Perez v. Rhiddlehoover

186 So. 2d 686, 1966 La. App. LEXIS 5150
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedMay 16, 1966
DocketNo. 2320
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 186 So. 2d 686 (Perez v. Rhiddlehoover) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Perez v. Rhiddlehoover, 186 So. 2d 686, 1966 La. App. LEXIS 5150 (La. Ct. App. 1966).

Opinion

REGAN, Judge.

The plaintiff, Leander H. Perez, Jr., District Attorney for the Parish of Plaque-mines, filed this suit against the defendants, Bruce Rhiddlehoover and Billy Travis, federal voting examiners assigned to serve in Plaquemines Parish pursuant to Section 6 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,1 and Roy Lyons, Registrar of Voters for Plaque-mines Parish, endeavoring to obtain an injunction restraining the defendants from registering and placing upon the voting rolls of the Parish certain individuals whom he asserts do not fulfill the suffrage requirements of state law.

Rhiddlehoover and Travis, the two federal examiners, removed the suit against them to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, on the following day.2 No effort was made to remove the case in so far as it applied to the defendant, Roy Lyons, the Parish Registrar of Voters, who appeared herein and denied the pertinent allegations of the foregoing petition.

A temporary restraining order was issued against all of the defendants, and in the usual course of judicial proceedings, a preliminary injunction was issued restraining only the defendant, Lyons, from registering certain individuals in violátion of state law, that is, those persons who were not twenty-one years of age on the date of registration and who did not possess the residence requirement of one year in the state, six months in the parish, and three months in the precinct.

In addition thereto, the judgment also restrained the defendant from registering those persons whose application therefor failed to reveal their mother’s maiden name, their race, their occupation, the color of their eyes, and the name of their employer for use as a means of identification by an election commissioner.3

Finally, the judgment made the preliminary writ of injunction peremptory, and from that judgment, the defendant has prosecuted this appeal.

The record discloses that Rhiddlehoover and Travis were assigned to Plaquemines Parish in conformity with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as federal examiners to register voters residing therein. Rhiddle-hoover’s testimony and the document produced by him in response to a subpoena [688]*688duces tecum reveals that he was instructed by the Civil Service Commission pursuant to Section 9(b) of this Act to place on the list of eligible voters any individual who would have attained the age of twenty-one years prior to the next election, and who would have met the residence requirements in the state, parish, and precinct prior to the next election. In other words, Rhiddle-hoover asserted that these persons were registered predicated upon a declaration of intent to reside within the parish for the required period of time.

The record also reflects that no entry was made on the registration form with respect to the color of the eyes of the applicant, his or her mother’s maiden name, his or her race, his or her occupation, or the name of his or her employer pursuant to state law, which is designed to facilitate the voting commissioners in identifying any individual who offers to vote in an election.

The record additionally reveals that the list of eligible voters certified by the federal examiners to the defendant merely contained the applicant’s name, address, age,4 ward, precinct, political party, certificate of eligibility number, and the date of the certificate. The defendant registrar was not furnished with a sample of the registrant’s signature or his “mark” to be used for the purpose of comparison when the individual appeared to vote.

In limine, the defendant focuses his attack upon the lack of jurisdiction of a state court to render a judicial decree involving its interpretation of Louisiana law relative to the qualifications or requirements that an individual must possess in order to be eligible to register as a voter in this state. In other words, the defendant insists that since the enactment by the Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and since the State of Louisiana is encompassed by the coverage formula thereof, Section 4(h), “[n]o court other than the District Court for the District of Columbia or a court of appeals” possesses the jurisdiction to interpret the voter registration laws of Louisiana.

In any event, the answer to the foregoing argument has recently been provided by a United States District Court in the case of Perez v. Rhiddlehoover,5 wherein the judge thereof rationalized with respect to the “Voting Rights Act of 1965” as follows:

“Primary emphasis centers on the contention that Section 14(b) of the Act permits suits of this nature only in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. That section reads:

'No court other than the District Court for the District of Columbia or a court of appeals in any proceeding under section 9 shall have jurisdiction to issue any declaratory judgment pursuant to section 4 or section 5 or any restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction against the execution or enforcement of any provision of this Act or any action of any Federal officer or employee pursuant hereto.’

We are of the opinion that Section 14 (b) is not applicable to the instant case. As seen from the preceding discussion of this suit’s merits, this is an action to secure compliance with the express provisions of the Act, not one attacking the Act. It is simply a suit to determine the nature of the state law that Sections 7(b) and 9(b) of the Act dictate must be applied. It is not, therefore, an attempt to enjoin ‘the execution or enforcement of any provision’ of the Act. Nor is it an attempt to enjoin ‘any action of any Federal officer or employee pursuant [io]' the Act. On the contrary, plaintiff is attempting, in effect, to require that the examiners act pursuant to the Act by [689]*689listing only those persons having ‘the qualifications prescribed by State law.’ The Congressional policy behind Section 14(b), whether wise or not, is concerned with insuring uniformity of decisions in cases testing the Act’s constitutionality. Nothing appears in the legislative history to indicate that the determination of each state’s law was to be reserved to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Whatever persuasiveness legislative history may possess when it seems to conflict with the plain language of an act, wherever it presents no conflict with a conclusion drawn from the language alone, a Court can readily accept both the history and the plain meaning of the language. No policy reasons appear to require that the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, rather than this Court, determine the nature of Louisiana law, and thus we do not feel that it is stressing form over substance to base our decision on a literal reading of the statute. Therefore, this Court holds that Section 14(b) of the Voting Rights Act does not preclude the granting of either declaratory or injunctive relief, or both, in this action.

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“It is arguable that the administrative remedy provided in Section 96 of the Voting Rights Act for challenging the listing of eligible voters negates the implication that Congress intended to permit state courts to pass on whether the Commission’s instructions agree with state law.

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Related

Rousselle v. Lyons
262 So. 2d 850 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1972)
Cox v. City of New Orleans
250 So. 2d 47 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1971)
Perez v. Rhiddlehoover
187 So. 2d 438 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1966)

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Bluebook (online)
186 So. 2d 686, 1966 La. App. LEXIS 5150, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/perez-v-rhiddlehoover-lactapp-1966.