GEORGIA ET AL. v. UNITED STATES
No. 72-75
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 21-22, 1973—Decided May 7, 1973
411 U.S. 526
Harold N. Hill, Jr., Executive Assistant Attorney General of Georgia, argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs were Arthur K. Bolton, Attorney General, and Robert J. Castellani and Dorothy Y. Kirkley, Assistant Attorneys General.
Deputy Solicitor General Wallace argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Griswold, Assistant Attorney General Norman, James P. Turner, William Bradford Reynolds, and John C. Hoyle.*
MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Attorney General of the United States brought this suit under § 12 (d) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as amended,
Following the 1970 Census, the Georgia Legislature set out to reapportion its State House of Representatives, State Senate, and federal congressional electoral districts. We are here concerned only with the reapportionment plan for the State House of Representatives.3 The result of the legislature‘s deliberations was a plan (hereinafter the 1971 plan) that, as compared with the prior 1968 scheme, decreased the number of districts from 118 to 105, and increased the number of multimember districts from 47 to 49. Whereas the prior apportionment plan had generally preserved county lines, the 1971 plan did not: 31 of the 49 multimember districts and 21 of the 56 single-member districts irregularly crossed county boundaries. The boundaries of nearly all districts were changed, and in many instances the number of represent-
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act forbids States subject to the Act from implementing any change in a “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting” without first obtaining a declaratory judgment from the District Court for the District of Columbia that the proposed change “does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color,” or submitting the plan to the Attorney General of the United States and receiving no objection within 60 days.
The State Legislature immediately enacted a new reapportionment plan and repealed its predecessor. The 1972 plan increased the number of districts from 105 to 128, and decreased the number of multimember districts from 49 to 32. Twenty-two of the multimember districts and 37 of the single-member districts still crossed county boundaries.
This 1972 plan was submitted to the Attorney General on March 15, and he objected on March 24. The Assistant Attorney General‘s letter stated, in part:
“After a careful analysis of the Act redistricting the Georgia House of Representatives, I must conclude that this reapportionment does not satisfactorily remove the features found objectionable in your prior submission, namely, the combination of multi-member districts, numbered posts, and a majority (runoff) requirement discussed in my March 3, 1972, letter to you interposing an objection to your earlier Section 5 submission. Accordingly, and for the reasons enunciated in my March 3, 1972, letter I must, on behalf of the Attorney General, object to S. B. 690 reapportioning the Georgia House of Representatives.”
When the Georgia Legislature resolved that it would take no further steps to enact a new plan, the Attorney General brought the present lawsuit.
I
Despite the fact that multimember districts, numbered posts, and a majority runoff requirement were features of Georgia election law prior to November 1, 1964, the changes that followed from the 1972 reapportionment are plainly sufficient to invoke § 5 if that section of the Act reaches the substance of those changes. Section 5 is not concerned with a simple inventory of voting procedures, but rather with the reality of changed practices as they affect Negro voters. It seems clear that the extensive reorganization of voting districts and the creation of multimember districts in place of single-member districts in certain areas amounted to substantial departures from the electoral state of things under previous law. The real question is whether the substance of these changes undertaken as part of the state reapportionment are “standards, practices, or procedures with respect to voting” within the meaning of § 5.
The prior decisions of this Court compel the conclusion that changes of the sort included in Georgia‘s 1972 House reapportionment plan are cognizable under § 5. In South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, we upheld the
“Section 5 goes on to provide that a State covered by § 4 (b) can in no way amend its constitution or laws relating to voting without first trying to persuade the Attorney General of the United States or the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia that the new proposed laws do not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying the right to vote to citizens on account of their race or color.” 383 U. S., at 356 (concurring and dissenting opinion).
The applicability of § 5 to election law changes such as those enacted by Georgia in its 1972 plan was all but conclusively established by the opinion of this Court in Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U. S. 544. The Allen opinion, dealing with four companion cases, held that § 5 applied to a broad range of voting law changes, and was constitutional as applied. With respect to the reach of § 5, we held that “[t]he legislative history on the whole supports the view that Congress intended to reach any state enactment which altered the election law of a covered State in even a minor way.” Id., at 566. One of the companion cases, Fairley v. Patterson, involved a claim that a change from district to at-large voting for county supervisor was a change in a “standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting.” The challenged procedure was held to be covered by § 5. We noted that “[t]he right to vote can be affected by a dilution of voting power as well as by an absolute prohibition on casting a ballot. See Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 555 (1964).” Id., at 569. In holding that § 5 reached voting law changes that threatened to dilute
Had Congress disagreed with the interpretation of § 5 in Allen, it had ample opportunity to amend the statute. After extensive deliberations in 1970 on bills to extend the Voting Rights Act, during which the Allen case was repeatedly discussed,5 the Act was extended for five years, without any substantive modification of § 5.
Another measure of the decisiveness with which Allen controls the present case is the actual practice of covered States since the Allen case was decided. Georgia, for example, submitted its 1971 plan to the Attorney General because it clearly believed that plan was covered by § 5. Its submission was “made pursuant to § 5,” and the State Attorney General explained in his submission that the 1968 reapportionment of the Georgia House of Repre-
In the present posture of this case, the question is not whether the redistricting of the Georgia House, including extensive shifts from single-member to multimember districts, in fact had a racially discriminatory purpose or effect. The question, rather, is whether such changes have the potential for diluting the value of the Negro vote and are within the definitional terms of § 5. It is beyond doubt that such a potential exists, cf. Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124, 141-144. In view of the teaching of Allen,6 reaffirmed in Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S.
By way of implementing the performance of his obligation to pass on state submissions under § 5, the Attorney General has promulgated and published in the Federal Register certain administrative regulations,
It is true, as the appellants contend, that § 5 itself does not authorize the Attorney General to promulgate any regulations. But § 5 is also silent as to the procedures the Attorney General is to employ in deciding whether or not to object to state submissions, as to the standards governing the contents of those submissions, and as to the meaning of the 60-day time period in which the Attorney General is to object, if at all. Rather than reading the statute to grant him unfettered discretion as to procedures, standards, and administration in this sensitive area, the Attorney General has chosen instead to formulate and publish objective ground rules. If these regulations are reasonable and do not conflict with the Voting Rights Act itself, then
In
Although both objections were consistent with the Attorney General‘s regulations, the appellants in effect attack the legitimacy of the regulation described above in contending that the Attorney General is without power to object unless he has actually found that the changes contained in a submission have a discriminatory purpose or effect.
It is well established that in a declaratory judgment action under § 5, the plaintiff State has the burden of proof.9 What the Attorney General‘s regulations do is to place the same burden on the submitting party in a § 5 objection procedure. Though the choice of language in the objection letter sent to the State of Georgia was not a model of precision, in the context of the promulgated regulations the letter surely notified the State with sufficient clarity that it had not sustained its burden of proving that the proposed changes were free of a racially discriminatory effect. It is not necessary to hold that this allocation of the burden of proof by the Attorney General was his only possible choice under the Act, in order to find it a reasonable means of administering his § 5 obligation. Any less stringent standard might well have rendered the formal declaratory judgment procedure a dead letter by making available to covered States a far smoother path to clearance. The Attorney General‘s choice of a proof standard was thus at least reasonable
The appellant‘s final contention is that the Attorney General‘s objection to the 1971 plan was untimely, and so the submitted plan should have been held by the District Court to have gone into effect. It is far from clear that this claim is not simply moot, since the state enactment establishing the 1972 plan explicitly repealed the 1971 plan,10 and the objection to the 1972 plan was clearly within the statutory time period. In any event, the claim is without merit.
In promulgating regulations, the Attorney General dealt with several aspects of the 60-day time limit established by § 5 of the Act. The regulations provide that all calendar days count as part of the allotted period, that parties whose submissions are objected to may seek reconsideration on the basis of new information and obtain a ruling within 60 days of that request, and that the 60-day period shall commence from the time the Department of Justice receives a submission satisfying the enumerated requirements.
In the present case, the Attorney General found the initial submission of the 1971 plan incomplete under the regulations. Two weeks after receiving it, he requested additional information.11 His letter referred to
The appellants argue that the Attorney General has granted himself more time than the statute provides by promulgating regulations suspending the time period until a complete submission is received. Here again, the question is whether the regulation is a reasonable administrative effectuation of § 5 of the Act. The judgment that the Attorney General must make is a difficult and complex one, and no one would argue that it should be made without adequate information. There is no serious claim in this case that the additional information requested was unnecessary or irrelevant to § 5 evaluation of the submitted reapportionment plan.12 Yet, if the Attorney General were denied the power to suspend the 60-day period until a complete submission were tendered, his only plausible response to an inadequate or incomplete submission would be simply to object to it. He would then leave it to the State to submit adequate
III
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the District Court is affirmed. Since, however, elections were conducted under the disputed 1972 plan by reason of this Court‘s stay order, it would be inequitable to require new elections at this time.
The case is remanded to the District Court with instructions that any future elections under the Georgia House reapportionment plan be enjoined unless and until the State, pursuant to § 5 of the Voting Rights Act, tenders to the Attorney General a plan to which he does not object, or obtains a favorable declaratory judgment from the District Court for the District of Columbia.
It is so ordered.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, concurring in the result.
I concur in the result reached by the Court but I do so under the mandate of Allen v. State Board of Elections,
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom MR. JUSTICE POWELL and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, dissenting.
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provides that a covered State may not put into effect any change in voting qualifications or voting standards, practices, or procedures until it either procures a declaratory judgment from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to the effect that the alteration does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, or submits the alteration to the Attorney General and an objection has not been interposed by that official during the ensuing 60 days. In this case, the Attorney General interposed an objection on March 24, 1972, to the March 9 reapportionment plan of the Georgia House of Representatives and shortly thereafter sued to enjoin the use of that plan on the ground that the State had obtained neither the approval of the Attorney General nor a declaratory judgment. The District Court held § 5 was applicable to changes in state apportionment plans and that the section prevented the March 9 reapportionment from going into effect.
I agree that in the light of our prior cases and congressional re-enactment of § 5, that section must be held to reach state reapportionment statutes. Contrary to the Court, however, it is my view that the Attorney General did not interpose an objection contemplated by § 5 and that there was therefore no barrier to the March 9 reapportionment going into effect.
It is arguable from the sparse language of the Act, which merely says that the State‘s modification will go
Although the constitutionality of § 5 has long since been upheld, South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301 (1966), it remains a serious matter that a sovereign State must submit its legislation to federal authorities before it may take effect. It is even more serious to insist that it initiate litigation and carry the burden of proof as to constitutionality simply because the State has employed a particular test or device and a sufficiently low percentage of its citizens has voted in its elections. And why should the State be forced to shoulder that burden where its proposed change is so colorless that the
My idea as to the obligation of the Department of Justice with respect to a submission under § 5 is similar to what Congress itself has provided in § 4,
MR. JUSTICE POWELL, dissenting.
For the reasons stated in his opinion, I agree with MR. JUSTICE WHITE that the Attorney General did not comply with § 5 of the Voting Rights Act,
Notes
“Appellees in No. 25 [Fairley v. Patterson] also argue that § 5 was not intended to apply to a change from district to at-large voting, because application of § 5 would cause a conflict in the administration of reapportionment legislation. They contend that under such a broad reading of § 5, enforcement of a reapportionment plan could be enjoined for failure to meet the § 5 approval requirements, even though the plan had been approved by a federal court. Appellees urge that Congress could not have intended to force the States to submit a reapportionment plan to two different courts.
“We must reject a narrow construction that appellees would give to § 5. . . .
“. . . The argument that some administrative problem might
arise in the future does not establish that Congress intended that § 5 have a narrow scope; we leave to another case a consideration of any possible conflict.” 393 U. S. 544, 564-565, 569.The caveat implicit in this language would support the appellants’ position only if practical problems of administration had emerged in the period that has elapsed since Allen was decided. This does not appear to have been the case. The brief of the United States advises us that the Department of Justice has adopted procedures designed to minimize any conflicts between § 5 administrative review and federal court litigation based on Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment attacks upon state reapportionment plans. Where a reapportionment plan has been prescribed by federal judicial decree, the Attorney General does not review it. See Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690, 691. Where a plan has been submitted to the Attorney General and is at the same time being litigated with respect to a Fifteenth Amendment claim, the Attorney General has deferred to the judicial determination regarding racial discrimination. Finally, the number of instances presenting an administrative-judicial overlap has been small. Of the 381 reapportionments submitted to the Attorney General, only 19 of the objected-to submissions were involved in litigation when submitted.
The promulgated regulations define in
“With respect to redistricting, annexation, and other complex
changes, other information which the Attorney General determines is required to enable him to evaluate the purpose or effect of the change. Such other information may include items listed under paragraph (b) of this section. When such other information is required, the Attorney General shall notify the submitting authority in the manner provided in § 51.18 (a).”