DEAN BUTCH WILSON, JOHNNY MIDDLEBROOKS, Plaintiffs-Appellees, versus ERSKINE MINOR, PERRY VARNER, ROY MOORE, CURTIS WILLIAMS, KIMBROUGH BALLARD, in their official capacity as Dallas County Commissioners, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Defendants-Appellants.
No. 99-11145
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
August 4, 2000
D. C. Docket No. 96-01052-CV-BH-M
(August 4, 2000)
Before CARNES, BARKETT and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.
MARCUS, Circuit Judge:
I.
The facts underlying this case are reasonably straightforward although the case has had a protracted procedural history. Prior to 1978, the Dallas County Commission was composed of four commissioners elected from at-large residency districts to concurrent four year terms. Dallas County commissioners served, and continue to serve, in a part-time capacity. The Dallas County probate judge acted as the chairperson of the Commission in an ex officio capacity.3
In 1978, the United States challenged the at-large method of electing members to the Dallas County Commission under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended,
To remedy the section 2 violation, the district court ordered the county to adopt an election scheme that created four single-member districts. The district court retained the probate judge, still elected at-large, as the ex officio chairperson of the Commission. See United States v. Dallas County Comm‘n, 661 F. Supp. 955, 958-59 (S.D. Ala. 1987). We again reversed holding that the continued inclusion of the at-large elected probate judge as the ex officio chairperson of the Commission did not fully cure the Commission‘s section 2 violation. See United States v. Dallas County Comm‘n, 850 F.2d 1430, 1432 (11th Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1030, 109 S.Ct. 1768, 104 L.Ed.2d 203 (1989). We ordered Dallas County to adopt a five single-member districting plan for the County Commission with the chairperson of the Commission to be chosen from among the five commissioners. Id. See also United States v. Dallas County Comm‘n, 850 F.2d 1433 (11th Cir. 1988) (describing the Lichtman plan).
The plan established two districts containing black voter majorities of 72.4 percent and 70 percent, two districts containing white voter majorities of 65
The district court conducted a four day bench trial in May 1998. On March 29, 1999, the district court entered judgment for the Plaintiffs. The court held that the 1988 injunction “impermissibly altered the size” of the Dallas County
II.
We review the district court‘s findings of fact for clear error, and we review its conclusions of law de novo. See Dekalb County School District v. Schrenko, 109 F.3d 680, 687 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 117 S.Ct. 79 (1996). The decision to modify an injunction is subject to an abuse of discretion standard, and it is an abuse of discretion to fail to make modifications required by applicable law. See Ensley Branch, NAACP v. Seibels, 31 F.3d 1548, 1563 (11th Cir. 1994); Godfrey v. Bell South Telecomm., Inc., 89 F.3d 755, 757 (11th Cir. 1996).
As an initial matter, the Defendants argue that the district court improperly allowed the Plaintiffs to challenge the 1988 injunction through an independent action rather than requiring them to intervene in the action in which the judgment was entered. The Defendants argue that because the Plaintiffs are trying to amend a judgment issued in a previous case, they should be forced to seek relief from the same court that entered the original judgment. Indeed, as a general matter, intervention pursuant to
While Wilks offers some support for the Plaintiffs’ argument that the district court properly allowed them to bring an independent action challenging the 1988 injunction, we find even more compelling the fact, which both sides recognize, that in this case the Plaintiffs’ collateral attack was for all practical purposes the same as an intervention in the original action. Notably, this independent action arose in the same district court and was heard by the same district judge who handled the original case. Moreover, the parties to the independent action include all of the parties to the original action, including the United States which was named in this case because of its status as a party to the prior proceeding, and the district court took judicial notice of those portions of the original proceedings on which the parties announced an intention to rely. For these reasons, this case does not implicate the potential problems and prejudice that can arise when plaintiffs are permitted to challenge relief entered by one court through a wholly independent action commenced in a different court and before a different judge. In short,
B.
The law relevant to the Plaintiffs’ challenge to the 1988 injunction is by now clear and undisputed. A federal court cannot modify the size of an elected governing body in order to remedy a section 2 violation because there is no principled reason to choose a legislative body of one size over one of a different size for the purposes of determining whether there has been vote dilution. See generally Holder v. Hall, 512 U.S. 874, 114 S.Ct. 2581, 129 L.Ed.2d 687 (1994); White v. Alabama, 74 F.3d 1058 (11th Cir. 1996); Nipper v. Smith, 39 F.3d 1494 (11th Cir. 1994) (en banc), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1083, 115 S.Ct. 1795, 131 L.Ed.2d 723 (1995). In Holder, black voters argued that the size of the county
We have since held twice that Holder limits the remedial powers of the federal courts under section 2 and prohibits district courts from changing the size of a county governing body. In Nipper we rejected a section 2 vote dilution challenge brought by black registered voters and an association of black attorneys to the at-large election system used to elect the judges of Florida‘s Fourth Judicial Circuit Court. The plaintiffs contended that the use of at-large elections diluted black voting strength. They sought the creation of subdistricts that would ensure their ability to elect black judges of their choice. Nipper, 39 F.3d at 1496-97. In rejecting the plaintiffs’ claim for relief, we emphasized that “under Holder, federal courts may not mandate as a section 2 remedy that a state or political subdivision alter the size of its elected bodies. . . . Federal courts may not [] alter the state‘s form of government itself when they cannot identify ‘a principled reason why one [alternative to the model being challenged] should be picked over another as a
Similarly, in White, we vacated the district court‘s approval of a settlement agreement entered into between a class of black voters in Alabama and the State of Alabama which would have increased the size of the Alabama courts of appeals. White, 74 F.3d at 1061. In White, a class composed of all black voters in Alabama argued that the at-large election process used to elect members of Alabama‘s appellate courts diluted the voting strength of black voters in violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Id. at 1059. The parties entered an agreement, which the United States Department of Justice precleared, that would have restructured the Supreme Court of Alabama, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the Court of Civil Appeals by increasing the size of those courts and creating a selection process that would ensure that the black voters of Alabama had at least two “representatives of their choice” on each court. Id. at 1061. The district court approved the agreement and made it part of the final judgment. Id. at 1061. Again, we held that in approving such relief the district court exceeded its authority under section 2 and vacated the district court‘s judgment. Id. at 1061. We emphasized that under Holder and Nipper, the district court “lacked the authority to require Alabama to increase the size of its appellate courts.” Id. at 1072.
Defendants argue simply that the 1988 injunction did not change the size of the Commission because before the injunction the probate judge in his role as ex officio chairperson acted as a full Commission member. They contend that both before and after the 1988 injunction the Commission should be viewed as having five members, and only the manner of electing the officials changed. Defendants contend that the fact that the probate judge was an ex officio member of the Commission does not mean that he was not a full member. They stress that
Moreover, they argue that the differences in voting rights between the pre-1988 probate judge as ex officio chairperson and the current chairperson do not indicate that the probate judge/chairperson was not a full Commission member. While they concede, as they must, that the pre-injunction probate judge/chairperson did not have full voting rights, they observe that he was the deciding vote in the event of a tie and therefore voted in every situation in which his vote would have made a difference. The Defendants add that the probate judge/chairperson‘s tie-breaking voting power indicates that the probate judge played as significant a role in policymaking as did the other four commissioners and shows that Commission policy before the 1988 injunction was set by five, rather than four Commission members.
Defendants also point to Dillard v. Crenshaw County, Ala., 831 F.2d 246 (11th Cir. 1987) in support of their contention that the pre-1988 probate judge acting in his capacity as the ex officio chairperson of the Commission should be considered a full Commission member. Dillard involved a section 2 challenge to the at-large election of the commissioners of the Calhoun County Commission in Calhoun County, Alabama. The Calhoun County Commission was originally
We rejected the County‘s argument and held that because of the historical and practical overlap between the roles of the commission and the chairperson, the chairperson could not be considered a separate single-member office position. See Dillard, 831 F.2d at 251. We held that the chairperson was a full member of the commission subject to proportional representation issues and that the district court correctly ruled that electing the chairperson at-large failed to correct the original section 2 violation. Id. at 252-53.
Appellants contend that because the proposed chairperson in Dillard was considered a full commission member for the purposes of a section 2 remedy, the pre-injunction probate judge acting in his capacity as ex officio chairperson also should be considered a full member of the Commission since the two had similar roles and the same voting capacity. However, we do not find Dillard a helpful model for the present case. There are critical differences between the two cases which undermine Dillard‘s usefulness in helping us determine whether the pre-injunction probate judge acting in his capacity as ex officio chairperson in the present case should be counted as a full commission member.
Plaintiffs emphasize what appear to us to be several critical differences here between the pre-injunction probate judge acting in his capacity as the ex officio chairperson of the Commission and the full Commission member with whom he was replaced after the injunction. First, the probate judge was elected as a probate judge, not as a Commission member. The probate judge simply acted as chairperson of the Commission in an ex officio capacity but was never elected to a position on the Commission. Second, the probate judge was chosen in different elections and served a different term of years than did the commissioners. Therefore, while the commissioners served concurrent four year terms on the Commission, the probate judge, who was elected to six year terms, served as the ex officio chairperson of the Commission for a longer term of years. Third, in his capacity as ex officio chairperson of the Commission, the probate judge did not possess the same voting rights as did the other commissioners. Instead of voting
We emphasize that the issue before us is the narrow and discrete factual question of whether the change from a Commission composed of four full commissioners plus a probate judge acting as chairperson in an ex officio capacity--who was elected to a different position, holds office for a different term of years, and has different voting powers on the Commission than the full members--to a Commission composed of five full Commission members (one of whom is designated as chairperson)--who were all elected specifically to that office, all hold office for the same term of years, and all possess the same voting powers--is significant enough for us to conclude that a change in the size of the Commission occurred. We recognize that real arguments exist on the other side and that the determination of whether the probate judge acting as ex officio chairperson looks like a full Commission member for purposes of comparing the sizes of the pre and post injunction Commissions is largely a judgment call. However, we find that the
Perhaps even more important than our own finding, however, is the fact that the district court made a clear and unequivocal factual finding that the 1988 injunction changed the size of the Dallas County Commission and we must review this finding for clear error. See Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 78-79 (1986) (affirming that ultimate finding of vote dilution is a question of fact subject to the clearly erroneous standard of review); United States v. DeVaron, 175 F.3d 930, 938 (11th Cir. 1999) (en banc) (explaining that ultimate factual findings like the subsidiary facts on which they are based are entitled to clear error review); Tinkler v. United States, 982 F.2d 1456, 1466 (10th Cir. 1992) (noting that ultimate findings “like ‘subsidiary’ fact-findings, are . . . not to be set aside unless clearly erroneous“). According to the district court, the 1988 injunction “impermissibly altered the size of [the Dallas County Commission] [] by expelling the chairman ex-officio simply because he was also the Probate Judge who must be elected at-large and by creating a
After thoroughly reviewing all of the evidence before us, we conclude that the 1988 injunction is most accurately understood as changing the size of the Dallas County Commission. The district court found as much and we hold that this finding was not clear error. In light of this factual finding and the clear precedent from both the Supreme Court and this Circuit establishing that a change in the size of a governing body is not a proper remedy for a section 2 violation, the district court‘s conclusion that the 1988 injunction was an impermissible remedy for a section 2 violation was essential. Accordingly, we conclude that the district court
AFFIRMED.
I dissent because I do not believe that the plaintiffs have standing in this case. Wilson and Middlebrooks filed suit to terminate an injunction entered in an earlier case in which they never participated, either as plaintiffs, defendants or intervenors. Because they fail to demonstrate that they have suffered any concrete and particularized injury stemming from this earlier injunction, they have also failed to demonstrate that they have standing under Article III of the Constitution to bring these claims. See Federal Election Comm‘n v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 23-24 (1998); Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 64 (1997); Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992). On this record there is no basis for concluding that Wilson and Middlebrooks satisfy the elements of standing, either as plaintiffs in this independent action or in order to intervene in the earlier lawsuit.
Before a federal court may exercise jurisdiction over a claim brought before it, the court must determine that the litigants have standing to bring that suit. As the Supreme Court has emphasized repeatedly,
[t]he question of standing is not subject to waiver, however: ‘[We] are required to address the issue even if the courts below have not passed on it, and even if the parties fail to raise the issue before us. The federal courts
are under an independent obligation to examine their own jurisdiction, and standing is perhaps the most important of the jurisdictional doctrines.
United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 742 (1995) (emphasis added) (citing FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 230-231 (1990)); see also Arizonans, 520 U.S. at 73. The Supreme Court has “made clear that it is the burden of the party who seeks the exercise of jurisdiction in his favor clearly to allege facts demonstrating that he is a proper party to invoke judicial resolution of the dispute.” United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 743 (1995) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Wilson and Middlebrooks have not borne this burden.
In order “[t]o qualify as a party with standing to litigate, a person must show, first and foremost, an invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized and actual or imminent.” Arizonans, 520 U.S. at 64 (citing Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560) (internal quotation marks omitted). As the Court made clear in Lujan, in order to be “particularized,” the injury “must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.” Id. at 560-61 & n.1. The Supreme Court has “repeatedly refused to recognize a generalized grievance against allegedly illegal governmental conduct as sufficient for standing to invoke the federal judicial power.” Hays, 515 U.S. at 743 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
In Hays, the Supreme Court expressly affirmed the rule against generalized grievances, holding that the mere fact that appellees in that case were residents and voters of Louisiana was not sufficient to give them standing to challenge Louisiana‘s congressional redistricting plan. The Court rejected appellees’ position that “anybody in the State has a claim,” Hays 515 U.S. at 743-44, and restricted standing to “those who are personally denied equal treatment” by the challenged discriminatory conduct. Id. (emphasis added). The Court contrasted the generalized grievance asserted by appellees in that case with the type of concrete equal protection injury that would be sufficient to sustain standing. The
The panel in Meek rejected the contention that the intervenors had only nonjusticiable generalized grievances on the grounds that “if we accepted such an argument, we would be forced to conclude that most of the plaintiffs also lack standing, a conclusion foreclosed by the many cases in which individual voters have been permitted to challenge election practices,” citing as precedent Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124 (1971), and Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962). The recent Supreme Court cases make clear that this reasoning misconceives the nature of the injury alleged in voting rights cases. Plaintiffs’ standing to assert their claims against the challenged election practices in Whitcomb, 403 U.S. at 128-29, and Carr, 369 U.S. at 207-8, derived not from their status as individual voters, but from the fact that they were personally denied equal treatment in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Similarly, the plaintiffs in Meek alleged a concrete injury in the form of vote dilution under Section 2 of the
In the instant case, plaintiffs fail to allege in their complaint either the exact nature of the alleged injury suffered or that they have any “personal stake” in the outcome of this litigation. See Lujan, 504 U.S. at 583. We are left to speculate in what personal and individual way they have been injured.3 Plaintiffs’ claim that the Court‘s injunction in the earlier suit was ultra vires in light of Holder is no more specific than an assertion of the generalized right to have the government “act in accordance with law,” a right which the Supreme Court rejected in Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 754 (1984). Nor do plaintiffs articulate any cognizable theory of harm under equal protection or vote dilution jurisprudence. To the contrary, the majority writes that Wilson and Middlebrooks “seek to protect their interests in being free from an illegal court-imposed electoral system.” This characterization, and the concomitant implication that all of Dallas County would
Appellees insist that they challenged Act 1 in its entirety, not District 4 in isolation. That is true. It is also irrelevant. The fact that Act 1 affects all Louisiana voters by classifying each of them as a member of a particular congressional district does not mean–even if Act 1 inflicts race-based injury on some Louisiana voters–that every Louisiana voter has standing to challenge Act 1 as a racial classification. Only those citizens able to allege injury ‘as a direct result of having personally been denied equal treatment,’ Allen, 468 U.S. at 755, may bring such a challenge, and citizens who do so carry the burden of proving their standing as well their case on the merits.
Hays, 515 U.S. at 746. The election scheme currently in place in Dallas County affects the voters of Dallas County to the same extent that the Louisiana districting scheme affected appellees in Hays. However, as that case makes clear, Article III requires something more than merely being affected in order to assert a cognizable injury. The racial classification suffered by those residents of a racially gerrymandered district meets this requirement; mere “residence in the area directly affected by the allegedly illegal voting scheme,” maj. op. at 16, n.11, does not.
Because plaintiffs have failed to allege an injury which satisfies the requirements of Article III, I believe this suit should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, and accordingly, I dissent.
Notes
In support of its standing argument, the dissent suggests that this Circuit‘s decision in Meek v. Metropolitan Dade County Florida, 985 F.2d 1471 (11th Cir. 1993), which is directly on point, has been overruled by more recent Supreme Court cases. In Meek, this Court affirmed the standing of voters to participate in an action challenging the constitutionality of the voting scheme to which they were subject. The plaintiffs, black and Hispanic residents of Dade County, challenged a voting scheme in which the eight County Commissioners were selected from eight districts but each commissioner was elected at-large. The plaintiffs argued that the at-large election scheme violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Two residents of Dade County who were registered voters sought to intervene to defend the existing election scheme. The district court denied the intervenors’ motions to intervene holding that their interests were identical to the defendants’ and adequately represented by them. After a bench trial, the district court ruled that the election scheme did violate section 2, and the defendants decided not to appeal the decision. The intervenors filed new motions to intervene in order to pursue the defendants’ appeal. The district court denied these motions without explanation. On appeal the plaintiffs argued that the intervenors lacked standing to intervene because they “lack[ed] sufficiently substantial legally protectible interests.” Meek, 985 F.2d at 1480. This Court reversed making clear that the intervenors had suffered an injury
The intervenors sought to vindicate important personal interests in maintaining the election system that governed their exercise of political power, a democratically established system that the district court‘s order had altered. As such, they alleged a tangible actual or prospective injury and did not merely challenge unlawful conduct in the abstract. See generally, e.g. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992). Moreover, we reject appellees’ contention that the intervenors had only nonjusticiable generalized grievances simply because they asserted interests widely shared by others. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 756-60, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3327-29, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984).
Id. at 1480. See also Clark v. Putnam County, 168 F.3d 458, 462 (11th Cir. 1999) (holding that six black voters were entitled to intervene to defend a court-ordered single-member-district voting plan because they had an interest at stake in the action and that interest was not adequately represented by the existing defendant in the action). Like the intervenors in Meek, the Plaintiffs in this case seek to protect their interests in being free from an illegal court-imposed electoral system.
Instead of addressing Meek head on, the dissent suggests that its holding has been overruled or somehow eviscerated by the Supreme Court in Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 117 S.Ct. 1055, 137 L.Ed.2d 170 (1997), and Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 115 S.Ct. 2431. The dissent relies on these cases for two broad assertions: first, that in order to have standing “a person must show . . . an invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized and actual or imminent,” Arizonans for Official English, 520 U.S. at 64, 117 S.Ct. at 1067 (citing Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)) (internal quotation marks omitted); and second, that “a generalized grievance against allegedly illegal governmental conduct” is not sufficient to establish standing, Hays, 515 U.S. at 743, 115 S.Ct. at 2435 (citations omitted). A more detailed and critical analysis of these cases, however, makes clear that neither offers support for the dissent‘s position in this case.
In Arizonans for Official English, a state employee, Maria-Kelly F. Yniguez, sued the State and its Governor, Attorney General, and Director of the Department of Administration seeking an injunction against enforcement of a state constitutional amendment making English the state‘s official language. Both the district court and the court of appeals ruled that the English only amendment was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court vacated these opinions and held that because Yniguez had resigned from her position with the state while the case was on appeal the case had become moot. In dicta the Court expressed “grave doubts” about whether the sponsors of the amendment, Arizonans for Official English Committee (AOE) and its Chairman, Robert Park, had standing to intervene to defend the amendment‘s constitutionality on appeal. Arizonans for Official English, 520 U.S. at 66, 117 S.Ct. at 1068. AOE and Park argued that as the initiative proponents they had a quasi-legislative interest in defending the constitutionality of the measure they sponsored. The Court noted that while it has “recognized that state legislators have standing to contest a decision holding a state statute unconstitutional if state law authorizes legislators to represent the
The question of whether AOE and Park had standing as the sponsors of particular legislation to represent the state‘s interest in defending that legislation provides no guidance on whether voters who live within a governing unit have standing to challenge an allegedly illegal voting scheme to which they are subject by virtue of their residence. Moreover, the Court in Arizonans for Official English did not even resolve the standing issue because of its conclusion that the case was moot. Id.
In Hays, the Supreme Court held that the appellees lacked standing to challenge a Louisiana redistricting plan when none of the appellees resided in the district that was the primary focus of their racial gerrymander claim. Hays, 515 U.S. at 739, 115 S.Ct. at 2433. The Court emphasized, however, that voters who lived in the allegedly gerrymandered district would have suffered an injury sufficient to establish standing. According to the Court, “Where a plaintiff resides in a racially gerrymandered district [ ] the plaintiff has been denied equal treatment because of the legislature‘s reliance on racial criteria, and therefore has standing to challenge the legislature‘s action.” Hays, 515 U.S. at 744-45, 115 S.Ct. at 2436 (citations omitted). The dissent relies on Hays to argue that because the Plaintiffs allege only that they are residents of Dallas County, rather than of a particular racially gerrymandered district, they have not satisfied the requirements of standing. Dissenting Op. at 6. This argument misapplies the holding of Hays.
Hays lays down a bright-line standing rule for a particular class of cases alleging illegal racial gerrymandering with respect to voting districts: if the plaintiff lives in the racially gerrymandered district, she has standing; if she does not, she must produce specific evidence of harm other than the fact that the composition of her district might have been different were it not for the gerrymandering of the other district. There is no suggestion in Hays--or any subsequent decision that we are aware of--that the district-by-district analysis adopted in that decision applies to a case such as this or Meek which does not have anything to do with gerrymandering and relates instead to an allegedly illegal electoral scheme covering an entire election area.
This is not a case in which the plaintiffs are alleging racial gerrymandering in one particular voting district where they do not reside. In this case, the Plaintiffs contend that all of Dallas County is being subjected to an illegal election scheme that expands the size of the County Commission from four members to five members thereby altering the voting strength of each voter within the County. Unlike in Hays, the Plaintiffs in this case are residents of the area governed by the challenged illegal election scheme and their voting powers plainly are affected by that scheme.
Moreover, we emphasize that Hays’ narrow holding regarding standing in the gerrymandering context is entirely consistent with our broader holding in Meek. In Hays, the Supreme Court held that plaintiffs had standing to bring their racial gerrymandering claim if they lived in the allegedly gerrymandered district. In Meek we held that respondents had standing to defend the election scheme to which they were subject when that entire election scheme had been
Simply put, the case at hand is squarely controlled by this Court‘s holding in Meek. Meek has neither been explicitly overruled nor implicitly undermined by the Supreme Court‘s decisions in Arizonans for Official English, or Hays, and we are bound to follow it. See United States v. Hogan, 986 F.2d 1364, 1369 (11th Cir. 1993) (explaining that “it is the firmly established rule of this Circuit that each succeeding panel is bound by the holding of the first panel to address an issue of law, unless and until that holding is overruled en banc, or by the Supreme Court“). Moreover, our decision in Meek is altogether consistent with the holdings of other circuits granting voters standing to challenge election schemes to which they are subject. See League of United Latin American Citizens, Council No. 4434 v. Clements, 999 F.2d 831 (5th Cir. 1993) (finding judges who had intervened as defendants had Article III standing as voters affected by the challenged judicial election scheme to pursue the case independently on appeal); United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Wilson, 510 F.2d 512 (2nd Cir. 1975) (holding that white voters had standing as voters to challenge New York‘s legislative redistricting plan designed to comply with the Voting Rights Act).