The Supreme Court/The Supreme Court.iso/pc/ascii/1994/94_558/94_558.zo

Text File | 1995-06-29 | 18.9 KB | 376 lines

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports.  Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that
corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
Nos. 94-558 and 94-627
--------
UNITED STATES, APPELLANT
94-558                     v.
RAY HAYS et al.

LOUISIANA, et al., APPELLANTS
94-627                     v.
RAY HAYS et al.
on appeals from the united states district court
for the western district of louisiana
[June 29, 1995]

  Justice O'Connor delivered the opinion of the Court.
  We held in Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. ___ (1993), that
a plaintiff may state a claim for relief under the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by
alleging that a State -adopted a reapportionment scheme
so irrational on its face that it can be understood only
as an effort to segregate voters into separate voting
districts because of their race, and that the separation
lacks sufficient justification.-  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 26).
Appellees Ray Hays, Edward Adams, Susan Shaw
Singleton, and Gary Stokley claim that the State of
Louisiana's congressional districting plan is such a
-racial gerrymander,- and that it violates the Fourteenth
Amendment.  But appellees do not live in the district
that is the primary focus of their racial gerrymandering
claim, and they have not otherwise demonstrated that
they, personally, have been subjected to a racial classifi-
cation.  For that reason, we conclude that appellees lack
standing to bring this lawsuit.

                            I
  Louisiana has been covered by 4(b) of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 438, as amended, 84 Stat.
315, 42 U. S. C. 1973b(b) (VRA), since November 1,
1964, see 28 CFR pt. 51, App.  The effect of such
coverage is set forth in VRA 5, 42 U. S. C. 1973c:
whenever a covered jurisdiction -shall enact or seek to
administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to
voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect
to voting different from that in force or effect on
November 1, 1964,- it must first either obtain a declara-
tory judgment from the United States District Court for
the District of Columbia that the 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 receive -preclearance- from the Attorney General to
the same effect.  Any redistricting plan in Louisiana is
subject to these requirements.
  Accordingly, in 1991, Louisiana submitted to the Attor-
ney General for preclearance a districting plan for its
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).
Louisiana's BESE districts historically have paralleled
its congressional districts, so the submitted plan con-
tained one majority-minority district (that is, a district
-in which a majority of the population is a member of a
specific minority group,- Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S.
___, ___ (1993) (slip op., at 1)) out of eight, as did
Louisiana's congressional districting plan then in force.
The Attorney General refused to preclear the plan,
claiming that Louisiana had failed to demonstrate that
its decision not to create a second majority-minority
district was free of racially discriminatory purpose.  See
Defense Exh. 17 in No. 92-1522 (WD La.) (letter from
U. S. Dept. of Justice, Assistant Attorney General John
Dunne, to Louisiana Assistant Attorney General Angie
R. LaPlace, Oct. 1, 1991).  The Attorney General
subsequently precleared a revised BESE plan, which
contained two majority-minority districts.  See Brief for
Appellants State of Louisiana et al. 3, n. 2.
  As a result of the 1990 census, Louisiana's congres-
sional delegation was reduced from eight to seven repre-
sentatives, requiring Louisiana to redraw its district
boundaries.  Perhaps in part because of its recent expe-
rience with the BESE districts, the Louisiana Legisla-
ture set out to create a districting plan containing two
majority-minority districts.  See, e. g., Tr. 11 (Aug. 19,
1993).  Act 42 of the 1992 Regular Session, passed in
May 1992, was such a plan.  One of Act 42's majority-
minority districts, District 2, was located in the New
Orleans area and resembled the majority-minority
district in the previous district map.  The other, District
4, was -[a] Z-shaped creature- that -zigzag[ged] through
all or part of 28 parishes and five of Louisiana's largest
cities.-  Congressional Quarterly, Congressional Districts
in the 1990s, at 323 (1993).  A map of Louisiana's con-
gressional districts under Act 42 is attached as Appendix
A.  The Attorney General precleared Act 42.
  Appellees Hays, Adams, Singleton, and Stokley are
residents of Lincoln Parish, which is located in the
north-central part of Louisiana.  According to the
complaint, all but Singleton reside in that part of
Lincoln Parish that was contained in the majority-
minority District 4 of Act 42.  See Pet. for Permanent
Injunction and Declaratory Judgment in No. CV 92-1522
(WD La.), p. 4.  In August 1992, appellees filed suit in
state court, challenging Act 42 under the state and
federal Constitutions, as well as the VRA.  The State
removed the case to the United States District Court for
the Western District of Louisiana, and, as required by
the VRA, a three-judge court convened to hear the case
pursuant to 28 U. S. C. 2284.  After a two-day trial,
the District Court denied appellees' request for a
preliminary injunction, denied the state and federal
constitutional claims, and took the VRA claims under
advisement.  While the case was pending, this Court
decided Shaw v. Reno, whereupon the District Court
revoked its prior rulings and held another two-day
hearing.  Focusing almost exclusively on the oddly-
shaped District 4, the District Court decided that Act 42
violated the Constitution, and enjoined its enforcement.
See Hays v. Louisiana, 839 F. Supp. 1188 (WD La.
1993) (Hays I).
  Louisiana, and the United States as defendant-inter-
venor, appealed directly to this Court, pursuant to 28
U. S. C. 1253.  While the appeal was pending, the
Louisiana Legislature repealed Act 42 and enacted a
new districting plan, Act 1 of the 1994 Second Extraor-
dinary Session.  The Attorney General precleared Act 1.
We then vacated the District Court's judgment and
remanded the case -for further consideration in light of
Act 1.-  512 U. S. ___ (1994).  A map of Act 1 is
attached as Appendix B.
  Act 1, like Act 42, contains two majority-minority
districts, one of which (District 2) is again located in the
New Orleans area.  The second majority-minority district
in Act 1, however, is considerably different from that in
Act 42.  While Act 42's District 4 ran in a zigzag
fashion along the northern and eastern borders of the
State, Act 1's District 4 begins in the northwestern part
of the State and runs southeast along the Red River
until it reaches Baton Rouge.  For present purposes, the
most significant difference between the two district maps
is that in Act 42, part of Lincoln Parish was contained
in District 4, while in Act 1, Lincoln Parish is entirely
contained in District 5.
  On remand, the District Court allowed appellees to
amend their complaint to challenge Act 1's constitution-
ality.  It then held another two-day hearing and con-
cluded, largely for the same reasons that it had invali-
dated Act 42, that Act 1 was unconstitutional.  See Hays
v. Louisiana, 862 F. Supp. 119 (WD La. 1994) (Hays II).
The court enjoined the State from conducting any
elections pursuant to Act 1, substituted its own dis-
tricting plan, and denied the State's motion for a stay of
judgment pending appeal.
  Louisiana and the United States again appealed
directly to this Court.  We stayed the District Court's
judgment, 512 U. S. ___ (1994), and noted probable
jurisdiction, 513 U. S. ___ (1994).

                           II
  The District Court concluded that appellees had
standing to challenge Act 42, see Hays I, 839 F. Supp.,
at 1192, but did not reconsider standing when faced
with Act 1.  The 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.'-
FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U. S. 215, 230-231 (1990)
(citations omitted).
  It is by now well settled that -the irreducible constitu-
tional minimum of standing contains three elements.
First, the plaintiff must have suffered an `injury in
fact'-an invasion of a legally protected interest which
is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or
imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.  Second, there
must be a causal connection between the injury and the
conduct complained of . . . .  Third, it must be likely, as
opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be
redressed by a favorable decision.-  Lujan v. Defenders
of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560-561 (1992) (footnote,
citations, and internal quotation marks omitted); see
also, e. g., Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984);
Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for
Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 472
(1982).  In light of these principles, we have repeatedly
refused to recognize a generalized grievance against
allegedly illegal governmental conduct as sufficient for
standing to invoke the federal judicial power.  See, e. g.,
Valley Forge Christian College, supra; Schlesinger v.
Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208 (1974);
United States v. Richardson, 418 U. S. 166 (1974); Ex
parte L-vitt, 302 U. S. 633 (1937) (per curiam).  We
have also made clear that -it is the burden of the `party
who seeks the exercise of jurisdiction in his favor,'
McNutt v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 298 U. S.
178, 189 (1936), `clearly to allege facts demonstrating
that he is a proper party to invoke judicial resolution of
the dispute.'  Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 518
(1975).-  FW/PBS, supra, at 231.  And when a case has
proceeded to final judgment after a trial, as this case
has, -those facts (if controverted) must be `supported
adequately by the evidence adduced at trial'- to avoid
dismissal on standing grounds.  Lujan, supra, at 561
(quoting Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441
U. S. 91, 115, n. 31 (1979)).
  The rule against generalized grievances applies with
as much force in the equal protection context as in any
other.  Allen v. Wright made clear that even if a
governmental actor is discriminating on the basis of
race, the resulting injury -accords a basis for standing
only to `those persons who are personally denied equal
treatment' by the challenged discriminatory conduct.-
468 U. S., at 755 (quoting Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U. S.
728, 740 (1984)); see also Valley Forge Christian College,
supra, at 489-490, n. 26 (disapproving the proposition
that every citizen has -standing to challenge every
affirmative-action program on the basis of a personal
right to a government that does not deny equal protec-
tion of the laws-).  We therefore reject appellees'
position that -anybody in the State has a claim,- Tr. of
Oral Arg. 36, and adhere instead to the principles
outlined above.
  We discussed the harms caused by racial classifica-
tions in Shaw.  We noted that, in general, -[t]hey
threaten to stigmatize individuals by reason of their
membership in a racial group and to incite racial
hostility.-  509 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11).  We also
noted -representational harms- the particular type of
racial classification at issue in Shaw may cause: -When
a district obviously is created solely to effectuate the
perceived common interests of one racial group, elected
officials are more likely to believe that their primary
obligation is to represent only the members of that
group, rather than their constituency as a whole.-  Id.,
at ___ (slip op., at 16).  Accordingly, we held that
-redistricting legislation that is so bizarre on its face
that it is `unexplainable on grounds other than race'
demands the same close scrutiny that we give other
state laws that classify citizens by race.-  Id., at ___
(citation omitted) (slip op., at 12).  Any citizen able to
demonstrate that he or she, personally, has been injured
by that kind of racial classification has standing to
challenge the classification in federal court.
  Demonstrating the individualized harm our standing
doctrine requires may not be easy in the racial gerry-
mandering context, as it will frequently be difficult to
discern why a particular citizen was put in one district
or another.  See id., at ___ (slip op., at 14) (noting -the
difficulty of determining from the face of a single-
member districting plan that it purposefully distin-
guishes between voters on the basis of race-).  Where a
plaintiff resides in a racially gerrymandered district,
however, 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, cf. General Contractors v. Jacksonville, 508 U. S.
___ (1993).  Voters in such districts may suffer the
special representational harms racial classifications can
cause in the voting context.  On the other hand, where
a plaintiff does not live in such a district, he or she does
not suffer those special harms, and any inference that
the plaintiff has personally been subjected to a racial
classification would not be justified absent specific
evidence tending to support that inference.  Unless such
evidence is present, that plaintiff would be asserting
only a generalized grievance against governmental
conduct of which he or she does not approve.
  In this case, appellees have not produced evidence
sufficient to carry the burden our standing doctrine
imposes upon them.  Even assuming (without deciding)
that Act 1 causes injury sufficient to invoke strict scru-
tiny under Shaw, appellees have pointed to no evidence
tending to show that they have suffered that injury, and
our review of the record has revealed none.  Neither Act
1 itself, see App. to Juris. Statement for Louisiana et al.
111-120; Appendix B, infra, nor any other evidence
in the record indicates that appellees, or any other
residents of Lincoln Parish, have been subjected
to racially discriminatory treatment.  The record does
contain evidence tending to show that the legislature
was aware of the racial composition of District 5, and of
Lincoln Parish.  We recognized in Shaw, however, that
-the legislature always is aware of race when it draws
district lines, just as it is aware of age, economic status,
religious and political persuasion, and a variety of other
demographic actors.  That sort of race consciousness
does not lead inevitably to impermissible race discrimi-
nation.- 509 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 14).  It follows
that proof of -[t]hat sort of race consciousness- in the
redistricting process is inadequate to establish injury in
fact.  Ibid.
  Appellees urge that District 5 is a -segregated- voting
district, and thus that their position is no different from
that of a student in a segregated school district, see
Brief for Appellees 17 (citing Brown v. Board of Educa-
tion, 347 U. S. 483 (1954)); Tr. of Oral Arg. 33.  But
even assuming arguendo that the evidence in this case
is enough to state a Shaw claim with respect to District
4, that does not prove anything about the legislature's
intentions with respect to District 5, nor does the record
appear to reflect that the legislature intended District 5
to have any particular racial composition.  Of course, it
may be true that the racial composition of District 5
would have been different if the legislature had drawn
District 4 in another way.  But an allegation to that
effect does not allege a cognizable injury under the
Fourteenth Amendment.  We have never held that the
racial composition of a particular voting district, without
more, can violate the Constitution.  Cf. Shaw, supra, at
___ (slip op., at 10-14); Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55
(1980).
  Appellees insist that they challenged Act 1 in its
entirety, not District 4 in isolation.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 36.
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 (emphasis added), may bring
such a challenge, and citizens who do so carry the
burden of proving their standing, as well as their case
on the merits.
  Appellees' reliance on Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400
(1991), is unavailing.  Powers held that -[a]n individual
juror does not have a right to sit on any particular petit
jury, but he or she does possess the right not to be
excluded from one on account of race.-  Id., at 409.  But
of course, where an individual juror is excluded from a
jury because of race, that juror has personally suffered
the race-based harm recognized in Powers, and it is the
fact of personal injury that appellees have failed to
establish here.  Thus, appellees' argument that -they do
have a right not to be placed into or excluded from a
district because of the color of their skin,- Brief for
Appellees 16, cannot help them, because they have not
established that they have suffered such treatment in
this case.
  Justice Stevens agrees that appellees lack standing,
but on quite different grounds: in his view, appellees'
failure to allege and prove vote dilution deprives them
of standing, irrespective of whether they have alleged
and proven the injury discussed in Shaw.  Post, at 2-3;
see also Miller v. Johnson, post, at ___-___ (Stevens, J.,
dissenting) (slip op., at 3-4).  Justice White's dissenting
opinion in Shaw argued that position, see Shaw, 509
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2) (-Appellants have not
presented a cognizable claim, because they have not
alleged a cognizable injury-); post, at 3 (quoting Justice
White's dissent in Shaw), but it did not prevail.
Justice Stevens offers no special reason to revisit the
issue here.
  We conclude that appellees have failed to show that
they have suffered the injury our standing doctrine
requires.  Appellees point us to no authority for the
proposition that an equal protection challenge may go
forward in federal court absent that showing of individu-
alized harm, and we decline appellees' invitation to
approve that proposition in this case.  Accordingly, the
judgment of the District Court is vacated, and the case
is remanded with instructions to dismiss the complaint.

                                      It is so ordered.

  Justice Ginsburg concurs in the judgment.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF O'CONNOR, J.

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF O'CONNOR, J.