WRIGHT ET AL. v. ROCKEFELLER, GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK, ET AL.
No. 96
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 19, 1963. Decided February 17, 1964.
376 U.S. 52
Irving Galt, Assistant Solicitor General of New York, and Jawn A. Sandifer argued the cause for appellees. With Mr. Galt on the brief for appellees Rockefeller et al.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellants, citizens and registered voters of New York‘s Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Congressional Districts, all in New York County (the Island of Manhattan), brought this action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York challenging the constitutionality of that part of Chapter 980 of New York‘s 1961 congressional apportionment statute which defined these four districts.1 The Governor and several other New York state officials were named as defendants. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who represents the Eighteenth Congressional District, and several other New York County political leaders were permitted to intervene as defendants supporting the constitutionality of the apportionment act. Appellants charged that the part of the New York Act in question deprived them of rights guaranteed by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and by the Fifteenth Amendment, which provides that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Their complaint alleged that:
“Chapter 980 establishes irrational, discriminatory and unequal Congressional Districts in the County of New York and segregates eligible voters by race and place of origin. It is contrived to create one district, the 17th Congressional District, which excludes
non-white citizens and citizens of Puerto Rican origin and which is over-represented in comparison to the other three districts in the County of New York. The 18th, 19th and 20th Congressional Districts have been drawn so as to include the overwhelming number of non-white citizens and citizens of Puerto Rican origin in the County of New York and to be under-represented in relation to the 17th Congressional District.”2
The case was heard by а District Court of three judges. During these hearings, counsel for appellants made it clear that their case did not depend on “under-representation because of the variation in the size of the Congressional districts“; it was rather, he said, “a case of ghettoizing the Island of Manhattan” so as “to create a white Congressional district and a non-white Congressional district.” “I think,” counsel said, “the only province of the Court in this area is to determine whether or not these districts have been created with racial considerations in mind, and, if they have, or if the results of this districting, the effect of the statute is to create racially segregated areas, we maintain that it violates the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.” Appellants offered maps, statistics, and some oral evidence designed to prove their charge that it was impossible to have districts such as these were unless they “were drawn with regard to race.” The statistics showed that the Eighteenth District contained 86.3% Negroes and Puerto Ricans; the Nineteenth, 28.5%; the Twentieth, 27.5%; and the Seventeenth, 5.1%. The evidence also showed irregularities in the boundaries of the districts and some varia
A majority of the District Court found that appellants had not made out their case on the crucial factual issues.4 Judge Moore broadly found that “[n]o proof was offered by any party that the specific boundaries created by Chapter 980 were drawn on racial lines or that the Legislature was motivated by considerations of race, creed or country of origin in creating the districts.”5 He concluded, “Plaintiffs having failed upon the facts and the law to establish any violation of their constitutional rights as a result of the action of the New York Legislature in enacting Chapter 980 of the Laws of 1961, the complaint must be dismissed.”6 Judge Feinberg concurred in Judge Moore‘s result because he, too, believed that appellants had
“not met their burden of proving that the boundaries of the new 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th Congressional Districts were drawn along racial lines, as they allege. . . .
“. . . Plaintiffs did introduce evidence which might justify an inference that racial considerations motivated the 1961 reapportionment of congressional districts in Manhattan. However, other inferences, as set forth below, are equally or more justifiable. Plaintiffs have a difficult burden to meet in attack-
ing the constitutionality of this state statute. . . . Upon analysis, I do not think that burden has been met.
“. . . In short, based upon the entire record, I do not feel that plaintiffs have proved their case.”7
Judge Murphy dissented. He viewed the evidence as “tantamount for all practical purposes, to a mathematical demonstration” that the legislation was “solely concerned with segregating” white voters from colored and Puerto Rican voters “by fencing colored and Puerto Rican citizens out of the 17th District and into a district of their own (the 18th)” and as establishing ”per se a prima facie case of a legislative intent to draw congressional district lines in the 17th and 18th Districts on the basis of race and national origin.”8
While a number of other matters have been discussed, we find it necessary to decide only the first question presented in the jurisdictional statement, namely “[w]hether appellants sustained their burden of proving that the portion of Chapter 980 . . . which delineates the boundaries of the Congressional districts in Manhattan Island segregates eligible voters by race and place of origin in violation of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.” We accept the findings of the majority of the District Court that appellants failed to prove that the New York Legislature was either motivated by racial considerations or in fact drew the districts on racial lines. Compare Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339. It may be true, as Judge Feinberg thought, that there was evidence which could have supported inferences that racial considerations might have moved the
We accept the District Court‘s finding that appellants have not shown that the challenged part of the New York Act was the product of a state contrivance to segregate on the basis of race or place of origin. That finding was crucial to appellants’ case as they presented it, and for that reason their challenge cannot be sustained. We do not pass on the question which appellants have not presented here, that is, whether the state apportionment is constitutionally invalid because it may fail in its objective to create districts based as nearly as practicable on equal pоpulation.12 See Wesberry v. Sanders, ante, p. 1. Since no such challenge has been urged here, the issues have not been formulated to bring it into focus, and the evidence has not been offered or appraised to decide it, our holding has no bearing on that wholly separate question.
The judgment dismissing the complaint is
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court on the premise that the only issue in this case involves alleged racially segregated districts. The case is thus, in my opinion, governed by entirely different constitutional considerations, see Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, than those which I believe
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom MR. JUSTICE GOLDBERG concurs, dissenting.
This case raises a question kin to that in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, where racial gerrymandering was used to deprive Negroes of the right to vote. Here no Negroes are deprived of the franchise. Rather, zigzag, tortuous lines are drawn to concentrаte Negroes and Puerto Ricans in Manhattan‘s Eighteenth Congressional District and practically to exclude them from the Seventeenth Congressional District. Neighborhoods in our larger cities often contain members of only one race; and those who draw the lines of Congressional Districts cannot be expected to disregard neighborhoods in an effort to make each district a multiracial one.1 But where, as here, the line that is drawn can be explained only in racial terms, a different problem is presented.
I.
Manhattan is divided into four districts and as a result of the serpentine path that the lines follow, those districts reflect substantial, though not complete, segregation by races:
| District | White percent of district | Negro and Puerto Rican percent of district |
|---|---|---|
| 17th . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 94.9 | 5.1 |
| 18th . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 13.7 | 86.3 |
| 19th . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 71.5 | 28.5 |
| 20th . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 72.5 | 27.5 |
To achieve this racial gerrymandering, careful manipulation of the boundaries of the Eighteenth District was necessary. The southeast corner is neаr the East River and from there it goes—west four blocks, north two blocks, west one block, north five blocks, west one block, north one block, west one block, north one block, west one block, north eleven blocks, west five blocks across the northern line of Central Park to Morningside, north along Morningside about twelve blocks, west one block, north along Amsterdam from 122d to 150th, east two blocks, north fifteen blocks to 165th, and east to East River.
The record strongly suggests that these twists and turns producing an 11-sided, step-shaped boundary between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Districts were made to bring into the Eighteenth District and keep out of the
A second judge concluded that petitioners “have not met their burden of proving” that the boundaries in question were “drawn along racial lines.” Id., at 468. The third judge expressed no view on the precise issue.3
The evidence which I have summarized was not rebutted or challenged, the State introducing no evidence. We havе not only inferences from conceded facts but also New York‘s frank concession that it is not possible to say “that race is irrelevant to districting.”
Racial segregation that is state-sponsored should be nullified whatever may have been intended. In Johnson v. Virginia, 373 U. S. 61, we held segregation of a courtroom audience by race to be unconstitutional, without stopping to inquire what the motive may have been. A
I had assumed that since Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, no State may segregate people by race in the public areas. The design of voting districts involves one important public area—as important as schools, parks, and courtrooms. We should uproot all vestiges of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, from the public area.
The intervenоrs are persons who apparently have a vested interest in control of the segregated Eighteenth District.4 They and the State seem to support this segregation not on the “separate but equal” theory of Plessy v. Ferguson, supra, but on another theory. Their theory might be called the theory of “separate but better off“—a theory that has been used before. A like argument was made in Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 81, in support of municipal segregation of residential areas; in District of Columbia v. Thompson, 346 U.S. 100, in support of segregation in restaurants; in Watson v. Memphis, 373 U.S. 526, in support of delayed integration of municipal parks. Indeed, the final argument of John W. Davis for South Carolina in Brown v. Board of Education, supra, ended with the words, “The good is sometimes better than the best.”
The fact that Negro political leaders find advantage in this nearly solid Negro and Puerto Rican district is irrelevant to our problem. Rotten boroughs were long a curse of democratic processes. Racial boroughs are also at war with democratic standards.
What we have in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Districts in Manhattan is comparable to the Electoral Register System which Britain introduced into India. That system gave a separate constituency to Sikhs, Muslims, Anglo-Indians, Europeans, and Indian Christians.5 Religious minorities found comfort and safety in such an arrangement. A Muslim deputation made the following demand:6
“(1) That in the whole of India the Muslims number over 62 millions or between one-fifth and one-fourth of the total population;
“(2) that as their numbers exceed the entire population of any first-class European Power, except Russia, Muslims might justly claim adequate recognition as an importаnt factor in the State;
“(3) that the representation hitherto accorded to them, almost entirely by nomination, had been inadequate to their requirements and had not always carried with it the approval of those whom the nominees were selected to represent; and
“(4) that while Muslims are a distinct community with additional interests of their own, which are not shared by other communities, no Muslim would ever be returned by the existing electoral bodies, unless he worked in sympathy with the Hindu majority in all matters of importance.”
“The Muslims demand three things. I had the pleasure of receiving a deputation from them and I know very well what is in their minds. They demand an election of their own representatives to these councils in all the stages just as in Cyprus, where, I think, Muslims vote by themselves; thеy have nine votes and the non-Muslims have three or the other way about; so in Bohemia where the Germans vote alone and have their own register; therefore we are not without a precedent and a parallel for the idea of a separate register. Secondly, they want a number of seats in excess of their numerical strength. These two demands we are quite ready and intend to meet in full.”
Hindus responded favorably.8 The Joint Report of 1918 stated:9
“Some persons hold that for a people, such as they deem those of India to be, so divided by race, religion and caste as to be unable to consider the interests of any but their own section, a system of communal electorates and class representation is not merely inevitable but is actually best. They maintain that it evokеs and applies the principle of democracy over the widest range over which it is actually alive at all, by appealing to the instincts which are strongest; and that we must hope to develop the finer, which are also at present the weaker instincts by using the forces that really count. According to this theory communal representation is an inevitable and even a healthy stage in the development of a non-political people.”
Racial electoral registers, like religious ones, have no place in a society that honors the Lincoln tradition—“of the people, by the people, for the people.” Here the individual is important, not his race, his creed, or his color. The principle of equality is at war with the notion that District A must be represented by a Negro, as it is with the notion that District B must be represented by a Caucasian, District C by a Jew, District D by a Catholic, and so on. Cf. Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 379. The racial electoral register system weights votes along one racial line more heavily than it does other votes. That system, by whatever name it is called, is a divisive force in a community, emphasizing differences between candidates and voters that are irrelevant in the constitutional sensе. Of course race, like religion, plays an important role in the choices which individual voters make from among various candidates.12 But government has no business designing electoral districts along racial or religious lines. We held in Akins v. Texas, 325 U.S. 398, 403, and in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 471, that courts in selecting juries need not—indeed should not—give each jury list the proportional racial complexion that the community
In Anderson v. Martin, 375 U.S. 399, we barred Louisiana from putting on a ballot opposite a Negro candidate‘s name the word, “Negro,” as it was a device encouraging racial discrimination. When we said in that case that a State may not encourage its citizens “to vote for a candidate sоlely on account of race,” id., at 404, I had assumed that we would hold a fortiori that no State could make an electoral district out of any racial bloc unless the electoral unit represented an actual neighborhood. Yet we violate that principle here.
When racial or religious lines are drawn by the State, the multiracial, multireligious communities that our Constitution seeks to weld together as one become separatist; antagonisms that relate to race or to religion rather than to political issues are generated; communities seek not the best representative but the best racial or religious partisan. Since that system is at war with the democratic ideal, it should find no footing here.
“Separate but equal” and “separate but better off” hаve no more place in voting districts than they have in schools, parks, railroad terminals, or any other facility serving the public.
MR. JUSTICE GOLDBERG, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS joins, dissenting.
I fully agree with and join what my Brother DOUGLAS has written in dissent but wish to add these words by way of comment on the Court‘s opinion.
The question for decision in this case is whether appellants have sustained their burden of proving that the boundaries of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Congressional Districts of New York were purposefully drawn on racial lines. The Court resolves this question against appellants by accepting “the District Court‘s finding that
My difficulty with this conclusion is that the record does not support the Court‘s treatment of the District Court‘s finding. The District Court was a three-judge court and the three judges did not agree upon and, as a court, made no express findings of fact. Instead there were three separate and differing opinions. Judge Moore implied that racially segregated voting districts are constitutional absent a showing of serious under-representation or other specific harm to the individual complainants. 211 F. Supp. 460, 467-468. He also suggested that segregated voting districts could be constitutionally justified because they may enable persons of the same race or place of origin “to obtain representation in legislative bodies which otherwise would be denied to them.” Id., at 467. Finally, Judge Moore intimated that factually segregated voting districts would be unconstitutional only where the legislature was “motivated or influenced” to create such districts. Ibid. To establish this motivation or influence complainants must introduce proof, and in this case no such proof was tendered by the appellants who, therefore, failed to make a case “upon the facts and the law.” Id., at 468.
Judge Moore did not in my view apply the proper constitutional standard. The Constitution, I strongly believe, proscribes state-sanctioned racial segregation in legislative districting as well as in voting and in public schools and facilities. E. g., Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483; Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339; Johnson v. Virginia, 373 U.S. 61; Watson v. City of Memphis, 373 U.S. 526; Goss v. Board of Education, 373 U.S. 683; Anderson v. Martin, 375 U.S. 399. Certainly in these areas the Fourteenth Amendment “nul
Furthermore, as I shall point out, Judge Moore also erred in holding that in any event appellants’ proof was insufficient to establish a prima facie case of unconstitutional racial districting.
Judge Feinberg disagreed both with Judge Moore‘s implication that segregated voting districts are constitutional absent serious under-representation and with the view that segregated districts could be constitutionally justified by alleged advantages to persons of a particular race or place of origin. Judge Feinberg stated that the “constitutional vice would be use by the legislature of an impermissible standard, and the harm to plaintiffs that need be shown is only that such a standard was used.” 211 F. Supp., at 468. He then frankly acknowledged that:
“The case is a closer one for me than the opinion of Judge Moore would indicate it is for him. Plain-
tiffs did introduce evidencе which might justify an inference that racial considerations motivated the 1961 reapportionment of congressional districts in Manhattan. However, other inferences . . . are equally or more justifiable. Plaintiffs have a difficult burden to meet in attacking the constitutionality of this state statute.” Id., at 469.
Judge Feinberg, on this reasoning, cast his vote for Judge Moore‘s result on the ground that appellants failed to sustain the “difficult burden” of attacking the constitutionality of this statute: Even where such racially segregated districting results and complainants’ evidence “might justify an inference that racial considerations motivated” the districting, still complainants fail to sustain their burden unless they also disprove every other permissible or reasonable purpose which the legislaturе might have had in mind.
Judge Murphy, in his dissent, agreed with Judge Feinberg as to the applicable constitutional standard. But, on Judge Murphy‘s view of the record, the appellants carried their burden of proving that “the legislation was solely concerned with segregating white, and colored and Puerto Rican voters by fencing colored and Puerto Rican citizens out of the 17th District and into a district of their own (the 18th)“; that the legislation had effected “obvious segregation“; and that the statute constituted a “subtle exclusion” of Negroes from the Seventeenth and a “jamming in of colored and Puerto Ricans into the 18th or the kind of segregation that appeals to the intervenors.” Id., at 473-475. Accordingly, Judge Murphy thought appellants had met their burden of proving segregation and, in the absence of any proof by the State or by intervenors, were entitled to a judgment declaring the statute unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
My Brother DOUGLAS in his dissent has set forth the virtually undisputed facts. I shall not repeat them here. He has also set forth the correct constitutiоnal standard which I believe we should unhesitatingly reaffirm and apply. On the basis of the evidence,1 I agree with Judge
The question therefore recurs: What more need appellants have proved? Judge Moore apparently would have required them to introduce proof that the legislature‘s actual motive was to create racially segregated voting districts. Appellants, however, by their evidence established a pattern of segregation not adequately explained on a geometric, geographic, equalization, party-compromise, neighborhood or other basis. To require a showing of racial motivation in the legislature would place an impossible burden on complainants. For example, in this case the redistricting bill was recommended and submitted to the legislature on November 9, 1961, passed on November 10, 1961, and signed by the Governor on that date. No public hearings were had on the bill and no
Notes
| District | Total Population | White Population % of District | Non-White and Puerto Rican Origin Population of District |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17th | 382,320 | 362,668 94.9% | 19,652 5.1% |
| 18th | 431,330 | 59,216 13.7% | 372,114 86.3% |
| 19th | 445,175 | 318,223 71.5% | 126,952 28.5% |
| 20th | 439,456 | 318,482 72.5% | 120,974 27.5% |
| Total | 1,698,281 | 1,058,589 62.3% | 639,692 37.7% |
| District | % of Non-White and Puerto Rican of County |
|---|---|
| 17th | 3.1% |
| 18th | 58.2% |
| 19th | 19.8% |
| 20th | 18.9% |
| 100.0% |