# Amicus Curiae Brief — City of Gretna v. Citizens for a Better Gretna

> Briefs, arguments, decisions, and more.

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/brief%3Amicro_IA40385002_0249%3A4

## Record

- **Collection:** Supreme Court brief
- **Document type:** Amicus Curiae Brief
- **Published:** January 1, 1989
- **Citation:** 492 U.S. 905

## Text

oo

Supreme Court, U.S.
(..) FILED

No. 88-597 ~~” JUN 5 1989

|
TEE TN “|

CLERK

In the Supreme Court of the Unitedrsstgtes —

OCTOBER TERM, 1988

CiTY OF GRETNA LOUISIANA, ET AL., PETITIONERS
v.

CITIZENS FoR A BETTER GRETNA, ET AL.

ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI
TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

BRIEF FOR THE UNITED STATES AS AMICUS CURIAE

KENNETH W. STARR

Solicitor General
JAMES P. TURNER

Acting Assistant Attorney General
THOMAS W. MERRILL

Deputy Solicitor General
CHRISTOPHER J. WRIGHT

Assistant to the Solicitor General
JESSICA DUNSAY SILVER
MIRIAM R. EISENSTEIN

Attorneys

Department of Justice
Washington, D.C. 20530
(202) 633-2217

QUESTION PRESENTED

Whether, in this vote dilution case brought under Sec-
tion 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 1973, the
district court properly prohibited the practice of filling all
positions on the Board of Aldermen of the City of Gretna,
Louisiana, through at-large elections, where the evidence
showed that black candidates supported by substantial
numbers of black voters received almost no votes from
white voters and hence could not be elected to the Board
under the at-large system.

(1)

FABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
Statement ........ Da ih aay as Sy ere ae l
Discussion ...
I cd mae 6a ; 16
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Cases:
City of Carrollton Branch of the NAACP vy. Stallings,
829 F.2d 1547 (11th Cir. 1987), cert. denied, 108 S. Ct.
I Rr i Sas aD as ge i-3 Rens 14
Smith v. Clinton, 687 F. Supp. 1310 (E.D. Ark.), aff'd
Sooke 2) ae Bere et 14
Solomon v. Liberty County, 865 F.2d 1566 (11th Cir.
ty i Ra Sin el a na a eee 14
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986) ........0......5, 6, 7,

Statutes:

Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. 1971 ef seq.:

> ea EOS ok Na 2, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14
§ 2(b), 42 U.S.C. 1973(b) 2
§ 5, 42 U.S.C. 1973c ; a 6

La. Rev. Stat. Ann. (West 1979 & Supp. 1989):
8 SEN Pea ee Fe ek ee 2
B, SB

Miscellaneous:
H. Blalock, Social Statistics (Rev. 2d ed. 1979) 1]

(111)

Jn the Supreme Court of the Anited States

OCTOBER TERM, 1988

No. 88-597
City OF GRETNA LOUISIANA, ET AL., PETITIONERS
Vv.

CITIZENS FoR A BETTER GRETNA, ET AL.

ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI
. TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

BRIEF FOR THE UNITED STATES AS AMICUS CURIAE

This brief is submitted in response to the Court’s invita-
tion to the Solicitor General to express the views of the
United States.

STATEMENT

1. The City of Gretna, located in Jefferson Parish,
Louisiana, has a population of 20,615. Pet. App. A4l.
Approximately one quarter of the voting age population 1s
black. PX 56, at 12. Before the district court’s decision in
this case, Gretna was governed by a five-member Board of
Aldermen who were elected at-large. It was the largest city
in the State to use an at-large system. /d. at A41. Voters
could vote for five candidates in an election for the Board.
“Single-shot” or “bullet” voting (/.e., voting for fewer than
five candidates) also was permitted. /d. at A42 n.27. To be
elected, candidates had to obtain a “majority” under La.
Rev. Stat. Ann. § 18:511 (West 1979 & Supp. 1989). Pet.

(1)

tt

App. A41-A42.' No black person was ever elected to the
Board of Aldermen under this system since Gretna’s incor-
poration in 1913. /d. at A34.

The plaintiffs, eleven black voters in Gretna, challenged
the at-large system of electing the Board of Aldermen.
They alleged that it effectively denied blacks the oppor-
tunity to elect their own representatives to the Board even
though blacks comprise a significant portion of the total
population of the City, in violation, inter alia, of Section 2
of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. 1973. Section
2(b) provides that the Act is violated where members of
racial minorities “have less opportunity than other
members of the electorate * * * to elect representatives of
their choice.”

2. After trial, the district court ruled that Gretna’s at-
large system of electing the Board of Aldermen violates
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The court found that,
since 1877, the white majority in Louisiana has resisted at-
tempts by blacks to participate in the political process.
Pet. App. A25-A26. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Jefferson
Parish registrar of voters required blacks, but not whites,
“to state their age exactly in terms of number of years,
months, and days, and to recite the preamble to the United
States Constitution in order to register to vote.” /d.at

' Respondents’ expert explained that a “majority” was calculated by
taking the entire number of votes cast in an election, dividing by five
(the number of seats), and then dividing by two and adding one. If
fewer than five candidates received a majority (as was especially likely
if there were a large number of serious candidates), those who ob-
tained a majority were declared elected and a runoff election was held
in which no more than twice the number of candidates as there were
untilled positions could compete (see La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 18:482
(West 1979). If more than five candidates received a majority (as was
especially likely if there were few serious candidates), the five with the
most votes won. I] Tr. 77-78.

A26. “Schools in Jefferson Parish remained segregated
until 1971,” after which they were desegregated pursuant
to a federal court order. /d. at A27. With respect to hous-
ing, the court found that “[v]irtually all residential neigh-
borhoods are racially identifiable.” Jd. at A29.

The court further found that, while “blacks are
registered to vote at a rate equivalent to white residents of
Gretna,” their turnout rate is substantially lower than that
of white voters. Pet. App. A30. It suggested that blacks
may believe that participation in local elections is futile
because, for many years, there has been an informal
slating process for city offices in Gretna from which
blacks have been excluded. Jd. at A31 & n.12. The slating
process has been dominated by the chief of police and the
mayor, whose supporters are known as “the Miller-White
faction.”? The candidates that the Miller-White faction
endorses consistently win seats on the Board of Aldermen.
Id. at A38-A41.

Only two blacks have ever run for city office in Gretna,
Edwin Romain and Leo Jones. Both ran for alder-
man — Romain in 1973, and Jones in 1977 and 1979. Pet.
App. A33. Romain sought the endorsement of several of
the incumbent aldermen in 1973, but was told to talk to
Chief of Police Miller. Miller, in turn, told him “that he
could not be on the slate, that he was not needed to get the
black vote.” Jd. at A40. Romain was the only non-
incumbent candidate in 1973 who was not invited to a
meeting held for the purpose of selecting candidates for
the Miller-White faction to endorse for the two seats on
the Board that were being vacated by incumbents. Two

? Beauregard Miller, Sr., was chief of police from 1925 until 1976,
when he was succeeded by his son, Beauregard, Jr. William White was
the mayor of Gretna from 1951 until recenily. Pet. App. A38.

Eee

4

candidates were endorsed by the Miller-White faction
following the meeting, and they were elected. Jd. at
A39-A40.

Romain was supported by the Westside Citizens Com-
mittee, a black political organization. Pet. App. A40.3 He
campaigned in both the black and white communities. Ro-
main, “a light-skinned black” (id. at A56), testified that
many of the voters did not initially know that he was
biack. In the first round, he finished sixth in a field of 17
candidates. Between the first round and the runoff, a
newspaper article noted that Romain might become the
City’s first black alderman. Jd. at A56-A57. “The evidence
Suggests,” the district court found, that the revelation that
Romain is black “had severe consequences.” Jd. at A56. In
the runoff election, Romain finished last in all but the two
most heavily black precincts (where he came in first and
second), and last in the total vote. Jd. at AS6-A57.

Leo Jones ran for one of five open seats in 1977, and for
a single open seat in the 1979 special election. Unlike the
1973 election, data was available for the 1977 and 1979
elections with respect to turnout by race and precinct. The
district court found ihat both of those races manifested
high degrees of racially polarized voting. Respondents’ ex-
pert calculated that, in 1977, Jones won approximately 67
percent of the black vote and, in 1979, 66 percent, but only
12 percent and one percent of the white vote in the same
elections. Pet. App. A46.4 The court concluded that the

’ The record retlects that the Westside Citizens Committee general-
ly supported the Miller-White ticket. It made an exception and sup-
»orted Romain in 1973, but it did not support Leo Jones either time he
I PP

ran. | Tr. 168; INI] Tr. 33, 46, 48-54.

* Respondents’ expert performed bivariate regression analyses of
the election returns in the 1977 and 1979 elections, a statistical analysis
that seeks to determine whether there is a direct and close relationship
between race and voting behavior. The regression analyses showed

4)

results in the 1977 and 1979 elections showed a high degree
of racial polarization. /d. at A51.

Because there were so few races in which blacks had run
for office in Gretna, the court also considered how
Gretna’s electorate had voted in two other races involving
black candidates, and found extreme polarization in those
races as well. In 1979, Ben Jeffers ran for Louisiana
Secretary of State, and won about 70 percent of the black
vote in Gretna but only about eight percent of the white
vote. Pet. App. A46. Similarly, in Jesse Jackson’s run in
the 1984 Democratic presidential primary, he obtained 95
percent of the black vote in Gretna, but only two percent
of the white vote. /bid. Two other blacks had run in
statewide elections for which data was available and drew
littke support from either blacks or whites. The court
noted, however, that one of those candidates was a “fringe
candidate,” while the other withdrew before the election
was held. Jd. at A46-A47 n.31.

After reviewing the factors set forth in the Senate
Report on the 1982 amendment of Section 2, the district
court noted that “racially polarized voting will ordinarily
that in both the 1977 and 1979 elections there was a very high correla-
tion between the number of blacks in a precinct and the percentage ol
the votes for Jones. Pet. App. ASO. The expert calculated the percent
age of the blacks who voted for Jones by estimating, based on the ex
isting data, what the vote would be in a hypothetical precinct that was
100 percent black. See Pet. App. ASI n.33; Il Tr. 87-95.

An extreme case analysis corroborated the regression analysis
lhree of Gretna’s precincts have fewer than ten black voters. Analysis
of the vote in these homogeneously white precincts showed that vit
tually no one in those precincts voted for Jones. Pet. App. A45, AS2
Gretna has no homogenous black precincts.

These two techniques —bivariate regression analysis and extreme

case analysis—were also used by the plaintiffs in Thornburg v
Gineles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), and provided the basis for the tinding ot
a Section 2 violation that was affirmed by this Court

be the keystone of a dilution case.” Pet. App. A62. Given
its findings of fact, the district court then concluded that
the use of the at-large system should be prohibited under
Section 2. Pet. App. A67. The court ordered the defend-
ants to propose a new election plan, and subsequently
authorized elections in which four aldermen are elected
trom single-member districts, and one is elected at-large.
Id. at Al7 n.20.° Leo Jones was elected to represent a
predominantly black district in the first election held
under that system. Br. in Opp. 20 n.4.

3. The court of appeals affirmed. Pet. App. Al-Al7.
From the language of the statute and this Court’s decision
in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), the court of
appeals concluded that “[a]t the heart of a § 2 vote dilu-
tion claim lies the issue of whether minorities have an
equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.” Pet.
App. A3. “Racial bloc voting,” the court further con-
cluded, “is the linchpin of a § 2 vote dilution claim.” Jd. at
A7. The court of appeals held that the district court had
not erred in finding strong evidence of racial bloc voting.
Id. at Al7.

Petitioners attacked the district court’s findings by
offering a factual argument based upon calculations not
presented to the disirict court that were set forth for the
first time in a lengthy appendix to their brief in the court
of appeals. Petitioners urged that the district court had
erred in finding that blacks could not elect candidates of
their choice because, they argued, Jones never was the
black voters’ preferred candidate. On the contrary, they
claimed, he received only 49 percent of the votes of black
voters in 1979, and, in 1977, two white candidates out-
polled him among blacks. They further argued (Pet. C.A.

> This plan was precleared by the Attorney General under Section 5
of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 1973c.

Br. 30) that in 1981, when none of the candidates was
black, four of the five winners received biracial support
and only one was elected without substantial black sup-
port. See Pet. App. Al2.

The court of appeals first held, contrary to petitioners’
new factual allegations, that the district court's findings
were not clearly erroneous. Pet. App. A7. In addition, the
court concluded that even if petitioners’ new factual
allegations were correct, that would not undermine the
district court’s finding of racial bloc voting. If Jones had
obtained 49 percent of the black vote in the 1979 special
election rather than the 66 percent the plaintiffs claimed,
the court explained, that would still be a sufficiently
significant proportion of the black vote to qualify Jones as
the preferred candidate of the black voters. Jd. at Al12.
The court noted that, according to petitioners’ new
analysis, no white candidate in the eight-way race for one
seat received more than 15 percent of the black vote. Thus,
even under petitioners’ figures Jones received three times
more support among black voters than any other can-
didate. In addition, according to petitioners’ new figures,
Jones received only 1.5 percent of the white vote. /d. at
Al2 n.12.

As for the 1977 and 1981 elections, the court of appeals
concluded that since five seats were at issue and there was
only one black candidate in 1977 and none in 1981, “it was
virtually unavoidable that certain white candidates would
be supported by a large percentage of Gretna’s black
voters.” Pet. App. Al3. More significant, the court found,
was that the black candidate lost in 1977, even though he
received 67 percent of the black vote, because very few
whites voted for him. /bid. Moreover, the court held, it
was proper for the district court to focus, in its analysis of
racially polarized voting, upon those elections in which
there was a black candidate. Jd. at Al5-A17. The court
noted that in Gingles this Court upheld a finding of racial

bloc voting based on analysis of elections in which blacks
ran for office. Jd. at Al7.

Finally, the court of appeals addressed petitioner’s claim
that the district court erred in considering the non-
aldermanic elections involving Jeffers and Jackson. The
court held that, while such so-called “exogenous” elections
could not, alone, make a case of racial bloc voting as to
elections for Gretna’s Board of Aldermen, “the district
court properly considered them as additional evidence of
bloc voting—particularly in light of the sparsity of
available data.” Pet. App. Al3.

DISCUSSION

This case involves a straightforward application of Sec-
tion 2 of the Voting Rights Act and this Court’s decision in
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986). The courts
below correctly applied established law to the facts o1 the
case, and there is no conflict between the decision below
and the decision of any other court of appeals. Petitioners’
arguments —that the courts erred in finding Leo Jones to
be the blacks’ preferred candidate and by considering the
elections in which Ben Jeffers ran for statewide office and
Jesse Jackson ran for president —are based principally on
factual allegations that were never brought to the attention

© In Gingles, this Court held that there are three preconditions to a
finding that a multimember electoral district operates to impair
minority voters’ ability to elect representatives of their choice: “First,
the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently
large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-
member district. * * * Second, the minority group must be able to
show that it is politically cohesive. * * * Third, the minority must be
able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc
to enable it —in the absence of special circumstances * * * —usually to
defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” 478 U.S. at 50-51.

of the district court and were not accepted by the court of
appeals. Accordingly, further review is not warranted.

1. The district court found racially polarized bloc
voting on the basis of five elections, including three elec-
tions for the Board of Aldermen. The district court

analyzed each of those three cases (1973, 1977, 1979) in
detail, and found that black candidates Romain and
Jones, who received a substantial proportion of the vote
among blacks, were defeated by whites voting as a bloc.
The court of appeals concluded that the district court’s
findings were not clearly erroneous. That evidence is suffi-
cient to meet the requirement of Ging/es that “the minority
must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes
sufficiently as a bloc to enable it —in the absence of special
circumstances * * *—usually to defeat the minority’s pre-
ferred candidate.” 478 U.S. at 51. Indeed, the evidence
showed that whites never supported a black candidate for
the Board of Aldermen— Romain finished last in all but
the two most heavily black precincts in 1973 after the
newspaper pointed out that he was black, and Jones
received 12 percent and one percent of the white vote in
1977 and 1979—although they received substantial sup-
port from black voters.’

Ignoring the findings of the two courts below, peti-
tioners present the case as if it were devoid of any elections
in which whites, voting as a bloc, defeated the blacks’ pre-
ferred candidate. Specifically, petitioners contend (see,
e.g., Pet. 21) that the courts below misconstrued Section 2
to protect black candidates, as such, regardless of whether
they are the preferred candidates of black voters. Were

’ Petitioners raise no challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence of
vote dilution by offering nonracial “explanations of the reasons why
white voters rejected minority candidates.” Gingles, 478 U.S. at 100
(opinion of O’Connor, J.); see also id. at 83 (opinion of White, J.).

10

this the case we would agree that there had been error,
since the Voting Rights Act is aimed at protecting minority
voters rather than minority candidates. But no such ques-
tion is in fact presented because petitioners’ allegations are
not consistent with the facts found below and are unsup-
ported by the record.

The centerpiece of petitioners’ argument is their claim
that Leo Jones was never the preferred candidate of the
black community and that, therefore, the 1977 and 1979
elections are not examples of racially polarized bloc
voting. Petitioners do not dispute that Jones received vir-
tually no support among white voters. They deny,
however, that blacks supported Jones in sufficient
numbers to support the finding of racially polarized
voting. But the district court’s contrary findings, which are
subject to review under the clearly erroneous standard
(Gingles, 478 U.S. at 79), are plainly correct.

The district court found that Jones had received about
67 percent of the black vote in 1977 (Pet. App. A46), and
petitioners do not question that finding. The district court
made no finding below regarding the proportion of black
votes received by any white candidate, and the court of ap-
peals declined to make its own finding on the basis of
allegations made for the first time on appeal. /d. at Al0.
Petitioners nevertheless contend that Jones was not the
preferred candidate of black voters in 1977 because, ac-
cording to petitioners, two of the white candidates who
won seats in that same election also received a ma-
jority —indeed, a large majority —of the black vote.*

’ Petitioners cite to nothing but their own brief in the court of ap-
peals for the proposition that two white aldermanic candidates out-
polled Jones among blacks in 1977. Pet. 10. To estimate the percent-
age of the black voters who voted for white candidates Le Boeuf and
Bush, petitioners performed the same kind of regression analysis that

11

The court of appeals correctly found that factual allega-
tion unavailing. Assuming that some of the white can-
didates in the 1977 election won with black support, that
does not vitiate the fact that the black candidate lost
because of racially polarized voting. As the court of ap-
peals explained: “Gingles detines bloc voting as white ma-
jority bloc voting that defeats minority preferred can-
didates. * * * In a multiple seat election such as Gretna’s
aldermanic race, the minority necessarily will have more
than one preferred candidate. In the Gretna elections
studied, blacks exercised their right to vote to fill all at-
large positions, but only one available candidate was
black. Thus, it was virtually unavoidable that certain
white candidates would be supported by a large percentage
of Gretna’s black voters. Significance lies in the fact that
the black candidate preferred by the minority was defeated
by white bloc voting. That blacks also support white can-
didates acceptable to the majority does not negate in-
stances in which white votes defeat a black preference.”
Pet. App. Al3. Thus, the 1977 election shows that while
blacks in Gretna supported some white candidates, whites
in Gretna refused then (and every other time a black ran)
to support a black candidate who was widely supported by
black voters. As the court below stated, that is evidence of
racial bloc voting.

In the 1979 special election for a single seat on the Board
of Aldermen, the district court found that Jones received

respondents’ expert had done with respect to Jones. As the scat-
tergram in the appendix to their court of appeals brief (at A22) shows,
however, there was almost no correlation between the percentage of
black voters in a precinct and the vote for LeBoeuf or Bush. While it is
theoretically possible to extrapolate to an intercept and estimate the
percentage of blacks who voted for the white candidates in that cir-
cumstance, the result is unreliable. See H. Blalock, Social Statistics
396-397 (Rev. 2d ed. 1979).

12

about 66 percent of the vote among blacks but was again
defeated because he received virtually no votes from
whites. Once more, petitioners do not contend that Jones
received the support of white voters, but they maintain
that he was not the blacks’ preferred candidate because he
actually received only 49 percent of the votes of blacks
who voted. The court of appeals did not overturn the
district court’s finding that Jones received 66 percent of
the black vote, which is the correct figure.? In any event,
even if Jones had received “only” 49 percent of the black
vote in the eight-way race for one seat in 1979, he was
plainly the heavy favorite of the black voters. By peti-
tioners’ Own estimates, Jones received far more support
among blacks than did any other candidate; the white can-
didate receiving the next highest proportion of the black
vote (Weigel) received only 15 percent. Pet. App. Al2
n.iZ.

% Petitioners estimated the percentage of blacks who voted for
Jones in 1979 by performing a bivariate regression analysis. They
used, as One variable, the percentage of voters who voted for Jones in
each precinct, just as the respondents had—but using different
figures. See Appendix to Appellants’ Brief in the Court of Appeals
A6. For example, in Precinct 1-3, 620 persons turned out to vote
((bid.), but only 547 of them voted in the election for the Board of
Aldermen. See PX 57. Jones received 234 of the 547 votes cast for
alderman. Petitioners, however, calculated that Jones had won 234
out of 620 votes. Petitioners’ calculation, in other words, credited
Jones with a lower percentage of the total vote than he actually re-
ceived in that (and every other) precinct. Not surprisingly, when peti-
tioners extrapolated from these figures to find the percentage Jones
would have received in an hypothetical all-black precinct, they came
out with a depressed figure of 49 percent. That petitioners’ estimate is
faulty is illustrated by the fact that the sum of the black vote for all
candidates as calculated by their method is only about 86 percent
rather than 100 percent. See Pet. App. Al2 n.12 (sum of “black
preference” column).

13

Thus, the lower courts correctly concluded that the elec-
tions in which Jones ran, together with the evidence re-
garding the candidacies of Romain, Jeffers, and Jackson,
offered sufficient evidence of racial bloc voting to support
a finding of dilution. The lower courts also relied, of
course, On a wide variety of other evidence in concluding
that, under the totality of the circumstances, there was a
Section 2 violation. See Pet. App. A7, Al7, A22-A43,
A55-A58, A64-A67. Petitioners’ contention that the court
of appeals’ decision protects black candidates who are un-
supported by black voters has no basis in either the opin-
ions below or the record.!®

2. There is also no merit in petitioners’ contention that
the district court was obliged to ignore the evidence of
racially polarized bloc voting in the 1984 Democratic
presidential primary and the 1979 election for Louisiana
Secretary of State. To be sure, if blacks had succeeded in
electing their preferred candidates to Gretna’s Board of
Aldermen, there would be no violation of Section 2 here
even if whites voted as a bloc against black candidates for
other offices. There is no reason to conclude, however,
that an election which reflects the racial voting patterns of
the constituency of the jurisdiction at issue—in this case,
the City of Gretna —is irrelevant.'' As the court of appeals

'© Petitioners purport to raise the broader question (see Questions
Presented 6 and 8) whether respondents could prove racial bloc voting
it the record reflected a pattern, in elections having only white can-
didates, of the black-supported candidates winning. Petitioners make
no argument to this effect in the body of their petition. Nor could
they. No evidence was presented to the district court, by either side,
regarding black voting patterns in elections for the Board of Aldermen
other than those in 1973, 1977, and 1979.

'! Petitioners consistently refer to the 1984 Democratic presidential
primary and the 1979 election of Louisiana Secretary of State as “ex-
ovenous” elections. See, e.g., Pet. 20. Contrary to the suggestion that

14

said, while such “elections alone could not prove racially
polarized voting in Gretna aldermanic elections,” they
may be “properly considered * * * as additional evidence
of bloc voting.” Pet. App. Al3. Indeed, such elections
have typically been considered in the analysis of racial bloc
voting in Section 2 cases. See, e.g., Solomon vy. Liberty
County, 865 F.2d 1566, 1575-1576 & n.15 (11th Cir. 1988);
City of Carrollton Branch of the NAACP v. Stallings, 829
F.2d 1547, 1556 (11th Cir. 1987), cert. denied, 108 5. Ct.
1111 (1988); Smith v. Clinton, 687 F. Supp. 1310, 1315
(E.D. Ark.), aff'd, 109 S. Ct. 548 (1988).

Contrary to petitioners’ assertion (Pet. 17-18), there is
no conflict between the lower courts’ analysis of the Jef-
fers and Jackson races and the Eleventh Circuit’s decision
in Carrollton. In that case, the court of appeals held only
that the district court did not err when it omitted two elec-
tions from its analysis of racial bloc voting as atypical.
Specifically, the district court there had not considered a
city election where the constituency was substantially
smaller than the county commission election system under
attack, and a statewide judicial election in which a black
ran as an incumbent and won. 829 F.2d at 1558-1559.
Nothing in the decision in Carrollton is inconsistent with
the court’s decision in the present case to consider other
elections, featuring prominent black candidates, in which
every Gretna precinct participated, and in which there was
a clear pattern of racially polarized bloc voting. Indeed,
the absence of a conflict is shown by the fact that the court
of appeals in Carrellton approved the district court’s con-
sideration of the votes cast for Jackson in that jurisdiction
in the 1984 Democratic primary. /d. at 1556.

“exogenous” implies, voters in Gretna participated in those elections,
and the only figures that were studied concerned how Gretna residents
voted. No votes cast outside Gretna were analyzed.

15

Finally, there is no merit to petitioners’ contradictory
complaint (Pet. 16-17) that the district court erred by not
considering in detail the statewide elections in which black
candidates received little support from anyone. As the
district court explained, one of those candidates withdrew
before the election, so little could be learned from an
analysis of the support that he received on election day
despite his withdrawal. Pet. App. A46-A47 n.31. And in
the case of the other candidate, described by the district
court as a “fringe candidate” (ibid.), it could not be said
that whites voting as a bloc did or did not defeat the choice
of the black voters in the two elections in which he ran,
since he was not the black voters’ choice. The courts below
properly decided that those elections were not relevant to
determining whether “the white majority votes sufficiently
as a bloc to enable it * * * usually to defeat the minority’s
preferred candidate.” Gingles, 478 U.S. at 51. In arguing
that those elections are relevant, petitioners make the very
error they incorrectly accuse respondents of making — con-
fusing candidates who are black with candidates who are
supported by black voters.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/brief%3Amicro_IA40385002_0249%3A4. Public record. Not legal advice.