argument," and observed that

Although the factual context and issues presented in LaFollette do not precisely coincide with those here, the Court used broad language to the effect that "[a] political party's choice among the various ways of determining the makeup of a state's delegation to the party's national convention is protected by the Constitution."

Wymbs, 658 F.2d at 325, quoting LaFollette, 450 U.S. at 124, 101 S.Ct. at 1020. The court also questioned the justiciability of Wymbs' equal protection claim and drew the litigants' attention to the LaFollette footnote which referred to Ripon Society, Inc. v. National Republican Party, 525 F.2d 567 (D.C.Cir.1975) (en banc), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 933, 96 S.Ct. 1147, 47 L.Ed.2d 341 (1976), where the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld Republican National Party Rule 30, upon which rule 11(4)(b), the delegate selection rule Wymbs challenged, was based. Id.

On remand, the district court, in a memorandum opinion, again held rule 11(4)(b) unconstitutional, observing that nothing in LaFollette or the Fifth Circuit's opinion remanding the case should cause it to change its previous decision. The district court concluded that Wymbs' equal protection attack on rule 11(4)(b) was not an attack on the first amendment rights of the national party or on that party's method of selecting delegates; rather, it was strictly an attempt to enforce the "one person, one vote" right which Wymbs claimed was guaranteed Florida Republicans under Gray v. Sanders, ¹⁰ 372 U.S. 368, 83 S.Ct. 801, 9 L.Ed.2d 821 (1963).

At the time the district court considered count two on remand, it reconsidered Wymbs' count one challenge that giving each county representative on the Committee one vote violated the equal protection clause. The court reversed its earlier ruling rejecting Wymbs' challenge, and found that two of the Committee's statutory functions--the promulgation of rules for the presidential preference primary and the filling of vacancies in nominations for statewide races--amounted to state action and, if performed when each county representative had one vote, would violate equal protection. The district court enjoined the Committee from performing these two functions until it implemented a voting procedure that ensured that each county representative on the Committee represented an equal number of Republican voters. In effect, the district court extended the "one person, one vote" principle of Gray v. Sanders ¹¹ into a "one registered Republican, one vote" principle, applicable to purely intra-party rules and affairs.

We are now presented with final judgments on both counts of Wymbs' complaint. ¹² On count one, the district court granted Wymbs partial relief; on count two relief in full. The court founded all relief on the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. ¹³

Before proceeding to the merits of the Committee's appeal, we need to stress that apportionment, voting rights, and political cases present difficult issues of...