I am
honored to appear before this Committee. For 50 years, I have
filed lawsuits that resulted in the Supreme Court’s declaring
segregation and discrimination in many areas of the law to be
unconstitutional, including voter registration and
reapportionment.
As
one who has been in the trenches, I appear today to attest to
the tremendous importance of the reapportionment cases decided
by the Warren Court, one of which I actually litigated,
Gomillion v. Lightfoot. In a job application to the Reagan
Justice Department, Samuel Alito wrote that his “deep interest
in constitutional law” was motivated in large part by
disagreement with Warren Court decisions,” including those
involving “reapportionment.” I consider Judge Alito’s comments
to be extremely troubling. The reapportionment cases decided by
the Warren Court made certain that that federal courts had the
power to ensure that voting rights were meaningfully protected.
These rights had been violated by many states since
reconstruction. The cases eliminated the inequities of
mal-apportionment which deprived African Americans of voting
strength all across the South. In my view, there is no more
important body of law.
Senator Sessions is familiar with my legal career, which began
with my representing Mrs. Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Bus Boycott gave rise to
the case of Browder v. Gayle, in which the Supreme Court
declared that ordinances and statutes requiring racial
segregation on Montgomery city buses were unconstitutional.
This was a unanimous decision by the Warren Court.
Prior
to Browder v. Gayle, African Americans in Alabama and
other southern states were actively working toward obtaining the
right to vote. In Tuskegee, Alabama – the home of Tuskegee
University where Dr. Booker T. Washington was its first
president and where Dr. George Washington Carver made many of
his scientific discoveries – African Americans filed lawsuits as
far back as 1945 in order to obtain the right to vote. While
the population of Macon County was about 75% African-American,
only a handful of African Americans were registered to vote.
After
years of litigation, we were able to get approximately 400
African Americans registered in the City of Tuskegee. In 1957,
however, the Alabama Legislature passed a law which changed the
city limits of Tuskegee from a square to 28 sides, excluding all
but three or four African Americans who were registered to vote,
but leaving all the white citizens. That law gave rise to the
case of Gomillion v. Lightfoot. This was my brainchild,
and substantially changed the law in securing the right to vote
for African Americans.
Gomillion was the first
significant reapportionment case decided during the tenure of
Chief Justice Earl Warren. In a unanimous decision, the Court
held that the boundary change violated the Fifteenth Amendment.
Just as importantly, the Court rejected the argument that
impairment of voting rights could not be challenged in the face
of a state’s unrestricted power to realign its political
subdivisions. The Court stated: “When a legislature thus
singles out a readily isolated segment of a racial minority for
special discriminatory treatment, it violates the Fifteenth
Amendment. . . . Apart from all else, these considerations lift
this controversy out of the so-called ‘political arena’ and into
the conventional sphere of constitutional litigation.”
There
is no question in my mind that Gomillion v. Lightfoot
laid the foundation for the concept of ‘one man, one vote.’
Fifth Circuit Judge John Brown, whose dissenting opinion
provided the foundation for the Supreme Court’s ruling,
considered his dissent to be his most important opinion. Judge
John Minor Wisdom would later write that “Gomillion had a
prompt and decisive effect on reapportionment and the right to
vote generally.”
Only
two years later, the Supreme Court cited Gomillion in its
seminal ruling in Baker v. Carr. There, the Supreme
Court held that federal courts could review a challenge under
the Equal Protection Clause to the apportionment of seats in
state legislatures. The Court relied on its holding in
Gomillion that the power of a state lies within the scope of
limitations imposed by the Constitution.
Shortly thereafter, in Gray v. Sanders, the Court
invalidated a Georgia system that provided more voting power to
rural voters than urban voters. Again, the Court quoted from
Gomillion: “When a State exercises power wholly within the
domain of state interest, it is insulated from federal judicial
review. But such insulation is not carried over when state
power is used as an instrument for circumventing a federally
protected right.” Immediately after the Gomillion quote,
Justice William O. Douglas set forth the famous principle: “The
conception of political equality from the Declaration of
Independence, to the Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth,
Seventeenth and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing –
one person, one vote.”
Finally, in Reynolds v. Sims, the Court held that the
Equal Protection Clause required Alabama’s legislative districts
to be apportioned on the basis of population, so that the weight
of a citizen’s vote would not depend on where he or she lived.
Chief Justice Warren held that “[t]he right to vote freely for
the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic
society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart
of representative government. And the right of suffrage can be
denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s
vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free
exercise of the franchise.” Once more, the Court relied on
Gomillion in holding that “a denial of constitutionally
protected rights demands judicial protection; our oath and our
office require no less of us.”
I cannot
overstate the importance of these cases for they are the
foundation of our modern democracy. In recognizing the concept
of “one person, one vote,” the reapportionment cases enshrined
the principle that every citizen has the right to an equally
effective vote, rather than the right to simply cast a ballot.
State legislatures could not dilute the votes of racial
minorities by perpetuating unequal voting districts.
Importantly, the reapportionment cases also established
principles for challenging “at-large” and “multi-member”
electoral systems enacted by many southern jurisdictions after
passage of the Voting Rights Act in order to dilute the
African-American vote. The concept that no group of voters
should wield more power in the election of candidates than
another was an essential component.
When I filed the Gomillion
case, we had very few African Americans registered to vote in
Alabama. We had no elected African Americans on city councils,
school boards, county commissions, in the legislatures or in
Congress. As a result of the Warren Court’s decisions in
Gomillion, Baker, Gray, Reynolds and
other cases, and the enactment of legislation, we now have
thousands of African Americans and other minorities serving in
elected and appointed positions, from city council persons to
members of Congress.
I respectfully suggest that this
Committee carefully scrutinize Judge Alito’s disagreement with
these cases. A nominee to the Supreme Court who has a judicial
philosophy set against the Warren Court and against the
reapportionment cases is, in effect, saying that he would turn
the clock back. If this occurred, not only would African
Americans lose, the entire nation would lose the great richness
of their contributions as currently enjoyed. In my opinion, a
Supreme Court Justice with these views would impede the
effective protection of the right to vote.
In conclusion, I submit that the
next appointee to the Supreme Court should favor the protection
of voting rights and should strengthen, not weaken, the voting
rights case law developed by the Warren Court.
Thank you very much. I will be
happy to answer questions.
