Case: City of Pleasant Grove v. United States

This is a case about an annexed municipality being refused pre-clearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  In 1980, The City of Pleasant Grove (plaintiff) filed an action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia “seeking declaratory judgment that the annexation by the city of certain land did not have ‘the purpose of effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.’  The Attorney General (defendant) denied preclearance for the annexations because contiguous areas inhabited by blacks with had petition of annexation were not annexed by Pleasant Grove.”  586 F. Supp. 1455, 1456.  The City was represented by Donald J. Cronin, Thomas G. Corcoran, Jr., Corcoran, Youngman & Rowe, Washington, District of Columbia, and Thomas N. Crawford, Jr., Esq., Cooper, Mitch & Crawford, Birmingham, Alabama.  The U.S. was represented by Gerald W. Jones, Paul F. Hancock, Jeremy I Schwartz, John K. Tanner, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, District of Columbia.

In its Motion for Summary Judgment, plaintiff argued “(1) that there [was] no evidence that the annexations were the product of a purpose to abridge the right of blacks to vote or had such an effect, and (2) that even if a purpose to discriminate could be established, it along would not sustain the refusal of defendant to clear the annexations.  Id.  The Court noted the geo-political details of the area and found that “Pleasant Grove may thus accurately be described as an all-white enclave in an otherwise racially mixed are of Alabama” and identified the basic issue as “whether the Voting Rights Act forbids the annexation by Pleasant Grove of areas inhabited or likely to be hereafter inhabited by whites at a time when Pleasant Grove is refusing to annex contiguous areas which are inhabited by blacks.”  To resolve this issue, the Court examined to questions: (1) “[C]an an intent to discriminate be attributed to Pleasant Grove on the present record” and (2) “[A]ssuming that such an intent exists, is Pleasant Grove prohibited from proceeding with its annexation in the absence of any allegation by the government that the voting power of blacks will be impaired of diluted?”  Id.  In examination of the first question in the context of the Plaintiff’s motion (regarding Defendant’s evidence as true), the Court found “an astounding pattern of racial exclusion and discrimination in all phases of Pleasant Grove life.”  Id.  Plaintiff argued that “proof of discriminatory purpose is insufficient; that the must be proof of a discriminatory effect,” reasoning that “since there [were] no black voters … in the city, there could be no proof of a discriminatory effect.”  Id. at 1458.  The Court found this argument “not persuasive,” noting that “[i]t would be incongruous if the City of Pleasant Grove, having succeeded in keeping all blacks out, could now successfully defend on the ground that there were no blacks in the city whose right to vote would be diluted by the annexation of white, but not black, subdivisions.”   Id. at 1458, 1459. 

In arguing on the merits, Plaintiff rationalized the annexation choices as economically motivated and not race-based.  623 F. Supp. 782, 784.  The Court found that argument “without merit, and … a mere pretext for race-biased annexation decisions, as “all the economic conclusions reached in this regard were developed after the fact.” Id at 784.  Further examining the timing and substance, the Court find “the economic justification advanced by Pleasant Grove for its annexation practices [was] flawed both procedurally and substantively, and that it is no more than a transparent attempt to put a valid gloss on decision which plainly had a racial purpose.”  Id at 787.

Plaintiff was granted review by the U.S. Supreme Court (476 U.S. 1113), which affirmed the District Court’s ruling (479 U.S. 462) in an opinion by Justice White, joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens and Scalia. Justice Powell was joined in dissent by Justices Rehnquist and O’Connor.

The Supreme Court first reviewed “two fundamental principles of the Voting Rights Act.  First, "An annexation of inhabited land constitutes a change in voting practice or procedure subject to preclearance under § 5.” 479 U.S. 467, citing City of Richmond v. United States, 422 U.S. 358, 368 (1975) and Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U.S. 379, 388 (1971).  “Second. ‘Congress plainly intended that a voting practice not be precleared unless both discriminatory purpose and effect are absent.” Id. at 469, quoting City of Rome v. United States, 446 U.S. 156, 172 (1980).  The Supreme Court then reviewed the District Court’s findings of fact regarding the City’s purposes of selective annexation / refusal to annex different parcels and accepted them as not clearly erroneous.  Id. The Supreme Court also dismissed plaintiff’s arguments that (1) the decision not to annex a predominantly black area was not a change to voting, and (2) with no black voters in Pleasant Grove to begin with there was no reduction in the proportion of black voters.  The Court held that “common sense teaches that appellant cannot indefinitely stave off the influx of black residents and voters-indeed, the process of integration, long overdue, has already begun.  One means of thwarting this process is to provide for the growth of a monolithic white voting block, thereby effectively diluting the black vote in advance.  This is just as impermissible a purpose as the dilution of present black voting strength.  To hold otherwise would make appellant’s extraordinary success in resisting integration thus far a shield for further resistance. Nothing could be further from the purposes of the Voting Rights Act.”  Id. 472.