Public Integrity Alliance, Inc. v. City of Tucson

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE, No. 15-16142

INC., an Arizona nonprofit

membership corporation; BRUCE D.C. No.

ASH, an individual; FERNANDO 4:15-cv-00138-CKJ

GONZALES, an individual; ANN

HOLDEN, an individual; KEN

SMALLEY, an individual, OPINION

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

CITY OF TUCSON, a chartered city

of the State of Arizona;

JONATHAN ROTHSCHILD, in his

capacity as the Mayor of the City

of Tucson; REGINA ROMERO, in

her capacity as a member of the

Tucson City Council; PAUL

CUNNINGHAM, in his capacity as

a member of the Tucson City

Council; KARIN UHLICH, in her

capacity as a member of the

Tucson City Council; SHIRLEY

SCOTT, in her capacity as a

member of the Tucson City

Council; RICHARD FIMBRES, in

his capacity as a member of the

Tucson City Council; STEVE

KOZACHIK, in his capacity as a

2 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

member of the Tucson City

Council; ROGER RANDOLPH, in

his capacity as the Clerk of the

City of Tucson,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Arizona

Cindy K. Jorgenson, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted En Banc June 21, 2016

San Francisco, California

Filed September 2, 2016

Before: Sidney R. Thomas, Chief Judge, and William A.

Fletcher, Ronald M. Gould, Richard A. Paez, Marsha S.

Berzon, Richard R. Clifton, Consuelo M. Callahan, Morgan

Christen, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, John B. Owens, and

Michelle T. Friedland, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Berzon

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 3

SUMMARY*

Civil Rights

The en banc court affirmed the district court’s order

awarding judgment in favor of the City of Tucson and its co-

defendants in an action challenging the City’s system for

electing members of its city council.

Tucson is divided into six wards of approximately equal

population, and each ward is allotted one seat on the six-

member city council. Council members are elected through

a hybrid system involving a ward-level partisan primary

election and an at-large partisan general election. The top-

vote getter from each party eligible for inclusion on the ward-

level primary ballot advances to an at-large general election

where she competes against the other candidates nominated

from the same ward. In the general election, every Tucson

voter may vote for one candidate from each ward that held a

primary.

Plaintiffs alleged that the combination of the ward-based

primary and the at-large general was constitutionally fatal.

Applying Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992), the en

banc court held that Tucson’s hybrid system for electing

members of its city council imposed no constitutionally

significant burden on the right to vote. The panel further held

that Tucson advanced a valid, sufficiently important interest

to justify its choice of electoral system. The panel concluded

*

This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

4 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

that on the facts alleged, the system did not violate the Equal

Protection Clause’s one person, one vote commitment.

COUNSEL

Kory A. Lanhofer (argued), Thomas J. Basile, and Roy

Herrera Jr., Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, Phoenix,

Arizona, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Dennis P. McLaughlin (argued), Principal Assistant City

Attorney; Michael G. Rankin, City Attorney; City Attorney’s

Office, Tucson, Arizona; for Defendants-Appellees.

Rebecca Glasgow and Callie A. Castillo, Deputy Solicitors

General; Robert W. Ferguson, Attorney General; Office of

the Attorney General, Olympia, Washington; for Amici

Curiae Washington Secretary of State, Washington State

Association of Counties, Association of Washington Cities,

and Washington Association of County Officials.

Jennifer M. Perkins; John R. Lopez, IV, Solicitor General;

Mark Brnovich, Attorney General; Office of the Attorney

General, Phoenix, Arizona; for Amicus Curiae State of

Arizona.

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 5

OPINION

BERZON, Circuit Judge:

The structure of municipal governments and methods of

selecting municipal officials vary greatly across the country.

Such diversity is a manifestation of our federal structure,

which ideally, though not always, “allows local policies

‘more sensitive to the diverse needs of a heterogeneous

society,’ permits ‘innovation and experimentation,’ enables

greater citizen ‘involvement in democratic processes,’ and

makes government ‘more responsive by putting the States in

competition for a mobile citizenry.’” Bond v. United States,

564 U.S. 211, 221 (2011) (quoting Gregory v. Ashcroft,

501 U.S. 452, 458 (1991)). This case requires us to consider

the constitutional validity of one municipality’s chosen

election system.

Public Integrity Alliance, a nonprofit corporation, and

four Tucson voters (collectively referred to as “Public

Integrity Alliance”) challenge as unconstitutional the City of

Tucson’s system for electing members of its city council. We

hold that Tucson’s system does not violate the Equal

Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution and so affirm the district court’s order awarding

judgment in favor of the City and its co-defendants.

BACKGROUND

I.

Tucson is one of nineteen charter cities in Arizona. City

of Tucson v. State, 229 Ariz. 172, 174 (2012) (en banc).

Under Arizona’s constitution, charter cities are municipalities

6 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

of more than 3,500 people that have elected to “adopt a

charter—effectively, a local constitution—for their own

government without action by the state legislature.” Id.

Charter cities enjoy enhanced autonomy with regard to

government structure and the selection of their city officials.

See id.; Strode v. Sullivan, 72 Ariz. 360, 368 (1951).

Since adopting its current city charter in 1929, Tucson has

used a “hybrid election system” for electing members to its

city council. City of Tucson, 229 Ariz. at 175; Tucson City

Charter, ch. XVI, § 9. Tucson’s city council election system

operates as follows: Tucson is divided into six wards of

approximately equal populations. Id. ch. XVI, § 8. Each ward

is allotted one seat on the six-member city council. Id. ch. III,

§ 1. Council members serve four-year terms and are elected

on a staggered basis, with three council members elected

every odd-numbered year. Id. ch. XVI, §§ 3, 4. For example,

elections for the seats allotted to Wards 1, 2, and 4 were held

in 2015, and elections for the seats allotted to Wards 3, 5, and

6 will be held in 2017. A candidate for city council must

reside in the ward from which she seeks to be nominated. Id.

ch. XVI, § 5.

Council members are elected through a hybrid system

involving a ward-level partisan primary election and an at-

large partisan general election. First, each ward with a city

council seat up for election conducts a partisan primary to

select one nominee from each recognized political party.

Persons who reside within that ward and are registered with

a political party qualified for representation on the ballot may

vote in their party’s ward-level primary. Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 16-

467(B); Tucson City Charter, ch. XVI, § 9. A person

registered as an independent, as having no party preference,

or as a member of a party not entitled to representation on the

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 7

ballot may vote in any one party’s ward-level primary. Ariz.

Rev. Stat. § 16-467(B).

The top vote-getter from each party eligible for inclusion

on the ward-level primary ballot then advances to an at-large

general election, where she competes against the other

candidates nominated from the same ward. Every Tucson

voter may vote for one candidate from each ward that held a

primary—that is, all voters may vote for one candidate for

each of the three council member seats appearing on the

general election ballot. Tucson City Charter, ch. XVI, § 9.

Thus, when city council seats for Wards 1, 2, and 4 were up

for election in 2015, residents of Ward 1 were permitted to

vote in the primary only for a candidate from Ward 1, but

then were permitted to vote for candidates from Wards 1, 2,

and 4 in the general election. Once elected, council members

represent the entire city. See City of Tucson, 229 Ariz. at 179.

Tucson’s voters twice have affirmed their commitment to

the system. They rejected a proposal to change from at-large

to ward-based general elections in 1991 and disapproved a

proposal to change from partisan to non-partisan elections in

1993. Id. at 175.

Analogous election systems can be found in at least two

other states in our circuit. Washington employs a similar

system to elect county commissioners in 32 of its 39 counties

and has done so for nearly a century. See State v. Bd. of

Comm’rs of King Cty., 146 Wash. 449, 463 (1928), overruled

on other grounds by Lopp v. Peninsula Sch. Dist. No. 401,

90 Wash. 2d 754 (1978) (en banc); Wash. Rev. Code

§§ 36.32.040, 36.32.050, 36.32.0556. Several Washington

cities, school districts, and special purpose districts also use

similar hybrid election systems. See Wash. Rev. Code

8 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

§ 35.18.020 (cities); § 28A.343.660 (school districts);

§ 53.12.010 (port districts); § 54.12.010 (public utility

districts); 52.14.013 (fire protection districts); § 57.12.039

(water-sewer districts). In Nevada, at least two cities, Sparks

and Reno, conduct “hybrid,” albeit nonpartisan, city council

elections, with the primary election by ward and the general

election city-wide. See Reno City Charter, Art. V, §§ 5.010,

5.020; Sparks City Charter, Art. V, §§ 5.010, 5.020.

II.

Public Integrity Alliance alleges that Tucson’s hybrid

system runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the

Fourteenth Amendment1 because it violates the “one person,

one vote” principle, relying mainly for their analysis on Gray

v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 380–81 (1963). The core of their

argument is that Tucson voters currently are denied the right

to participate in primary elections for all but one of their

representatives on the city council. Because city council

members represent Tucson as a whole, Public Integrity

Alliance contends either (1) every Tucson voter must be

permitted to vote in each ward’s primary, or (2) Tucson must

switch to a purely ward-based system, in which voters for

both the primary and general elections for a given council

seat are limited to voting for the representative from their

own ward and have no voice in selecting candidates from

other wards. In other words, Public Integrity Alliance’s

1

Public Integrity Alliance’s complaint also alleged that Tucson’s system

violates the Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause and the Free and

Equal Elections Clause of the Arizona Constitution. Ariz. Const. art. II,

§§ 13, 21. Because these state-law claims were not developed in the

appellate briefing, we consider them abandoned. See Greenwood v.

F.A.A., 28 F.3d 971, 977 (9th Cir. 1994).

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 9

position is that an entirely ward-based or entirely at-large

system of voting would be permissible, but the combination

of the ward-based primary and at-large general is

constitutionally fatal.

Public Integrity Alliance filed a complaint in federal

district court seeking to enjoin the operation of Tucson’s

hybrid system and secure a declaration that the scheme is

unconstitutional. The district court held Tucson’s system

constitutional and so denied Public Integrity Alliance’s

request for relief.

A divided three-judge panel of this court reversed,

holding that by denying out-of-ward voters the ability to vote

in the primary elections of other wards, the hybrid system

violates the one person, one vote guarantee embedded in the

Equal Protection Clause. Pub. Integrity All., Inc. v. City of

Tucson, 805 F.3d 876, 883 (9th Cir. 2015). We took the case

en banc and now affirm the district court. Tucson’s hybrid

voting system for its city council elections does not violate

the Equal Protection Clause.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

“[T]he Constitution grants to the States a broad power to

prescribe the ‘Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections

for Senators and Representatives,’ Art. I, § 4, cl. 1, which

power is matched by state control over the election process

for state offices.” Tashjian v. Republican Party of Conn.,

479 U.S. 208, 217 (1986). “This power is not absolute,”

however. Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State Republican

Party, 552 U.S. 442, 451 (2008). “[V]oting is of the most

fundamental significance under our constitutional structure,”

Ill. State Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U.S.

10 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

173, 184 (1979), and state and local government election laws

that violate the Constitution are impermissible. See Wash.

State Grange, 552 U.S. at 451; Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S.

814, 818 (1969).

The Supreme Court delineated the appropriate standard of

review for laws regulating the right to vote in Burdick v.

Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992). Burdick recognized that

governments necessarily “must play an active role in

structuring elections,” and “[e]lection laws will invariably

impose some burden upon individual voters.” Id. at 433.

Consequently, not every voting regulation is subject to strict

scrutiny. Id.

Instead, . . . a more flexible standard applies.

A court considering a challenge to a state

election law must weigh “the character and

magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights

protected by the First and Fourteenth

Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to

vindicate” against “the precise interests put

forward by the State as justifications for the

burden imposed by its rule,” taking into

consideration “the extent to which those

interests make it necessary to burden the

plaintiff’s rights.”

Id. at 434 (quoting Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 789

(1983)).

Under Burdick’s balancing and means-end fit framework,

strict scrutiny is appropriate when First or Fourteenth

Amendment rights “are subjected to ‘severe’ restrictions.” Id.

(quoting Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S. 279, 289 (1992)). “But

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 11

when a state election law provision imposes only ‘reasonable,

nondiscriminatory restrictions’ upon the First and Fourteenth

Amendment rights of voters, ‘the State’s important regulatory

interests are generally sufficient to justify’ the restrictions.”

Id. (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 788).

Applying these precepts, “[w]e have repeatedly upheld as

‘not severe’ restrictions that are generally applicable, even-

handed, politically neutral, and protect the reliability and

integrity of the election process.” Dudum v. Arntz, 640 F.3d

1098, 1106 (9th Cir. 2011) (citation and alterations omitted).2

Our “respect for governmental choices in running elections

2

Restrictions that block access to the ballot or impede individual voters

or subgroups of voters in exercising their right to vote receive different

treatment from rules establishing an overall, generally applicable electoral

system. Controversies concerning laws allegedly designed to impede

voting are not a historical artifact. See, e.g., Brennan Center for Justice,

Voting Restrictions in Place for 2016 Presidential Election (last updated

Aug. 10, 2016), http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysi

s/New_Restrictions_2016.pdf; U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, GAO-

14634, Elections: Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws 44–56

(2014), http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665966.pdf. Under Burdick, courts

are to assess the “character and magnitude” of the asserted burden, the

proven strength of the state’s interest, and whether the extent of the burden

is “necessary” given the strength of that interest, so as to ferret out and

reject unconstitutional restrictions. 504 U.S. at 434. Recently, in Crawford

v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008), a majority of the

Supreme Court agreed that in so doing, courts may consider not only a

given law’s impact on the electorate in general, but also its impact on

subgroups, for whom the burden, when considered in context, may be

more severe. Id. at 199–203 (plurality opinion) (recognizing that a voter

identification law may have disproportionately burdened certain persons,

but holding that petitioners’ evidence was insufficient to permit the Court

to quantify the burden imposed on the subgroup); id. at 212–17 (Souter,

J., dissenting) (disagreeing as to the sufficiency of evidence in the record

regarding the burden imposed on subgroups of voters).

12 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

has particular force where, as here, the challenge is to an

electoral system, as opposed to a discrete election rule.” Id. at

1114.

Despite Burdick, the City of Tucson asks that we apply

traditional rational basis review, rather than a balancing and

means-end fit analysis. Public Integrity Alliance agreed at

oral argument that if we rejected its position that primary and

general elections must involve identical electorates,

traditional rational basis was the appropriate standard of

review.

Our case law has not always accurately described the

Burdick test. In Libertarian Party of Washington v. Munro,

31 F.3d 759 (9th Cir. 1994), we stated that where plaintiffs

can demonstrate only a “slight” or “de minimis” impairment

of their rights, they bear “the burden of demonstrating that the

regulations they attack have no legitimate rational basis.” Id.

at 763. But Burdick calls for neither rational basis review nor

burden shifting. See Ariz. Libertarian Party v. Reagan,

798 F.3d 723, 732 n.12 (9th Cir. 2015) (noting the “tension”

between Munro and Burdick); id. at 734–36 (McKeown, J.,

concurring) (same). To the extent Munro prescribed a

different standard from the one articulated by the Supreme

Court in Burdick, it is now overruled.

DISCUSSION

I.

Public Integrity Alliance argues that Tucson’s hybrid

system severely burdens the Fourteenth Amendment by

denying Tucson voters the right to vote in the primary

elections for five out of six of their representatives on the city

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 13

council. Central to Public Integrity Alliance’s articulation of

the alleged burden is their interpretation of Gray v. Sanders.

According to Public Integrity Alliance, the case before us

“is controlled by a single, simple maxim of equal protection”

from Gray: “Once the geographical unit for which a

representative is to be chosen is designated, all who

participate in the election are to have an equal vote . . .

wherever their home may be in that geographical unit.” Gray,

372 U.S. at 379. Public Integrity Alliance interprets this

language as a requirement that primary and general elections

use identical geographical units. Because members of the city

council represent the entire city, Public Integrity Alliance

reasons, the relevant “geographical unit” is the city as a

whole. So, Public Integrity Alliance maintains, Tucson cannot

constitutionally designate individual wards as the

geographical units for the primary elections and limit

participation in a given ward’s primary election to that ward’s

residents, and then designate the whole city as the

geographical unit for the general election.

Gray establishes no such principle. A vote dilution case,

Gray involved a challenge to Georgia’s system of primary

elections for statewide officers, a system wholly different

from Tucson’s hybrid system of primary and general

elections. Instead of counting individual votes, Georgia

employed a “county unit system.” 372 U.S. at 370–71.

Candidates who received the most votes in a county were

considered to have won the county primary and, with respect

to the statewide primary, were awarded “county units” in

proportion to the number of representatives the county had in

Georgia’s lower legislative body. Id. at 371. Georgia’s

primary election system was thus similar to the electoral

college used to elect our President, with counties’

14 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

representation substituted for the state representation in the

electoral college. The county units were not proportionate to

the county population, giving residents in one county

dramatically more influence in the nomination of candidates

than residents in another county. Id.

Gray held Georgia’s county unit system violative of the

one person, one vote principle, because it diluted the voting

power of certain voters based only on where they happened

to live. Id. at 379–80.3 But Gray concerned only the primary

election, not a comparison of the geographical units used in

the primary and general elections. Gray therefore did not hold

that the same geographical unit must apply to both primary

and general elections; no issue regarding the relationship

between the voting basis in the primary and in the general

election was before the Court. And Gray has never been cited

for the proposition Public Integrity Alliance puts forward.

Instead, Gray has uniformly been construed as an unequal

vote weighting case for a single election stage. See Williams

v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 52 n.5 (1968) (Stewart J., dissenting)

(Gray “sustained the right of a voter to cast a ballot whose

numerical weight is the equal of that of any other vote cast

within the jurisdiction in question.”); Fortson v. Morris,

385 U.S. 231, 235 (1966) (“The Gray case . . . did no more

than to require the State to eliminate the county-unit

machinery from its election system.”); Lucas v. Forty-Fourth

Gen. Assembly, 377 U.S. 713, 744 (1964) (Stewart, J.,

dissenting) (noting that Gray was irrelevant to a case

3

The Supreme Court later clarified that the unit system violated equal

protection not only because it diluted votes, but because aggregating

county units rather than individual votes meant that votes for losing

candidates were effectively discarded, solely because of the voter’s county

residence. See Gordon v. Lance, 403 U.S. 1, 4–5 (1971).

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 15

“hav[ing] nothing to do with the ‘weighting’ or ‘diluting’ of

votes cast within any electoral unit”). We decline to take a

single sentence in a decades-old vote dilution case concerning

a single stage of an election, read it without regard to the

issue before the Court in that case, and transform it into a new

voting rights principle requiring a two-stage election to cover

the same geographical base at each stage.

Indisputably, primary elections are state action subject to

the same constitutional constraints as general elections. See

Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, 661–62 (1944); United

States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 318–19 (1941). And

primaries and general elections have an obvious and strong

interconnection; that relationship is why the Supreme Court

has described them as “a single instrumentality for choice of

officers.” Allwright, 321 U.S. at 660. But the recognition that

primaries are of great significance to the ultimate choice in a

general election and thus directly implicate the right to vote

does not mean that primaries and general elections must be

identically structured and administered.

In fact, that contention is belied by decades of

jurisprudence permitting voting restrictions in primary

elections that would be unconstitutional in the general

election. See, e.g., Clingman v. Beaver, 544 U.S. 581, 584

(2005) (permitting a semiclosed primary, in which only

people who are registered as party members or independents

may vote in a party’s primary); Am. Party of Tex. v. White,

415 U.S. 767, 786 (1974) (providing that states may establish

waiting periods before voters may be permitted to change

their registration and vote in another party’s primary); Ziskis

v. Symington, 47 F.3d 1004, 1004–05 (9th Cir. 1995) (holding

that a law requiring participants in primaries be registered

with a political party did not violate the challenger’s

16 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

Fourteenth Amendment right to vote). These voting

restrictions are constitutionally permissible in primaries

because primaries serve a different function than general

elections: A primary determines which candidates will

compete in the general election, a critical stage and one fully

subject in its own right to constitutional scrutiny under

Burdick, but a stage as to which the legitimate state interests

are not identical with those pertinent to the general election,

as the partisan primary cases illustrate.

II.

Having concluded that Gray does not require that the

primary and general elections use identical geographical

units, we now apply the Burdick balancing approach,

assessing first the burden imposed on Tucson voters by its

hybrid system.

All voters in Tucson have an equal right to vote, both

during the primary election and during the general election.

Each voter may vote for the candidate of her choice in her

ward’s primary election. No one may vote in another ward’s

primary. And each voter may vote in the general election for

one candidate from each ward with a council member

position on the ballot.

That the city council elections are staggered is immaterial

to the vote denial claim at issue, as Public Integrity Alliance

admits in its opening brief. Although half of Tucson’s

residents are unable to vote in a primary in a given election

year, that burden quickly evens out over time, as the other

half of Tucson’s residents will not be able to vote in a

primary in the next election year. Ultimately, every voter has

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 17

an equal opportunity to vote in their own ward’s primary

every four years and in the general election every two years.

As is constitutionally required, then, every voter in

Tucson has the same voting power as every other voter in the

primary and general city council elections. See San Antonio

Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 35 n.78 (1973)

(noting that the constitution protects the right “to participate

in state elections on an equal basis with other qualified voters

whenever the State has adopted an elective process for

determining who will represent any segment of the State’s

population”). There is no unequal weighting of votes, no

discrimination among voters, and no obstruction or

impediment to voting. See Holshouser v. Scott, 335 F. Supp.

928, 933 (M.D.N.C. 1971) (rejecting, in the context of

judicial elections, a challenge to a state law providing that

judges should be nominated from their respective districts

and elected by statewide vote in a general election); Stokes v.

Fortson, 234 F. Supp. 575, 578 (N.D. Ga. 1964) (per curiam)

(same). The burden on Public Integrity Alliance’s Fourteenth

Amendment rights is far from severe. If a burden exists at all,

which we doubt, it is at best very minimal.4

As to the governmental interest justifying whatever

minimal burden may exist, Tucson has asserted that the

hybrid system serves to promote local knowledge and

legitimacy, geographic diversity, and city-wide representation

on the city council:

4

We note that no geographically based vote dilution allegation is before

us on appeal, nor has minority or other subgroup vote dilution been

alleged.

18 PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON

Having nominations through primary

elections in each ward, using separate ballots

for each party, allows the party electorates in

each of those wards to make their own choice

of a nominee, and simultaneously acts as a

guarantee for the City electorate as a whole

that each ward’s nominee actually has support

among the party members within that ward.

Moreover, since nominees compete in the

general election only against other candidates

nominated in the same ward, . . . ward

nominations also help assure that each ward

has a local representative on the council, and,

conversely, that the Mayor and Council has

members who are aware of each ward’s

issues, problems, and views.

There is no question that Tucson’s interests are important.

The Supreme Court has approved requirements that a city

council candidate elected at-large reside in the district with

which her seat is affiliated. See Dallas County v. Reese,

421 U.S. 477, 481 (1975) (per curiam) (upholding an election

regime providing for countywide balloting for county

commission members but requiring that one member reside

in and be elected from each district); Dusch v. Davis,

387 U.S. 112, 117 (1967) (same). Candidate-residency

requirements promote a similar interest to the one Tucson has

articulated: ensuring local representation by and geographic

diversity among elected officials. By holding ward-based

primaries in addition to maintaining a candidate-residency

requirement, Tucson is working to ensure that the candidates

nominated in a given ward actually have the support of a

majority of their party’s voters in that ward, a conclusion that

PUBLIC INTEGRITY ALLIANCE V. CITY OF TUCSON 19

may not always follow from a candidate-residency

requirement alone.

Tucson’s hybrid system represents a careful, longstanding

choice, twice affirmed by voters, as to how best to achieve a

city council with members who represent Tucson as a whole

but reflect and understand all of the city’s wards. It is, in

other words, the product of our democratic federalism, a

system that permits states to serve “as laboratories for

experimentation to devise various solutions where the best

solution is far from clear.” Ariz. State Legislature v. Ariz.

Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, 135 S. Ct. 2652, 2673 (2015)

(quoting United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 581 (1995)

(Kennedy, J., concurring)).

CONCLUSION

Tucson’s hybrid system for electing members of its city

council imposes no constitutionally significant burden on

voters’ rights to vote. And Tucson has advanced a valid,

sufficiently important interest to justify its choice of electoral

system. On the facts alleged herein, the system does not

violate the Equal Protection Clause’s one person, one vote

commitment.

AFFIRMED.