Phillip R. Langsdon , et al. (98-6778) v. DON SUNDQUIST , Governor of the State of Tennessee

*This decision was originally issued on April 3, 2000. It is now being
issued to incorporate Judge Jones’ separate concurring opinion.
1
RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206
ELECTRONIC CITATION: 2000 FED App. 0134P (6th Cir.)
File Name: 00a0134p.06
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
_________________
R URAL W EST TENNESSEE
AFRICAN AMERICAN -AFFAIRS
C OUNCIL, et al. (98-6718),
P HILLIP R. LANGSDON , et al.
(98-6778),
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
v.
DON S UNDQUIST , Governor of
the State of Tennessee, et al.,
Defendants-Appellants.
;>

1
Nos. 98-6718/6778
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Tennessee at Memphis.
Nos. 92-02407; 92-02415—Jerome Turner, District Judge.
Argued: March 16, 2000
Decided and Filed: April 3, 2000*
Before: JONES, BATCHELDER, and CLAY, Circuit
Judges.

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2 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
_________________
COUNSEL
ARGUED: Michael W. Catalano, OFFICE OF THE
ATTORNEY GENERAL, Nashville, Tennessee, for
Appellants. Laughlin McDonald, AMERICAN CIVIL
LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION, Atlanta, Georgia, John
L. Ryder, APPERSON, CRUMP & MAXWELL, Memphis,
Tennessee, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Michael W.
Catalano, Paul G. Summers, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY
GENERAL, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellants. Laughlin
McDonald, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
FOUNDATION, Atlanta, Georgia, John L. Ryder,
APPERSON, CRUMP & MAXWELL, Memphis, Tennessee,
John R. Walker, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN &
CALDWELL, Memphis, Tennessee, Richard H. Dinkins,
DODSON, PARKER, DINKINS & BEHM, Nashville,
Tennessee, for Appellees.
BATCHELDER J., delivered the opinion of the court, in
which CLAY, J., joined. JONES, J. (pp. 18-23), issued a
separate concurring opinion.
_________________
OPINION
_________________
BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge. Don Sundquist, Governor
of the State of Tennessee, and other state officials appeal from
a district court order finding that a districting plan for the
Tennessee House of Representatives unlawfully dilutes
African-American voting strength in violation of § 2 of the
Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973, and enjoining further
use of that plan. The State further requests a stay of the
district court’s order for elections scheduled to begin in
August of 2000. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm
the order of the district court, and deny the motion for a stay
as moot.
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
23
long as it grants equal opportunity to some other set of
minority voters. This conclusion is contrary to the Supreme
Court’s interpretation of § 2, which clearly provides that a
state may not remedy vote dilution in one area by legal
compliance in another.

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22 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
(W.D. Tenn. 1998). While one might expect a political group
to wield significant influence in a district in which it
comprises at least one-quarter of the voting age population,
the realities of white bloc voting command that we apply a
more flexible standard in assessing the extent to which
purported influence districts provide minorities with an equal
opportunity to elect representatives of choice.
Notwithstanding a minority population that may even
approach upwards of 40% in a district, when, as here, 90% of
whites coalesce along racial lines to defeat the black
community’s preferred candidate of choice, the ability of
blacks to “influence” elections in these circumstances is
specious. The bright-line 25% rule obscures the realities of
white bloc voting, and implies black “influence” that may not
in fact exist. Accordingly, I would expressly reject the 25%
rule, and adopt a more flexible, case-by-case standard that
takes white bloc voting into account.
Second, the majority concludes that “neither over-
proportionality in one area of the State nor substantial
proportionality in the State as a whole should ordinarily be
used to offset a problem of vote dilution in one discrete area
of the State.” Ante at 14 (emphasis added). For this
conclusion, the majority relies upon the Supreme Court’s
holdings in Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899 (1996) and Johnson
v. DeGrandy, 512 U.S. 997 (1994), which collectively
provide that a state may not remedy vote dilution in one area
of a state by compliance with § 2 in another area. Indeed, as
the majority acknowledges, the DeGrandy court scathingly
critiqued the premise that “the rights of some minority voters
under § 2 may be traded off against the rights of other
members of the same minority class,” 512 U.S. at 1019, and
the Shaw court plainly ruled that “the vote-dilution injuries
suffered by . . . persons [in one area of the State] are not
remedied by creating a safe majority-black district somewhere
else in the State.” 517 U.S. at 917. Inexplicably, the majority
reads ambiguity into these conclusions, and thereby leaves the
door open to the notion that a state may dilute the vote of
minority voters in ways that would otherwise violate § 2, as
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
3
I
In April of 1992, the Tennessee General Assembly enacted
legislation reapportioning the State’s single-member House of
Representatives and Senate districts. Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 3-
1-102 & 103 (1992) (repealed 1994). Prior to the 1992
primaries, the Rural West Tennessee African-American
Affairs Council (“RWTAAC”) and certain registered voters
in Tennessee filed suit charging that both the Senate Plan and
the House Plan violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the
United States Constitution. Phillip R. Langsdon and other
registered voters in Tennessee filed suit challenging the
validity of the House Plan on the grounds that it violated § 2
of Voting Rights Act and the “one person, one vote” doctrine
of the Fourteenth Amendment; the plaintiffs also challenged
the House Plan on other grounds subsequently dismissed.
A three-judge panel of the district court convened and
ordered the two cases consolidated. On September 15, 1993,
the panel held that the House Plan was unconstitutional
because it violated the one person, one vote doctrine of the
Equal Protection Clause. RWTAAC v. McWherter, 836 F.
Supp. 447, 452 (W.D. Tenn. 1993). The court ordered the
defendants to prepare and submit a constitutional
apportionment plan by January 25, 1994. Id. The State
appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
On November 4, 1993, the district court ruled that the
Senate Plan violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act by
affording African-American voters in west Tennessee less
opportunity than other members of the electorate to
participate in the political process and to elect representatives
of their choice. RWTAAC v. McWherter, 836 F. Supp. 453,
466 (W.D. Tenn. 1993) (“RWTAAC I”). The State appealed,
and the Supreme Court vacated the panel’s order and
remanded for further consideration in light of Johnson v.
DeGrandy, 512 U.S. 997 (1994). RWTAAC v. McWherter,
512 U.S. 1249 (1994). On remand, the district court reversed

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4 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
its decision in RWTAAC I and held that the Senate Plan
conformed to the Voting Rights Act. RWTAAC v.
McWherter, 877 F. Supp. 1096, 1098 (W.D. Tenn. 1995)
(“RWTAAC II”). The plaintiffs appealed.
While the appeals in the Senate and House Plan cases were
pending, the Tennessee General Assembly adopted a new
House Plan and submitted it to the district court. Tenn. Code
Ann. § 3-1-103 (1994). The court found that the new Plan
complied with the Equal Protection Clause’s one person, one
vote requirement. It delayed consideration of the other
challenges to the House Plan until the Supreme Court ruled
on the appeals pending in the Senate case.
The Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiffs’
claims as to the Senate Plan on October 4, 1995. RWTAAC v.
Sundquist, 516 U.S. 801 (1995). RWTAAC then amended its
complaint to challenge the House Plan on the sole ground that
it violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Because the
amended complaint contained no constitutional claims, the
three-judge court disbanded itself. After a trial on the merits
of the plaintiffs’ consolidated claim of vote dilution, the
Honorable Jerome Turner, on November 6, 1998, declared the
1994 House Plan to be violative of the Voting Rights Act and
enjoined the defendants from using it in future elections.
RWTAAC v. Sundquist, 29 F. Supp. 2d 448, 450 (W.D. Tenn.
1998). The state defendants bring this timely appeal.
II
"A district court's factual findings regarding Section 2
violations and the determination of whether vote dilution has
occurred are ordinarily reviewed for clear error." Cousin v.
McWherter, 46 F.3d 568, 574 (6th Cir. 1995) (citing Fed. R.
Civ. P. 52(a) and Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 79
(1986)). However, "Rule 52(a) does not inhibit an appellate
court's power to correct errors of law, including those that
may infect a so-called mixed finding of law and fact, or a
finding of fact that is predicated on a misunderstanding of the
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
21
least of all a rule interpreting a statute designed to implement
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the
Constitution.” NAACP v. City of Niagra Falls, 65 F.3d 1002,
1016 (2d Cir. 1995). Indeed, the district court properly
evaluated the success of the black community’s preferred
candidate in white-white elections because of our refusal to
conclude that racial representation per se is the lynchpin of a
dilution determination. See Cousin, 145 F.3d at 825. Not
only is such an abstracted presumption abhorrent to the
colorblind goals of the Equal Protection Clause, see, e.g.,
Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 911-12 (1995), but it directly
conflicts with § 2's dictate that nothing in the Voting Rights
Act shall be construed to require proportional representation.
See 42 U.S.C. § 1973(b).
By granting greater weight to black-white elections when
white bloc voting is targeted against black candidates, we do
not disrespect this principle. We merely recognize the
established realities of white bloc voting in rural west
Tennessee, and conclude uncontroversially that blacks do not
enjoy an equal opportunity “to participate in the political
process and to elect representatives of their choice” when they
can elect only those candidates sanctioned by the white
majority.
II.
I also write separately to express disagreement with both
the district court’s definition of “influence” districts for the
purposes of the “totality of the circumstances” analysis, and
the majority’s implicit recognition that, under certain
unspecified circumstances, a state may remedy vote dilution
in one area of a state by compliance with § 2 in another.
First, the district court erred in adopting the RWTAAC II
court’s bright-line definition of “influence” districts as any
district where a minority group comprises between 25% and
55% of the district. Rural West Tennessee African American
Affairs Council, Inc. v. Sundquist, 29 F.Supp.2d 448, 461

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20 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
candidates of their race at the polls. Cf. Shaw v. Reno, 509
U.S. 630, 647 (1993) (asserting that intentionally-created
majority-minority districts may “reinforce[] the perception
that members of the same racial group . . . think alike, share
the same political interests, and will prefer the same
candidates at the polls”). In this case, the record shows that
60% of whites vote against the black community’s preferred
candidate in white-white elections, yet almost 90% of whites
vote for the white candidate in black-white elections. The
record therefore reveals almost total white bloc voting when
a politically cohesive group of blacks attempts to elect a
member of their racial group. These facts depict the
undisputed racial realities of politics in rural west Tennessee,
and we cannot wish away these hard political facts in hopes
of achieving a colorblind ideal that, as of yet, does not
comport with empirical reality.
Moreover, absent compelling evidence that a white
candidate in a white-white election is genuinely the black
community’s preferred candidate, courts must assess black-
white elections to determine whether a politically cohesive
minority group actually has a viable candidate of choice, or
merely an opportunity to mitigate the impact of white
electoral hegemony. See Cousin, 145 F.3d at 825 (providing
that white-white elections are relevant when “one of the
candidates [is] strongly preferred by black voters” or “[w]here
black voters have a genuine candidate of choice”) (citation
omitted); cf. Citizens for a Better Gretna v. Gretna, 834 F.2d
496, 503 (5th Cir. 1987) (concluding that a candidate’s race
is most relevant when the election “offers voters the choice of
supporting a viable minority candidate”).
Recognizing the relevance of a candidate’s race when the
record shows minority political cohesion and especially strong
white cohesion in elections involving black candidates does
not preempt the possibility that a white candidate may be the
black community’s genuine and actual candidate of choice.
As the Second Circuit rightly concluded, “[n]o legal rule
should presuppose the inevitability of electoral apartheid –
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
5
governing rule of law." Gingles, 478 U.S. at 79 (internal
quotation marks omitted).
A
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act provides:
(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or
standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or
applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner
which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of
any citizen of the United States to vote on account of
race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set
forth in section 1973b(f)(2) of this title, as provided in
subsection (b) of this section.
(b) A violation of subsection (a) of this section is
established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is
shown that the political processes leading to nomination
or election in the State or political subdivision are not
equally open to participation by members of a class of
citizens protected by subsection (a) of this section in that
its members have less opportunity than other members of
the electorate to participate in the political process and to
elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which
members of a protected class have been elected to office
in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance
which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in this
section establishes a right to have members of a protected
class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the
population.
42 U.S.C. § 1973.
Before considering whether the House Plan dilutes minority
voting strength in rural west Tennessee and thus denies
members of the minority group a fair opportunity to elect
representatives of their choice, we must determine whether
the plaintiffs have met the three preconditions announced by
the Supreme Court in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50-

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6 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
51. The plaintiffs must demonstrate that 1) the minority
group is sufficiently large and geographically compact to
constitute a majority in a single-member district; 2) the
minority group is politically cohesive; and 3) the white
majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to
defeat the minority’s preferred candidate. Id. The parties
agree that the first two Gingles preconditions have been
satisfied. They clash on the question whether whites vote as
a bloc usually to defeat the candidates of choice of African-
American voters, contesting most hotly the weight to be given
to particular sets of election data.
B
Chapter 536 of the Public Acts of 1994 provides a three-
part reapportionment plan for Tennessee’s ninety-nine house
districts. Plan A, at issue in this case, creates twelve
majority-African-American districts. None of these districts,
however, lies in the area that plaintiffs describe as rural west
Tennessee, which includes Madison, Haywood, Hardeman,
Tipton, Fayette, and Lauderdale counties. Chapter 536
provides that should a court find that Plan A unlawfully
dilutes minority voting strength, Plan B, which creates
thirteen majority-African-American house districts, including
one in rural west Tennessee, will take effect. Plan C, which
would have reinstated the 1992 house redistricting plan had
the State prevailed on its claim that the 1992 plan complied
with the Equal Protection Clause, is moot. See Millsaps v.
Langsdon, 510 U.S. 1160 (1994) (affirming the district
court’s ruling that the 1992 house redistricting plan violated
the “one person, one vote” doctrine).
At trial, both parties presented expert testimony regarding
voter behavior in rural west Tennessee. Plaintiffs’ expert, Dr.
Steven Cole, analyzed eleven legislative elections which had
both black and white candidates from 1974 to 1996 using
bivariate ecological regression analysis, and found that the
black preferred candidates lost nine times (82%). Average
black cohesion was 67%, and average white cohesion was
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
19
white candidates than those involving only white candidates.
Ante at 9. The majority is wise to reach these conclusions,
because “[w]hen white bloc voting is ‘targeted’ against black
candidates, black voters are denied an opportunity enjoyed by
white voters, namely, the opportunity to elect a candidate of
their own race.” Clarke, 40 F.3d at 812. Certainly, when
white voters have the opportunity to elect preferred candidates
of all races, yet black voters may only elect white candidates,
black voters patently do not enjoy an opportunity to “elect
[their] candidate of choice on an equal basis with other
voters.” Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 153 (1993).
This conclusion does not blur the reality that § 2 is
ultimately concerned with “whether minority-preferred
candidates, whatever their race, usually lose” because of
white bloc voting. Cousin v. Sundquist, 145 F.3d 818, 825
(6th Cir. 1998). It merely recognizes that when a court has
found both that a minority group politically coalesces along
racial lines, and that whites politically coalesce along racial
lines in elections involving a member of that minority group,
it defies logic for a court to attempt to assess equal access in
a colorblind fashion. In these circumstances, a court is faced
with race-conscious political action among both the white
majority and the black minority, and the Voting Rights Act
clearly protects the racial minority from the political tyranny
of the racial majority. See 42 U.S.C. § 1973(b). If a court,
however, fails to apply a race-conscious standard that
accounts for acute white bloc voting in black-white elections,
it may allow less dramatic polarization in white-white
elections to obscure the reality of black political exclusion in
black-black elections. It is syllogistic that a court cannot
discern color-conscious discrimination through colorblind
lenses.
The VRA’s command that we inquire into a candidate’s
race when faced with black political cohesion and intense
white bloc voting stems from findings pertaining to the
empirical realities of race-conscious political action, not racial
presumptions that blacks, or whites, will only prefer

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18 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
_____________________
CONCURRENCE
_____________________
NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge, concurring.
Although I fully concur in the result reached by the majority
and in much of its well-reasoned analysis, I write separately
to make three points. In concluding that the district court did
not err in finding that whites vote as a bloc usually to defeat
the preferred candidate of blacks in rural west Tennessee, the
majority acknowledges that “the Voting Rights Act’s
guarantee of equal opportunity is not met when ‘candidates
favored by blacks can win, but only if the candidates are
white.’” Ante at 9 (quoting Smith v. Clinton, 687 F.Supp.
1310, 1318 (E.D. Ark. 1988) (three judge panel)). It is on this
presupposition that the majority rests its conclusion that, in
this case, black-white elections are more probative of vote
dilution than white-white elections. I agree with this holding;
however, I think it is necessary to explicate further why it
matters under the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) when a
minority group’s only electable candidates of choice are
white. I also write separately to note my differences with the
district court’s definition of “influence” districts, and the
majority’s conclusion that, in certain unspecified
circumstances, compliance with § 2 in one area of a state may
offset vote dilution in another area.
I.
I am of the view that it is wise to explain more fully the
substantive and jurisprudential support animating our holding
that equal opportunity in voting is not achieved when a
minority group may elect representatives of choice when they
are white, but are unsuccessful in electing members of their
own group. See id.; see also Clarke v. City of Cincinnati, 40
F.3d 807, 812 (6th Cir. 1994). Based primarily on this
predicate, the majority concludes that the district court did not
err in granting more weight to elections involving black and
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
7
89%. An analysis of homogenous white precincts for
legislative contests from 1994 to 1996 showed that on average
80% of whites voted for the white candidates over the black
candidates. There were no homogenous black precincts.
Based on this evidence, Dr. Cole concluded that white voters
tend to vote as a bloc so as usually to defeat the candidate of
choice of African-American voters.
The State’s experts, Dr. William Lyons and Dr. Michael
Gant, analyzed ten black-white legislative contests in rural
west Tennessee from 1986 to 1996, and found that the
minority—preferred candidates had been defeated nine times
(90%). Average black cohesion was 64%, and average white
cohesion was 86%. Because black voter turnout was roughly
equal to white voter turnout in black-white elections and in
elections that had only white candidates, Drs. Lyons and Gant
also analyzed eleven white-white legislative contests from
1986 to 1996. Adding the results to those from the black-
white contests, Drs. Lyons and Gant found that the preferred
candidate of black voters was defeated eleven out of twenty-
one times (52.38%).
While Drs. Lyons and Gant acknowledged that the
minority-preferred candidate usually lost, and hence that the
results of state legislative contests in rural west Tennessee
were indicative of minority vote dilution, they noted that a
difference in one election would change this outcome. They
therefore examined twenty-four black-white and twenty-six
white-white countywide elections from 1986 to 1996. In the
black-white contests, they found that the black-preferred
candidate was defeated thirteen times (54%). For white-white
countywide elections, the black-preferred candidate lost six
times (23%). Combining all the countywide contest from
1986 to 1996, the black-preferred candidate lost eighteen out
of fifty times (36%). Noting that if all of the countywide
elections were combined with all of the legislative elections,
the results showed that the black-preferred candidate lost only
twenty-nine of seventy-one elections (41%), the defense

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8 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
experts concluded that election results in rural west Tennessee
were not, in general, indicative of minority vote dilution.
After hearing this testimony, the district court held that the
plaintiffs had made a showing sufficient to satisfy the third
Gingles precondition. The district court placed primary
emphasis on the results of the black-white contests and, due
to the significant number of legislative elections analyzed,
determined that the results from the countywide contests were
not particularly useful or necessary. In light of its limited
probativeness, the district court concluded, the white-white
and countywide evidence was insufficient to overcome the
fact that a white voting bloc defeats the minority-preferred
candidate at least 82% of the time in interracial legislative
elections in rural west Tennessee.
On appeal, the State argues that the district court erred. The
State contends, in essence, that the district court was obliged
to give equal and controlling weight to white-white and non-
legislative contests in its analysis under the third Gingles
factor.
C
This court has made clear that white-white elections are
relevant in the analysis of a voting dilution claim. In Cousin
v. Sundquist, we considered a § 2 challenge to the at-large
method of electing judges utilized by Hamilton County,
Tennessee. Cousin, 145 F.3d 818, 820 (6th Cir. 1998). The
plaintiffs’ expert used average cohesion figures from black-
white elections in connection with voter turnout information
to determine that, in order to succeed in a Hamilton County
election, a hypothetical black candidate would need a number
of white crossover votes exceeding the average crossover
suggested by the cohesion figures. Id. at 824. The
defendants’ expert, by contrast, used both black-white and
white-white election results, identified the minority’s
preferred candidate in each, and determined that the white
majority did not regularly vote in such a way as to deprive
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
17
elections in the six county area are racially polarized, and no
African-American has ever won one. These circumstances
simply overwhelm those factors that might favor the State of
Tennessee (such as a lack of suspect electoral practices,
responsive (albeit mainly white) state legislators, and the
possibility that minority voters in minority-African-American
districts will be able to influence electoral outcomes). The
district court therefore properly held that the plaintiffs had
proved a § 2 violation. The remedy that the plaintiffs seek for
this violation, creation of one majority-African-American
house district in rural west Tennessee through implementation
of Plan B of Chapter 536, will take place as a matter of state
law.
IV
The late Judge Turner ably considered a complex body of
statistical and anecdotal evidence to determine that Plan A of
Chapter 536 unlawfully dilutes African-American voting
strength in rural west Tennessee. His order enjoining use of
the House Plan in future elections is hereby affirmed. The
defendants’ motion for a stay pending appeal is denied as
moot.

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16 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
selected because to do so would require us to trade the § 2
rights of individual African-Americans in rural west
Tennessee against those of African-American groups
elsewhere in the State.
The State complains that by allowing the plaintiffs to define
the frame of reference for their § 2 claim, we will enable
future litigants to carve up successively smaller areas of the
State until they are able to maximize the number of majority-
minority legislative districts—a result not countenanced by
the Voting Rights Act. See De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1017
(“Failure to maximize cannot be the measure of § 2.”). As the
district court pointed out, however, the Gingles preconditions
operate to prevent just the sort of limitlessly small “reverse
gerrymander” whose specter the State raises here. See, e.g.,
Campos v. City of Houston, 113 F.3d 544, 547-48 (5th Cir.
1997) (holding that minority group was not sufficiently large
and geographically compact to sustain a § 2 claim). In this
regard, we note that the region selected by the plaintiffs in this
case is a sensible one—indeed, more sensible than the seven-
county area including Shelby County urged by the State.
While Shelby County is the southernmost and westernmost
county in the State, and, like the six neighboring counties of
rural west Tennessee, has a large African-American
population, the seven counties do not form a coherent
demographic unit. The African-American population in
Shelby County is concentrated in inner-city Memphis, and is
largely set off from rural west Tennessee by a “buffer zone”
of white suburbs. As a result, the African-American
populations in these two areas are not likely to be particularly
cohesive. For this reason, the district court properly restricted
the geographic scope of relevant statistical data to the six
counties of rural west Tennessee.
Having correctly defined its frame of reference, the district
court made no clear error in weighing the totality of the
circumstances. Rural west Tennessee has an African-
American voting age population of 31%, but none of its five
house districts is majority-African-American. Legislative
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
9
black voters in Hamilton County of the opportunity to elect
their candidate of choice. Id. In preferring the methodology
of the defense expert, we noted: “The proper inquiry is not
whether white candidates do or do not usually defeat black
candidates, but whether minority-preferred candidates,
whatever their race, usually lose.” Id. at 825.
While the plain import of Cousin is that courts are not
foreclosed from considering electoral races involving only
white candidates, that case does not suggest (as the State
seems to argue) that white-white contests are necessarily
entitled to the same weight as those involving a minority
candidate. As Judge Richard Arnold has pithily stated, the
Voting Rights Act’s guarantee of equal opportunity is not met
when “[c]andidates favored by blacks can win, but only if the
candidates are white.” Smith v. Clinton, 687 F. Supp. 1310,
1318 (E.D. Ark. 1988) (three judge panel). This court, along
with others, has accordingly held that a candidate’s race can
be relevant to a § 2 inquiry under certain circumstances. See
Clarke v. City of Cincinnati, 40 F.3d 807, 812 (6th Cir. 1994);
see also, e.g., Nipper v. Smith, 39 F.3d 1494, 1540 (11th Cir.
1994) (en banc) (holding that white-white elections may be
considered, but are less probative than those involving black
candidates). One such circumstance occurs when white bloc
voting is “targeted” against black candidates. Clarke, 40 F.3d
at 812.
In this case, there is marked evidence of targeting; the
experts for both the plaintiffs and the defendants agreed that
white voter cohesion in rural west Tennessee increases from
59% in white-white elections to 86% in black-white elections.
Perhaps not unrelatedly, no African-American candidate has
ever won an interracial legislative contest in the six-county
area, despite many candidacies. In view of such evidence that
a white voting bloc coalesces to frustrate African-American
candidacies, the district court properly considered the race of
candidates in its § 2 analysis, and accorded greater weight to
the results of black-white elections.

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10 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
Similarly, the district court was correct to discount the
results of countywide contests. The parties stipulated that
legislative elections were the most legally relevant, and the
rulings of our sister circuits support the parties’ appraisal.
See, e.g., Citizens for a Better Gretna v. City of Gretna, 834
F.2d 496, 502 (5th Cir. 1987) (suggesting that exogenous
elections alone cannot prove racially polarized voting, but can
be considered as “additional evidence”). At trial, data were
presented from twenty-one legislative elections over a period
of ten years—a substantial body of evidence. See Jenkins v.
Red Clay Consol. Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 4 F.3d 1103, 1130
(3d Cir. 1993) (holding that seven elections over a period of
ten years was a suitable sample such that the court could
discern the presence of a pattern of white bloc voting usually
defeating the minority voters’ candidate of choice). The State
nevertheless advocates the inclusion of the countywide
elections on the ground that a different outcome in one of the
eleven legislative elections in which the preferred candidate
of African-Americans was defeated would alter the minority
vote dilution determination. But the record contains no
information that would allow us to evaluate the claimed
marginal character of the statistics derived from the legislative
contests. More importantly, the State’s claim rests on the
assumption that black-white and white-white legislative
elections should be given equal weight. As we have pointed
out, however, that assumption is not valid in this case.
In sum, we find no clear error in the district court’s
determination that the plaintiffs have satisfied the third
Gingles precondition. The data from the legislative elections
were sufficiently robust for the district court to discern
whether there existed a pattern of white bloc voting. When
the black-white legislative elections are afforded greater
weight, the data show that the white majority votes
sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the
minority’s preferred candidate in rural west Tennessee.
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
15
Critiquing this “safe harbor” argument, the Supreme Court
remarked on the State’s “unexplored premise of highly
suspect validity:”
that in any given voting jurisdiction (or portion of that
jurisdiction under consideration), the rights of some
minority voters under § 2 may be traded off against the
rights of other members of the same minority class.
Under the State’s view, the most blatant racial
gerrymandering in half of a county’s single-member
districts would be irrelevant under § 2 if offset by
political gerrymandering in the other half, so long as
proportionality was the bottom line.
Id. at 1019. Similarly, in Shaw, the Court considered North
Carolina’s argument that a bizarrely shaped majority-black
congressional district was a narrowly tailored remedy for a § 2
violation elsewhere in the State. Shaw, 517 U.S. at 916-17.
Finding this position “singularly unpersuasive,” the Court
stated:
If a § 2 violation is proved for a particular area, it flows
from the fact that individuals in this area “have less
opportunity than other members of the electorate to
participate in the political process and to elect
representatives of their choice.” 42 U.S.C. § 1973(b).
The vote-dilution injuries suffered by these persons are
not remedied by creating a safe majority-black district
somewhere else in the State . . . .
. . . To accept that the district may be placed anywhere
implies that the claim, and hence the coordinate right to
an undiluted vote (to cast a ballot equal among voters),
belongs to the minority as a group and not to its
individual members. It does not.
Id. at 917. Taken together, the admonitions of De Grandy
and Shaw dissuade us from accepting the Tennessee’s
invitation to append Shelby County, or the State as whole, to
the geographical frame of reference that the plaintiffs have

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14 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
1The State also challenges the district court’s finding regarding the
history of official discrimination in voting in western Tennessee. We
have carefully considered this question, and find no error in the district
court’s determination.
conducting the proportionality analysis.1 The State argues
that the court should have considered proportionality in the
entire state or, in the alternative, in an area that includes
Shelby County along with the six counties of rural west
Tennessee. On a statewide basis, there are twelve majority
black house districts out of a total of ninety-nine, which, the
State contends, is substantially proportional to Tennessee’s
black voting age population of 14.4%. In the seven-county
area that includes Shelby County, the black voting age
population is 37.9%; since 42.85% of the house districts are
majority black in that seven-county area, the State says,
blacks are in fact overrepresented.
B
In Johnson v. De Grandy, the Supreme Court explicitly left
open the question of the proper frame of reference for
analyzing § 2 claims. De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1022 (“[W]e
have no occasion to decide which frame of reference should
have been used if the parties had not apparently agreed in the
District Court on the appropriate geographical scope for
analyzing the alleged § 2 violation and devising its remedy.”).
Nevertheless, the reasoning in that case, and in Shaw v. Hunt,
517 U.S. 899, 917 (1996), persuades us that neither over-
proportionality in one area of the State nor substantial
proportionality in the State as a whole should ordinarily be
used to offset a problem of vote dilution in one discrete area
of the State.
In De Grandy, the State of Florida argued that, as a matter
of law, no dilution occurs whenever the percentage of single-
member districts in which minority voters form an effective
majority mirrors the minority voters’ percentage of the
relevant population. De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1017.
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
11
III
Having determined that the plaintiffs have met the three
Gingles preconditions, we turn to the question whether, given
the "totality of the circumstances," the House Plan has in fact
"diluted" African-American electoral strength and thus denied
African-Americans in rural west Tennessee a fair opportunity
to elect representatives of their choice. See Clarke, 40 F.3d
at 811. The Senate Report which accompanied the 1982
amendments to the Voting Rights Act specifies factors which
typically may be relevant to a § 2 claim: the history of
voting-related discrimination in the State or political
subdivision; the extent to which voting in the elections of the
State or political subdivision is racially polarized; the extent
to which the State or political subdivision has used voting
practices or procedures that tend to enhance the opportunity
for discrimination against the minority group, such as
unusually large election districts, majority vote requirements,
and prohibitions against bullet voting; the exclusion of
members of the minority group from candidate slating
processes; the extent to which minority group members bear
the effects of past discrimination in areas such as education,
employment, and health, which hinder their ability to
participate effectively in the political process; the use of overt
or subtle racial appeals in political campaigns; and the extent
to which members of the minority group have been elected to
public office in the jurisdiction. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 44-45
(citing S. Rep. No. 97-417, at 28-29 (1982)). The Report
notes also that there may be probative value to evidence
demonstrating that elected officials are unresponsive to the
particularized needs of the members of the minority group
and that the policy underlying the State's or the political
subdivision's use of the contested practice or structure is
tenuous. Id. at 45.
The Supreme Court has recently highlighted a new
element—proportionality—to be weighed in the totality of the
circumstances. In Johnson v. De Grandy, a case involving a
challenge to Florida’s legislative reapportionment plan, the

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12 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
Nos. 98-6718/6778
Court concluded that § 2 relief should not be granted because,
notwithstanding the presence of continued discrimination and
racial bloc voting, minority voters were able to form effective
voting majorities in a number of legislative districts that were
roughly proportional to their respective shares in the voting
age population. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1024 (1994). The
Court emphasized, however, that proportionality is not a “safe
harbor :” “the degree of probative value assigned to
proportionality may vary with other facts. No single statistic
provides courts with a shortcut to determine whether a set of
single-member districts unlawfully dilute minority voting
strength.” Id. at 1020-21.
A
The district court found that the totality of the
circumstances indicated that the House Plan unlawfully
dilutes minority voting strength in rural west Tennessee.
Beginning with the two factors that the Supreme Court has
declared are the most important in balancing the totality of the
circumstances, see Gingles, 478 U.S. at 48 n.15, the court
found that no African-American had been elected to the state
legislature from the six-county area, and that the experts at the
trial agreed that voting in the area is racially polarized. The
court next took judicial notice of findings from the Senate
Plan cases, RWTAAC I & II, regarding the history and effect
of discrimination in voting in western Tennessee. The court
in the Senate Plan cases had recounted the entire history of
official discrimination from the pre-Civil War era, a time-
frame whose use we disapproved of in the Cousin case, 145
F.2d at 832, but went on to cite two cases from the 1980s
which indicate that voting rights violations by public officials
in rural west Tennessee are ongoing. See Taylor v. Haywood
County, 544 F. Supp. 1122, 1131 (W.D. Tenn. 1982) (holding
that change to an at-large election scheme was a result of
purposeful intention to dilute black voting strength); Bills v.
Alexander, No. 83-12220 (W.D. Tenn. 1983) (approving
settlement setting up a new system to ensure the opportunity
of black citizens to participate meaningfully in the political
Nos. 98-6718/6778 Rural West Tennessee, et al.
v. Sundquist, et al.
13
process). The court concluded that as a result of those
ongoing violations, African-Americans had suffered
disadvantages in such areas as education, employment, and
health.
The district court further found that the Tennessee House of
Representatives was responsive to the needs of black voters
in the rural western part of the state, a factor upon which this
court has laid heavy emphasis in the past. See Cousin, 145
F.3d at 833. The district court questioned the state policy of
maintaining municipal boundaries wherever possible in
configuring the legislative districts, since the plan itself
fractured certain cities. Under the heading of “miscellaneous”
factors, the court concluded that there was no evidence of
suspect electoral practices, racial appeals in political
campaigns, or a slating process or other mechanism used to
prevent minority candidacies.
Turning to the question of proportionality, the district court
noted that blacks make up 31.01% of the voting age
population of the six counties comprising rural western
Tennessee, but that none of the five house districts covering
that area contains a majority of black voters. The court
acknowledged that in four of the five districts minority
members make up 25-55% of the population and hence could
meaningfully affect election outcomes in those four districts,
but concluded that in the absence of a single majority black
district, this fact had little probative significance. Balancing
the lack of proportionality with the other factors from the
Senate Report, the court concluded that black voters in rural
west Tennessee do not have equal opportunity in the political
process.
The State’s primary quarrel with this determination
concerns the geographical area on which the court focused in

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