Taylor v. McKeithen

499 F.2d 893
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedAugust 21, 1974
DocketNo. 71-2783
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 499 F.2d 893 (Taylor v. McKeithen) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Taylor v. McKeithen, 499 F.2d 893 (5th Cir. 1974).

Opinion

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

This case involves a racial gerrymander not by a state legislature but by a federal district court. The trial judge was well intentioned, of course, but his plan for drawing the boundaries of four state senate voting districts in New Orleans cannot be considered “benign districting” as the Supreme Court used that term in remanding this case to the Court of Appeals.

This litigation started as a frontal attack on the self-reapportionment of the Louisiana legislature under Acts 107 and 108 of 1970. In 1971, in five suits the plaintiffs attacked the legislative reapportionment plan as violative of the one man, one vote principle and as racially discriminatory. The trial judge, the Honorable E. Gordon West, consolidated the cases and appointed a special master, Edward J. Steimel, to recommend a plan that would comply with legal standards for legislative apportionment.1 The trial judge approved the Steimel plan without any deviation. 333 F.Supp. 452. This Court affirmed the judgment, except with respect to four senatorial districts in Orleans and three in East Baton Rouge Parishes.2 [895]*895As to these seven senatorial districts, we approved alternate plans submitted by interested state senators. The judgments of both courts represented an almost total defeat for the Louisiana Attorney General, who had defended the statutory reapportionment and had attacked the Steimel plan largely on the ground that it contained all single-member districts in both Houses, in disregard of state policy allowing multi-member districts.

The litigation has now narrowed to a dispute over senate districts 2, 3, 4, and 5, four of the seven senate districts in Orleans Parish. (The parish is coterminous with the City of New Orleans.) This Court approved a plan for these districts proposed by incumbent State Senators Adrian G. Duplantier, Ignatz G. Kiefer, Michael H. O’Keefe, and Theodore H. Hickey. The first three of these senators, all attorneys, were associated by the Attorney General as co-counsel for the State after we had remanded the case to the district court for a hearing on the special master’s plan; the district court first approved the plan without a hearing. The real adversaries here are these senators 3 and Mrs. Dorothy Taylor, a black member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, who brought one of the class actions attacking Acts 107 and 108.

The United States Supreme Court, on Mrs. Taylor’s petition for writ of certiorari, remanded the case to our Court, 407 U.S. 191, 92 S.Ct, 1980, 32 L.Ed.2d 648, "because this record does not fully inform [the Supreme Court] of the precise nature of the litigation and because [the Supreme Court has] not had the benefit of the insight of the ‘Court of Appeals’.” The Supreme Court stated that the Court of Appeals “without opinion . . . adopted the Attorney General’s alternative division of New Orleans”.4 The Supreme Court, in its per curiam opinion, said:

An examination of the record in this case suggests that the Court of Appeals may have believed that benign districting by federal judges is itself unconstitutional gerrymandering even where (a) it is employed to overcome the residual effects of past state dilution of Negro voting strength and (b) the only alternative is to leave intact the traditional “safe” white districts. If that were in fact the reasoning of the lower court, then this petition would present an important federal question of the extent to which the broad equitable powers of a federal court, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 15 [91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554], are limited by the colorblind concept of Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 [81 S.Ct. 125, 5 L.Ed.2d 110], and Wright v. Rockefeller, 376 U.S. 52, 57, 67 [84 S.Ct. 603, 11 L.Ed.2d 512].

In this Court’s short, earlier decision we did not reach the important federal question that concerned the majority of the Supreme Court.

[896]*896The district court, in effect, admittedly approved Steimel’s structuring of the four districts for the purpose of maximizing the black voting strength in two districts to ensure two safe black senate seats. But this racial gerrymander rested on a premise that was patently erroneous. It is true that the Senators’ plan relies heavily on historical boundaries, wards in the City of New Orleans. It is also true that the trial judge said: “as brought out in the evidence, it was this policy and these ‘historical’ boundaries that produced but two negro legislators during the Twentieth Century”. He concluded: “ ‘[Historical’ boundaries of voting districts i.n Louisiana reflect[ed] a history of racial discrimination. Adherence to the historical boundaries alluded to by objectors [had] been the prime reason why only two negroes [had] been allowed to sit in the Louisiana Legislature in the last 75 years.” The Supreme Court quoted this language in its opinion. It is understandable that this language should (unintentionally, of course) mislead the Supreme Court.

There is absolutely nothing in the record to support such a “finding”. As a statement of Louisiana history, it is an error of monumental magnitude.

The heavy concentration of black votes in Steimel districts 2 and 4 could be accomplished only by diluting the black vote to negligible effectiveness in districts 3 and 5 which would then become super-safe white districts. The Steimel districts disregarded historical boundaries and were as multi-sided as the “uncouth” gerrymandered district in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 1960, 364 U.S. 339, 81 S.Ct. 125, 5 L.Ed.2d 110. The Senators’ plan observed historical ward boundaries as nearly as possible, but differs as radically from the statutory plan embodied in Act 108 as jt differs from the Steimel plan.5 In contrast to the latter, the districts are compact, contiguous, mini-sided; and, considering the shrinking white population, the increasing black population, and the accelerating black registration in New Orleans, the Senators’ plan gave black voters in the four districts better access to participation in the election of state legislators than the Steimel plan. We did not and do not think that “the only alternative [to the Steimel plan was] to leave intact the traditional ‘safe’ white districts”.

Historically, there has never been any nexus whatever in Louisiana between the establishment of traditional political boundaries and the denial of access of blacks to the state legislature.6 In this century, until this Court compelled parish registrars of voters to register blacks and until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted and enforced, blacks could not be elected to the Louisiana legislature — to be blunt — because there were no black voters. It is as simple as that. Since adoption of the Louisiana Constitution of 1898 and until recently, the legislature disfranchised blacks overtly; it was never necessary for the legislature to resort to covert disenfranchisement of blacks by manipulating the boundaries of legislative voting districts.

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499 F.2d 893, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/taylor-v-mckeithen-ca5-1974.